World's Smallest Known Snake

Isn’t he cute?  I wonder if he’d like to eat some aphids off of my fruit trees.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/wayoflife/07/28/mf.mrrogers.neighbor/index.html

Mr. Rogers is one of my heros.  I had no idea he was such a sweet man.  I want to be like him.  I’m not going to eat fish anymore and I’m going to try to be less judemental.  And I want to learn to play piano and write songs like he did.  I also love that he went into TV because he hated TV.

With all of the commentary on how the “left-leaning media” is giving Obama more press coverage than poor McCain, I couldn’t help but grab a screen shot of today’s headlines from my Yahoo email.

Obama is speaking in Germany to a HUGE audience of Europeans and Americans, while McCain visits a German restaurant…  And you wonder why Obama gets better press coverage?  Hello!

I think it’s so funny that they even mention that McCain went to a German restuarant – big deal.  He asked for more media coverage… well he got it alright.  Maybe the media is left-leaning by being such smart-asses, but come on, it’s like he isn’t even trying.

Check this out. But have a tissue in hand!

I paid for my shiney green 2003 VW Beetle in cash in 2005.  And I love my car.  Really.

The problem is: it won’t pass smog.  Isn’t that the craziest thing you’ve ever heard?  I get 30 mpg and I can’t pass smog?!  I have been driving with the check engine light on for almost a year.  It is the engine coolant temp sensor, nothing to worry about.  But it is a pain to fix it and get the computer clear and have the thing smogged and re-registered.  Went to get the oil changed the other day, and the rack and pionion are leaking -that’s about a grand to fix.  I casually asked why my car made creaking noises.  They said I probably need struts -they’re about two grand.

All of this hassle and bad news and un-empathetic DMV employees got me thinking… Is driving a car worth it?  Is having a reliable car REALLY freedom as I once thought as a trapped-at-home youth?

Or am I just a slave to my car in the end?

I’m tired of wasting all of my money on transportation!  The car was around $16,000 after tax.  Since then, I’ve paid about $1,500 a year in insurance.  I’ve bought around a tank of gas a week for the last three years – somewhere between 150 and 200 tanks of gas ranging from $40 to $50 + per tank.  Not to mention maintenance (that’s 10 to15 oil changes by now), new tires, and registration costs.  I also got an insurance fine of $250 dollars because my insurance company at the time changed my address and I stopped getting bills.  And parking tickets and parking passes at UNR?  Puh-lease brotha.

I’ve spent approximately 40,000 on transportation costs in the last three years.

Tell me cars don’t suck.  Even cute little beetles like mine.

Coma Coffee, originally uploaded by palmtreedeprived.

I’m tired of the blog templates offered by Blogspot AKA Blogger. Going to try this one for a while. Here’s a happy picture of Eelke and I at coma coffee from many months ago.