So I found this a little humorous…Chip had asked if I could give him a ride home and I said I would. After work, I sent him a message that I was heading on my way. He had left work early already and was killing time at his school in downtown. Whenever he knows I’m on the way, he heads off to a bus stop area where I go and pick him up. Well, today he went over to the bus stop as usual and waited for me to arrive.

But this time he encountered someone…one of those guys that are spreading the word of God, or something like that. Here it is, paraphrased as Chip described it…

Man: “Hello! Do you know your God?”
Chip: “…yeah.”
Man: “Do you have your salvation?”
Chip: “Yup!”
*at which point I pull up to the bus stop, wondering why Chip is talking to someone*

So, it’s on to some rather unique experiences for the week. We’ll start off with the past Saturday…

Saturday wasn’t really much of anything, just one unique event. This would be Chip’s extremely late Christmas present/fused with his birthday present to me. It was time to EAT! For that, we would be going to Twin Peaks. This restaurant caught my attention some time last year as I was driving on the highway to pick up a part for work. It showed a few smiling, well-chested models and I could see the whole twin peaks bit. I mentioned this to Chip and he told me that it seemed to be somewhat like some sort of family version of Hooters, or something like that. Well, after months and months of setbacks (remember, this was a Christmas present initially), a Twin Peaks restaurant opened in Mesquite and now it was convenient enough for us to go.

Christine and I decided at a time to meet up with Chip and Dylan. Beforehand, I was at Best Buy and was checking out a potential MP3 player. We’ll see…if I get it, then I will have it with me…duh!

On the side of Twin Peaks was a painting of a cowgirl. Strange enough, it was the same cowgirl picture Christine Photoshopped on one of my MySpace profile pictures. So we took a few pictures with me and the painting then Christine and I made our way to the front door. As we opened the door, we were greeted by a pair of legs and short shorts, which a female torso wrapped in lumberjack checker-styled tablecloth stood three feet away from the door frame. We didn’t see a face because a little baby was held by this person, over her head while tossing the baby up about two or three times before walking off. Christine and I just kind of blinked and cautiously entered…what a first impression. Chip and Dylan were about a minute behind us and entered, expressing a little bit of uncomfortable feeling for a first impression. There, we proceeded to the hostess, who I nicknamed Heimlich. That’s because she had adjusted her “tablecloth” to the point that if she choked and I had to give her the Heimlich, she would give everyone in the restaurant the true meaning to what the restaurant means by “scenic views.”

Thankfully, the rest of the experience was fairly normal…or at least as normal as you can get for this restaurant. Just like Hooters and Humperdinks, this place was focused on sports. The flat screen monitors had the games playing and we entertained ourselves to the constant repeating of Volkswagon vehicles crashing into other cars. I do not think this place had chicken fingers for a dish, so Christine proceeded to go into the women’s restroom and hang herself.

Meanwhile, the rest of our food arrived. I think everyone except me ordered burgers of some sort. I tried out the chicken fried steak which was of decent size. Food was pretty good. The only gripes for us was that day we had a dejected waitress, that and some creepy looking people were eating and Chip got to have them for a scenic view as well.

The place was fairly good, though I guess it can be initially thought of as an Alpine strip club/restaurant. We hope to return there again sometime, hopefully with a much more cheerful waitress. Dejected people shouldn’t be dressed like that…well, the whole “dress code” bit for the restaurant is still a little strange. Well, so is the hung corpse of Christine hanging from the restroom ceiling. Except that you should know I was joking about the whole thing. She had a burger as well. Okay, if you really believed she did that…you need to go run into a brick wall to rattle your brain a little more to see if it just glitched for the moment.

The following day, Christine and I went to Lone Star Park in Grand Prarie. We were going to the Mazda Zoom-Zoom Live! event. This is similar to the Taste of Lexus event. Here, Mazda would have a couple of cone courses and several of their cars where we would have the opportunity to drive them and see what we thought of them. I have decided that on my new website, I will still continue articles. Mainly because I have so much control over my presentations if I keep it as a website. I do not feel that my blog on MySpace can sufficiently present images and video if I choose to add them to my posts. WordPress may, but I am still acclimating to it…and in the end, I may realize that I do not have as much control as I thought…so the website articles will continue. I am still in the process of updating my site…so this article may not be released until the latter half of October…just be forewarned.

The video intro to ZZL was kind of funny, and then I heard depressing news. You had to pay for your meal here! Yes, I was spoiled silly in Taste of Lexus…unlimited pastries and bistro appetizers, as well as all the Fiji water I could drink. From what we saw…ZZL would obviously be a little different from TOL. It was no surprise that the courses would be sport oriented, but they added a little “point system” where you could try to win prizes. More on that as I move along. They also discouraged dangerous driving. Everyone that could drive was given a badge/card on a neck lanyard. As well as giving you permission to drive and for marking your scores, it would indicate your driving. If you drove recklessly, the staff would cut one corner off the bottom of your badge. If it was cut twice (so that both bottom corners of your card were cut), you could no longer drive. I wondered how long it would take until I was kicked off.

We got out and looked around. There was the row of Mazda vehicles on display and some representatives to answer our questions. Christine and I went to look at mainly the RX-8, Mazda3, Mazda6 and CX-7. It was also picture time! With Christine in the driver’s side of the CX-7, I opened the back row and laid across the seats and had Christine take a picture, as if I was “trying out the back space for road trips.” After the picture was taken, I looked at my feet, hanging off the CX-7 and there was a Mazda rep looking in at me and asking if I had any other questions. Yeah, I was laughing.

Well, we didn’t come here to stare at cars, we came to drive them. We went to the one course that wasn’t point based…and that was where you could drive both the MX-5 and the RX-8. Because the line was shorter, we went to the MX-5 first. While there were a few automatic transmission models available, we obviously opted for manual transmission. This was a small concern for me as my manual experience is very small, and I really didn’t need to make an embarassing scene of myself. The MX-5 was a very snug fit, especially for me. We both enjoyed that…for the time being. When we drove the RX-8, we enjoyed the car immensely, though the track kept us from going to third gear. While we were in another line, I heard someone behind me say what just about everyone says. They like the RX-8 but don’t like the mediocre amount of torque it generates. Then I just rolled my eyes when he continued, “…of course, I never went over first gear.”

Our first points-based track was where you had to finish the course as close to 33.000 seconds as possible. Thankfully, I had a watch with a timer on it. We had two chances to make our score as high as possible. I think the first time around Christine took a little too long, but I think she beat the time the second time around. With me, I went too fast the first time and I came to about .4 of a second the second time around. Our car in this was the Mazda3, in automatic transmission (only the MX-5, RX-8 and MazdaSpeed6 were in manual). Christine elected to drive it in automatic transmission, where I got a little aggressive and elected for the “manumatic” mode where you switch it to an “electronic manual” and shift gears by rocking the shifter in certain directions.

Afterwards, we tried an accuracy track, using the CX-7 SUV, which I will have to say is the most fun driving SUV I have driven to date. This, you tried to get the edge of the left tire as close to 12 inches away from select cones, which was where an optical/laser sensor measured your accuracy. We did our first pass and I did better than Christine in accuracy. Later in the day, on our second round Christine would do better than me in accuracy…but to my credit, both of my times were faster!

Let me mention food…because after the first event we went to eat. No bistro pastries…no Fiji water. Christine got a little cheeseburger, I got a white macadamia cookie and we both got sodas. Total was over $8! Yeah, I was gonna starve for this. Afterwards, we went to the long line, the MazdaSpeed course. There, we tried to meet or beat 36.5 seconds. We’ve seen several cars on this course spin out of control, it just seemed pretty crazy. Here, there was a camera taking a picture from the starting line. I will add these pictures to the article. Christine did forty-something seconds and I finished on 39 or so seconds.

We went back to drive on the 33-second track, but our scores no longer counted so we would drive for the fun of it. Aside from the Mazda3, you could choose to drive the Mazda5 (which you don’t see a lot of on the road, but it’s pretty much a minivan that thinks it’s a sports car…or as I call it, a Toyota Matrix for fat people), Mazda6 or CX-7. All cars Christine drove automatic as I did manumatic, Christine also got the added torment of being thrown around like a rag doll as I did my best to push each car to the limit and finish in the fastest time as I could…which was fast, even for the minivan and SUV, I was very impressed. It should also be known that Christine and I often video-recorded the other who was driving with the camera, Christine has some fairly funny commentary.

Afterwards, we waited in line once more to drive the RX-8 one last time. Adrenaline has been pumped, hearts beating faster and our responses better…I knew we would drive the car better than we did several hours beforehand. Christine did really well, and I wanted to see if I could redline the RX-8 and here the tone that it’s supposed to make when it hits 9,000 rpm…so I would try to stay in first gear as much as I can. By the time the first turn came up, I was at 7,000 rpm and the car had a large amount of power to it at the higher rpms that I gave up and switched to second gear. There was a point where I could’ve switched to third, but decided not to. On this course, as well as the MazdaSpeed6, I thought that my card would be cut. But in the end, Christine and I had our card corners intact! We were quite tired afterwards and I did my best to get a good sleep in before I had to work the following day.

Tuesday morning I was driving to work and I half watched the car in front of me on I-30. i was on Lane 3 (this part of the highway is four lane, with the rightmost being Lane 1…leftmost being Lane 4). The car in front of me probably wanted to speed up and I saw it speed up while starting to change over to Lane 4. I saw a truck coming on my left mirror and the car in front of me hesitated, driving over the boundary separating Lane 3 and Lane 4. Then I heard a screech and watched it buckle and lift about half a foot into the air as the car in front of me, thirty feet away, slammed into the truck it was behind. Brake lights flashed everwhere as I saw this would directly affect Lanes 3 and 4. I was temporarily stuck, until someone was kind enough to let me get into Lane 2. I quickly looked to see if the people involved were okay, and they were so I continued on as there was no place for me to stop without further adversely affecting traffic. I guess the truck slowed while the car sped, as the force caused the truck to ram into the car in front of it. Another crazy thing to witness…oh yeah, the month is still September, huh?

Chip should thank me. He was looking for his DDR Supernova bundle today after work. We went to where he initially preordered…they didn’t have it. So we tried another store, no joy. When in doubt, and you don’t mind risking the chance of meeting strange people, go to Wal-Mart. Chip was circling the game section, he didn’t see it and he was waiting to be helped. I sauntered around, just looking at games when I stopped. I don’t know why I stopped…I was in front of some Nintendo Gamecube games, and didn’t have a Gamecube…so there was no reason for me to stop and look at them. Then I did something even stranger…I looked up. There were about a dozen DDR:S bundles and I showed them to Chip. Go me, I feel good. Now he’s playing silly songs with Pix, some digital dancing fairy or something like that. Yay…go me, it’s Friday tomorrow!

Today’s event just have me checking my watch and wondering what is going on…

Quick trackback, however…back on Labor Day, I had gone over to a clothing store to do a rare event of looking for clothes that I might buy, or at least laugh at.  Nothing to special about this day, except that it was a wonderful and lazy Monday where I didn’t have to work.  I’ll also add that it was great since this was one of the starts of hope for all of us in TX being plagued by constant hot weather.  It was actually kind of cool (90s at the time) with clouds and light rain.  Not being one of those to spend time looking for a close parking lot, I had parked in the back like I often do.  I was just at the end of the parking lot towards the store when the door flew open and a guy with an armful of pants bolted out and moments later a buddy in a car pulled up for him to make a getaway, they were roughly ten feet away from me.  In the end nothing happened…you can look at previous posts to get more detail on that day (with the exception of those of you who are reading this on my site, as I started my blog there just a few days ago).  But c’mon, you usually don’t get VIP seats to an actual robbery often.

Then on to last week with my birthday in the morning.  I stepped out to go to work, only to encounter a silver Honda Accord, lights on, parked behind my car.  Noticing me, they peeled out of the area.  And it was just that, pedal to the floor and if it was a Maximum Tune car, the houses would be on fire from all the flames out of the exhaust.

Today, coming from work, I arrived home to find a green Jeep Cherokee parked in front.  I continued on and parked in the back and made my way back up front on foot.  There I approached the Jeep.  There was junk all inside the vehicle…and on the passenger side seat was a dog.  I did a few things to include logging the Jeep’s license plate.  Seeing nobody around, I had to start with home.  Quickly but quietly, I cleared to make sure everything was okay.  Afterwards I decided I’d check on the neighbors…if none of them knew about the Jeep, then whoever owned this Jeep would have to deal with the Mesquite Police.

I decided to go to the house directly across the street.  I don’t know why…my sixth sense just said that was where to go.  I did a quick check to make sure I was secure and ready and made my way.  As I approached the house, I did notice to the side of the house the fence to the backyard.  The door to the fence was wide open.  I wasn’t going to come to conclusions, but I noted the discrepancy in my brain.  I arrived to the front door, with my body facing the side of the house with the open door; the garage door was at my back (this is one of the houses where the garage door and driveway are in the front…how I’d like my house, less yard to mow, but that’s another story!).

I did two rings of the doorbell and received no answer.  All the while, I was doing my usual things that I do.  Such as assessing the windows and type, along with the door.  Seeing and hearing no response, I decided to try one of the next door neighbors.  A quick glance showed the fence door still opened, untouched and no sound from there.  I figured once I got back to my side of the street that I would “slice the pie” and observe what I could see from my side.

As I looked forward to orient myself to the next door neighbor’s house, I heard a heavy crashing noise behind me.  I slightly crouched, spun halfway around with my hand already grabbing the grip of my pistol as my eyes locked into some shoddy looking man who just kicked the door open while holding a bucket in one hand and somewhat swinging a broom or rake in the other hand.  After about half a second I could tell he wasn’t swinging at me and I quickly and smoothly shifted back to a more “normal” posture.

I spotted a logo on his shirt, so he probably worked somewhere having to do with the backyard.  Though I was busy scanning his hands and the bucket, as well as kind of looking around to make sure I didn’t scare off any neighbors that may have been out for an afternoon exercise (it has been wonderful weather lately).

He said he was hired to work on their backyard and he parked across instead of this house to get some shade for his dog and also he didn’t tell the owner he had a dog, so a precaution not to alarm her.  Seemed okay and haven’t seen anything suspicious yet.  He left afterwards, but commented some about my suspicions.  I guess that’s good that he knows that I actually check things out…but I guess sad that it means I’m a rare type and murderers probably walk people’s children home from school without knowing it.

But just in case, I still have pictures of his Jeep and such in case he turns out to be more than he said.  I know, to you this is nothing.  Some of you probably wouldn’t care if a vehicle you’ve never seen pulled up to your home.  As seen with the 18-wheeler car chase in Dallas a few weeks ago, if you were in my shoes of the guy robbing the clothing store, some of you might even cheer them on.  If you were leaving for work to encounter a car that just left…some would just shrug and rationalize how much it wasn’t anything suspicious.

But to me, that’s just all timing for me.  I don’t know, it just seems a lot of strange things I get to encounter when the month of September rolls in.  Not saying everything is the same old thing the other eleven months…just things are often odd during September.

~Like 9/11, right Chris?~

Okay…I wasn’t going to go THAT far.  Besides, if I did that then it wouldn’t rationalize the Cole attack in October.

~Well, you didn’t pull in anywhere in September, you were out in the ocean.~

Yeah…I’m still not going that far.  But yeah, just had to put it on record that things are usually weird for me at that time.

Also a word of advice.  Don’t ever have strawberry milkshake flavored Whoppers anywhere near Chip…EVER!  Inside joke…maybe?  You’ll probably hear about it more someday.

Yeah…this is pathetic. Welcome to yet ANOTHER blog from me. Actually, this will be stuck on my site…so this will most likely end up being my primary blog. Xanga will probably stay up just because I’ve had it forever and most of my posts are pretty much there. Still debating MySpace…I will probably just have posts authored both here and MySpace…we’ll see how that goes.

Yes…there’s nothing to look at. There are not enough hours in a day for me to spend making this all pretty. Though I am hoping to make my site reasonable by October…and then I’ll probably goof with this a little bit afterwards.

I know you can get really creative with this…that will probably emerge later on once I start understanding this. But really, I could either sit here for hours on end and make my eyes grow weary with strain and codes…or I could just get off the computer after spending an hour or so on it and either pop in a good DVD, hit the freezer for some ice cream…hey, even both!

With that said…I AM hungry, and I WOULD like some ice cream…so I’m just gonna leave you here…staring. I shall see you all later.