“Borrowing” someone elses car registration tags can land you in some seriously hot water.

Back in June of 2000, I went to Las Vegas with a group of 4 other people. (Side note: Betcha didn’t know you could fit 5 people in a VW Beatle and take a 5-6 hour drive to another state, but you totally can)

Anyhow, our group was leaving from Newport Beach, CA on a Friday, and returning late Sunday. The car I was driving at the time was a really crappy Toyota Corolla that looked like hell, but drove like a champ. The problem? It wouldn’t pass smog so I couldn’t get the registration tags for it. I did, however pay the registration fees. Until it passed the smog check there would be no tags for me.

A few days before we were set to head of to Sin City, I was changing out the tags on my grandmother’s Thunderbird. And there it was, the answer to my problem. The main issue? I’d be parked on the street in NB for a weekend, and I didn’t have current tags. That pretty much guaranteed my car would be towed. If I had a current tag on the car, I figured the police would pass my car by and when I got back, I’d handle the whole smog check issue.

Newport Beach is a pretty snobby city. I really do love NB, but it seems like the police there love to give out tickets for anything and everything.

Anyhow, I parked my car and we were off. We all had a great time, but then it was time to come home. The drive took forever (“for-e-ver, for-e-ver” ~ bonus points if you can name that movie quote.) We pulled in crazy late, but wtf? Where’s my car? WHERE’S MY CAR?!? A few minutes on the phone with the NB Police Department netted the info that my car had been towed. They didn’t really say why.

A few days later, I got a phone call from a nice gentleman at the PD. I’m being serious, he was really nice. He asked me who so-and-so was and I froze. He said my grandmother’s name. I told him who she was and he asked if I realized that the numbers on the tag are assigned. All they had to do was run the tags and they’d know who’s car they belonged to. Doh! Busted.

I explained that the car didn’t pass smog, I was parking in NB for the weekend and I paid the reg. fees but i couldn’t get the tags. He was really understanding and said that since I was totally cooperative, he’d make a note of it in the file for the judge to see when I went to court. Ugh, court.

I guessed they actually ran the tags on the car, because let’s be honest here, the car was an eyesore. It didn’t sit too well on the street in such a hoity toity city. They had to be looking for any reason to get it off the street, and they found it. On a silver platter.

Turns out that “stealing” someone’s registration tags in CA will net you a heafty fine and a misdemeanor on your record. It’s on my record that I’m a thief. Good times.

My advice would be to NOT take your grandmother’s tags just because your car’s tags are expired and there’s still a month or 2 left on hers. That is, unless you like going to court, paying over $500 in fines and having a misdemeanor on your record. If you do, then by all means, go for it!

For more “Betcha Didn’t Know” stories from the “blogosphere,” head on over to Barking Mad. But stick around for all of her posts because they rock!

Over on LiveJournal you will find a community called A Day In My Life.  I really love this community. You see some of the most interesting people doing the most interesting things. However, over the years as the community grew, they had to crack down with the posting rules. Rather than follow strict guidelines, possibly messing it up and thus getting my post deleted, I decided I’d skip LJ all together, and just post my day here, on my own site. TAKE THAT LJ!

What you are about to see is my day, March 18 from about 45 minutes after I woke up and remembered I’d been wanting to do this, through the time I went to bed. Sort of. I ended up staying awake chatting with the husband for another 30 or so minutes after the last photo.

Are you ready? Sit back, relax, grab a cup of coffee, tea, a soda or whatever because there are 71 pictures ahead! Captions are UNDER each picture.

First things first. Let’s establish the start time. This was about 45 minutes after I woke up.

Read the rest of this entry »

Times are tough. We all know that. In fact, we live in California where the unemployment rate is 10.1%, whereas the national unemployment rate sits at 8.1% the last I’d heard.

South Carolina, Rhode Island, California and Oregon joined Michigan as the states with the five highest unemployment rates. North Dakota, Nebraska, South Dakota and Utah joined Wyoming as the states with the lowest.

We’re doing ok so far though. However, this week (or possibly next) we’ll have to make a very big decision about our future. Luckily, we’re renters and that means we can bail when we need to. I’m really thankful we don’t have a mortgage locking us down.

Jason has a third interview tomorrow, Monday, which will be the deciding factor in whether or not we’ll be staying put, or packing it all up and moving into my grandmother’s house. We’ve been through that once before, and I can assure you this decision isn’t one made lightly. My grandma isn’t living in the house, however my mom and my uncle are. The last thing we want to do is uproot and move into that house, even if it is fairly temporary. But after discussing our options, we’ve come to the conclusion that if he doesn’t get this job, we’re going to have to go. We could stay here, but it seems like we’d likely be delaying the inevitable. This job opportunity is the *only* one he’s had in the 8 weeks he’s been out of work. There’s no “maybe that job will come through” in sight. That means we’re spending the unemployment money month after month on staying here when we could actually be saving it up and using it for other important bills and, you know, a decent stock pile of food. Each time his unemployment check comes, they include how much is left until it runs out. We’ve got a while left to collect, but what if we go through it and there’s still no job? Then we have nothing to pay the car payments, insurance, phone bills etc… What then?

So, we’re there. We’re at the point that if he doesn’t get this job, the only real opportunity we can see, we’re going to have to leave and set up camp where we don’t have to take 95% of the unemployment money and pay the rent. If he had several “maybe’s” out there, we could stick it out, we WOULD stick it out. But when there’s nothing, no nibbles at all, it just doesn’t seem wise to sit on our hands and hope something comes through before the money runs out and we’re completely in trouble.

And so, this week he will go to that job interview, battle against 4 other people who desperately need this job as badly as my husband does, and he’ll fight. He’ll fight for our future. Hopefully he’ll be the victorious one and we can carry on like normal. If he doesn’t come out the other side victorious. we’ll pack our family up, and get the assistance we need to carry on. As long as we have eachother, that’s what really matters to me. The only thing I expect out of my husband when he goes in for this job interview, is to do his best. That’s all he can do, and the rest is up to the company. If he doesn’t make it, that’s ok, we will.

When I was a teenager, I’d decided one day that I was over going to the grocery store with my mom. The last thing I wanted to do every Saturday was wake up and go to the store. My mom wasn’t having that.

I come from a single parent home and we had a routine. Saturday was shopping and Sunday was laundry. There were no ifs, ands or buts. Although the exception was during Field Show season, since we often had a 7 a.m. call time (or earlier), in which case I guess we went either when we got home, or if the event took an entire day, we went Sunday morning.

As part of the school regiment (Tall Flags baby, represent!!!) and that meant that every Friday night I’d be at either a football game or a basketball game and then the group would almost always gather for pizza afterward. Friday nights I wouldn’t get home until pretty late.

Proof.

Left hand side, middle row in all red

On one particular Saturday morning, I was more tired than usual and my mom came in to tell me it was time to get up and get to the grocery store. I proceeded to tell her she could go to the store her own darn self, I was sleeping in. HAH! Now, at this point in our lives, I’d decided I wouldn’t be eating my mom’s food anymore because I didn’t like anything she cooked. In fact, I’m not really sure I did eat much those days. I can’t recall nightly meals. Maybe I lived on boxes of mac and cheese at the time. Who knows. So it’s not like I helped her with the grocery list because I didn’t really eat. As long as I had milk and cereal, and mac & cheese, I guess I was good.

Anyhow, She wasn’t having it, and I’d be going to the grocery store come hell or high water. She eventually won the argument and I do believe I went grocery shopping with her every Saturday until I started working.

Being a mom now, I often compare the way I handle our shopping and chores to how it was done by my own mother. For a few years I was a single mom of 2 small children myself. I had no choice but to drag them to the store with me. Once I got married, that was the end of taking the kids to the store with me. And especially now that 2 of my kids are old enough to stay home alone for a while, and watch their little sister to boot, the last thing I want to do is take the kids grocery shopping with me. Occasionally I have to take Jessalyn along on a store run, and every time I say to myself that I’ll never do that again. It’s not that she misbehaves or throws fits when I tell her no, we will not be buying whatever it is she’s asked for, it’s just that I get so distracted and end up forgetting half the items on my list. If I need Jason to go to the store with me, our first option is to leave Jess home with a sibling. I just don’t like taking any kids with me when I’m grocery shopping, or even running other errands. Am I alone in this?

I can’t understand why my mom would put her foot down once I was old enough to be home alone, and MAKE me go to the store with her. If I didn’t want to do something, I can tell you, I’m pretty sure I was a miserable little twit and did my best to make her miserable as well. And yet, week after week she’d tell me I had no choice, I was going. It’s not like it was quality time together as long as I was being a little wretch because I didn’t want to be there.

So I ask you, gentle reader, if you have someone available to watch your child(ren) do you take them shopping with you anyway? Do you prefer to wait until there IS someone available so you won’t have to take them to the store? Are you like me and avoid running errands with your child(ren) at all costs?

I might have mentioned here that we don’t really go to many local establishments. Mostly chains. I don’t know why bit this is all across the board, from where we shop to where we eat. However there’s a local restaurant (that’s actually branched out to 3 locations) that has been a local favorite for years. Unfortunately they seem to have lost something in the customer service department.

Jason, Jess, Christian and I went to our favorite Italian place, Lascari’s, on New Year’s Eve. Once we were seated, which didn’t take all that long, the wait for our server felt eternal. The wait for our food was even longer. However, we kept in mind that it was New Year’s Eve, and our server mentioned the kitchen was short staffed. I thought that was understandable, so I didn’t complain.

But last night. Oh my gosh! My aunt, Jess and I went there for dinner. We were debating between eating there or ordering in. She checked the wait time. It was Saturday night around 5 p.m. and was told the wait for a table was only about 10 minutes. We decided it would be faster to just go in and have a meal. Big mistake.

First, the wait wasn’t actually 10 minutes, but closer to 20. Ok it was a Saturday and of course there would be a wait. When we were seated, a very outgoing and charming guy came over and said he’d be our server. Let’s call him Julius because that’s his name. So Julius seemed to be very enamored with my gorgeous aunt and I was all but invisible. Lovely. We ordered water for us and milk for Jessalyn. Jess took a drink and all of a sudden her straw seemed to explode and milk flew all over the place. I checked out the straw and saw a hole in it. I took the straw from my water and placed it in her cup. Julius wandered over to flirt with my aunt some more and asked if Jess preferred to drink from a grown up straw. I assured him no, hers had a hole. So he brought her a new one, but didn’t give me a replacement straw for my water. At this point my aunt ordered a cappuccino only to be told they were out of espresso beans.

After waiting what felt like an eternity (mostly because I was trying to entertain and 3.5 year old) he came to the table to let us know our “food should be out in no less than 3 or 4 minutes.” Did you catch that because I did. No LESS than 3 or 4 minutes. We joked about it after he left the table. Turns out he didn’t misspeak after all. It was good 15 minutes before the food finally came. In the mean time, Jess had crawled under the table and found a stray tomato from someone else’s dinner. I put it on the edge of the table where it sat the entire time we were there. Another thing that sat there was a puddle of milk from the straw explosion and my useless glass of water. Jess had put her holey, milky straw into my water glass. So now my water is all cloudy and nasty looking. I put it on the edge of the table so he could see it was no longer drinkable, but he NEVER asked if I would like a new one.

Ok, so the food comes and about 2 seconds into it he asked my aunt how her food was. Again, I’m invisible.

We had quite a bit left over. Jess’s pasta, my aunt’s pasta and half of my sandwich. He asked my aunt if we’d be needing 2 boxes. I looked at him and said 3 please. He looked totally perplexed. I pointed out Jess’s food, my aunts food and then my sandwich. “Oh. Uhhhh ok” and off he went. A few minutes later the guy who boxes up food came over and started packaging everything up. They have a policy where they pack it up for you, but they never actually touch your food. If you have a sandwich, they ask you to put it on the paper to be wrapped. First, he didn’t bring the paper, he was just going to be tossing my sandwich into a box. Second, he straight picked up my sandwich with his bare hands and plunked it in the box.

Moments later Julius came over, dropped the check and said have a good night. Not, I’ll take this when you’re ready. You pay at the table! They’re lucky she had cash because he had no intentions in coming back to the table. He also didn’t ask if anyone wanted dessert, but my aunt fully intended to get tiramisu to go.

The more I thought about the crap service, the more irritated I became. I ended up going to their website and sending a nice long account of just how poor our service had been. I also mentioned that it was once one of our favorite local eateries, but we have no plans to return there any time soon.

I’m not one of those people that actually complains to a company, but this is out of hand. The past two time I’ve been, I’ve had completely crappy service and that’s not acceptable. If they want me to spend money in their place, they need to step up their game. Oh well, I won’t know if they do because I’m not going back got for quite a while.

You know, with the way people are trying to spend their money more wisely, and going out to dinner is more of a luxory than it once was, you’d think the staff would recognize this and make sure to take care of their customers. If someone’s going to be spending their money on going out to eat, wouldn’t you want to do everything in your power to make sure they had a pleasant visit and will think of your establishment when they go out again?