What I Saw Today

So today, after spending the morning surfing around these tubes trying to find gainful employment, I headed over to Metro PCS, my cell phone provider, to pick up one of their $50 cell phones. Metro PCS is an upstart cell phone company here in the metro areas of Florida, some in Georgia and a few other spots around this fair country I live in. For 52 bucks a month, I get unlimited texting, long distance, and minutes. It is great for me and I am planning on moving my daughter over to it, since the Nextel contract I got her last year for Christmas, a contract, costing 80bucks a month, and has limited texts and minutes, expires this month.

When I moved over Beachside from Sl-Ocala, in addition to changing my email address, I also changed my cell phone company. Previously, I had been with Nextel, also, and was paying a couple hundred a month for 2,000 minutes and free walkie talkie. Now, here in The Birthplace of Speed, I did not need to spend that amount of cash as Metro PCS works here.

By The Way, if you follow that link, I was there.

Anyway, when I switched to Metro PCS, I bought a camera phone, as, at that time, my old Sony was starting to fade away and I thought I would use the camera phone as my daily driver. It turns out the camera is not what I thought it would be, hence my purchase of the Polaroid. I am going to give my daughter that nearly new camera phone for Christmas this year. Also a gift card to Books A Million, on her request.

On the way to the Taj Mahal, I stopped by Jon Hall Chevrolet as thejeepjunkie and the sun goddess are contemplating trading their Expedition, with 100,000 miles on it, in on a new Suburban. Now I know those of you Counting Along With Me are going to ask "What is he thinking?"!!!

Well, they already own a vehicle that gets 13 mpg around town and, this summer, got used to budgeting a certain amount of money each month for petro, and, now that he could get a deal on a new vehicle, Why Not Get That One? Plus, that ole Expedition is starting to require a good bit of thejeepjunkie's time, time that could be spent on old CJ's. And the Kid and his sister are getting a bit bigger and they need the space those big SUV's provide. Me? I'd buy a longroof.

The catch is thejeepjunkie wants a black one, loaded, with 4WD so he can blast by slower cars on the rare occasion he is in the Ozarks with snow on the ground. As he explains it, and I love it because this is one of the most unpretentious guys I know, 'John-John--yeah he calls me that, too--I love the fact that when I was in the Ozarks a couple years ago, I was passing Missouri cars in the snow, with Florida plates!!' Logic there is okay but there are 51 other weeks in the year where that truck resides in flat Florida and that Expedition, also 4WD, has never been off road down here, nor up there, other than at Haven Lee Farm. I believe my 850 trucksterwannabe was also.

Alas, I digress. It turns out black Suburbans are rare in Florida and black 4WD Suburbans even rarer. Jon Hall has a silver one and the asking price is $54,000. Yeah, we are talking some serious cash now. But, as it turns out, GM seems to be in a bit of a cash crunch and are offering $11,000 in rebates and other enticements to sell off these things.

So, if you can Count Along With Me, $54K minus $11k equals $43K. The dude I am talking to, Kye, not Kyle, mentions thejeepjunkie could pick up this silver burb for around $35K. Yeah, they are hungry.

Man, have I ever gotten away from What I Saw Today.

I returned to the Taj Mahal and had a bite to eat. The idea of spending the rest of this wonderful, sunny afternoon, temperature of 76 degrees with a wind chill of 79, sitting around checking out the blogs I frequent, was not as desirable as it would seem.

I thought I would head down to the Beach, as access is free til Feb. 1 and catch a few rays on this white body and, maybe, try to figure out this newfangled phone I have.

Well as it turns out, I can't see the LED display on this phone in the bright, warm sunshine, so I basically just chill for a couple hours.

As I realized I was getting as much sunshine as this oil covered body needed, I decided it was time to fire up the olestationbus and head back to the Taj Mahal.

Oh yeah, did I forget to mention the noise I heard under the hood of the oleragtop this past week was not the water pump but the timing belt tensioner? Yep. Not the easiest of parts to replace, and, not being able to afford thejeepjunkie's prices at his shop, I got a Beachside dude to replace it, along with that water pump. So I have had the privilege of driving my olestationbus around the past few days.

So, I climbed in the olestationbus, fired it up and started to head back to the Taj Mahal. Well this is what happened.

Yep, I got stuck as those lame ass dudes from Sl-Ocala last summer.

So, I called the Kid to see if he could come on down, Beachside, to once again rescue ole JohnJohn. Turns out he was still at school, getting ready for a 4:00 game and was unable to bring that CJ out to the rescue.


Well, of course, my next call was to thejeepjunkie and he was headed out to the rescue.

I am lucky he was available and willing to come on out.

Yeah, jeepjunkie, make sure you get that 4WD, I may need it in the future!!

And that is What I Saw Today.