It's been quite a month!

First Noland had an accident on the highway - he slid on the highway going into work one morning when it was a little icy - he bounced off the cement barriers between the east and west bound lanes and slid all the way across 4 lanes of traffic to the shoulder where he was able to come to a stop. It happened at about 7:45 am on a pretty busy section of road - but somehow no one else managed to hit him or get hit by him and he was ok - luckily insurance covers most of the bill so while it still sucks to pay at all .

That happened about mid-November - 'cause we took the rental car back before Thanksgiving so that we didn't have to pay for a 4 day weekend where he didn't need it and we could just drive my car everywhere.

Of course then a week later - Monday Dec. 4 I'm driving home from work and my radio starts betting all staticy, then it seems like my lights are dimming - it reminds me exactly of what my old car Gus did on a highway late at night in Iowa in the middle of snow onc - when I ended up needing a new alternator - then my car died in the middle of an intersection - luckily some nice people (who were also stuck behind me until I moved:-) helped me push it into the parking lot of a church that was there on the corner - and luckily this happened after I had finished the highway portion of my commute, was back on my side of the river and not too terribly far from home. We tried replacing just the battery - and that worked for a few days - but then it died again - so we had to replace the alternator - Noland and Spencer did it - but it will took a few days for the right parts to gt ordered from the Auto Parts store - so I was carless for a few days. And we only "hope" this will fix the problem!

All this time though I'm freaking out about having to pay bills - 'cause we've speculated for a few months that my company might not be lasting much longer - but since Thanksgiving or so - it's really seemed that may be the case, and this week that my car is dying is also the week of our final show - it was almost for sure due to all the clues coming from our GM and President. So sure enough Friday morning the 8th they call us into a meeting about 10 am after the last person in the offices shows up (we are only 12 people at this point) and tells us that effective immediately we are no longer in business. They paid us or one additional week and we would be "on call" in case they needed anything from us to help close the office down and gave us 2 weeks severance pay plus any PTO we had left but we were to pack our stuff and leave right then and there.

So needless to say we all headed straight to our favorite after work bar - where the bartender asked "how did you guys all get off work so early today?" and drank there for a few hours before heading to Toni and Warren's place - who live near there - and continued drinking until we had done so for about 12 hours - 10:30am - 10:30pm!

Oh yeah - to top it all off the following week someone stole Noland's stereo (although I must say I was pissed at him at the time - how many times do I have to tell him that he doesn't love in the country anymore and our neighborhood, while not the total hood - it not the best either and he needs to lock the car?! My car was locked and my stereo wasn't stolen, so I don't think they would have broken the window - they would have just passed right on by had it not been unlocked.) But now I know I was just being cranky :-)

But - then after all that on the bright side....a girl that used to work at our company called me after she heard we were closed and that they might have a position....so I went in on my birthday for an interview and they called with an offer the next day! It sounds like a great job and a great company, it's an increase in salary - and the best part is that I don't have to drive to the suburbs anymore - it's actually downtown! I was going to start today- but they called yesterday and pushed it back a week because they need to get some stuff in order first - so basically I ended up with a 6 week Christmas vacation!

I do still need a new car - the new alternator helped, but I just failed DEQ so without sinking more money into repairs I can't renew my tags - so I get to go car shopping (YEAH! - a good thing now that I have a job again!)

Really - everyone that reads this knows all this - but I haven't blogged here in so long I felt I need to actually give some news.

Next time - back to the fantasy!