deebeedee

On her last day of finals, as she was leaving school Thursday night, my wife hit a deer. The less-than full-grown deer came out of nowhere and it was too late to avoid it. My wife’s fine but unfortunately the deer didn’t survive. My wife called 911 but there was a wait (could you imagine that?). So she left the scene… to go shopping at the mall. To her credit, she said she was so shaken up that she shopped in a dazed stupor. She managed to call me while on a short break at the food court to let me know what had happened. I insisted on having the highway patrol know about the dead deer on the road. I had access to the local police station’s phone number so I made the phone call (forget 911). After telling the dispatcher about the accident, she told me all I had to do was call our insurance company. I told her it was not necessary since all our car got was a broken parking light. I let her know that the dead deer may pose a hazard to other motorists so she asked for the accident’s approximate location. Click on the link below to see a shot of our license plate with bits of “evidence” (click at your own discretion but it’s certainly mild compared to what you’d see on CSI):

A TiVo giveaway from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. today tomorrow is in my neck of the woods. Like this guy said though, the real giveaway will last from 11:00 to 11:02 a.m. I’ve only got 5 minutes to get there and I’m still home. Bah. Fuggetit.

Update: The giveaway is tomorrow. I should read my linked articles more carefully next time, shouldn’t I? Tivo, here I come!

Update 2: I ended up not going. But a co-worker did. She said thousands of people showed up. My co-worker got her TiVo but she got a $33 ticket for parking illegally. She also had to fork $5 for a doll she bought from a lady behind her because she forgot to bring a donation. She brings back some good news though: I can still buy a TiVo for $49.99 (after $100 rebate)! Deadline is midnight tonight. Now if I could only convince the wife.

Update 3: We didn’t go for the TiVo rebate offer. We’ll put our money to some other use like, hmmm, buying Christmas presents for others, maybe? We’ll settle for our trusty old VCR for now.

Woohoo!

(link via Looking Closer through Prosthesis)

(previously blogged about Narnia here and here)

I discovered around the time our youngest turned one that my cell phone can be used as a quick-fix “pacifier.” I hand it to him whenever he gets fussy, and say, we’re stuck behind a slow grocery line. It keeps him entertained for a while. He takes removing the case as a challenge and finds great satisfaction in finally doing so. The novelty, however, has worn off as of late. He would promptly reject it whenever I hand it to him and would continue on with his wailing. All is not lost though. The Mobile Baby Toy may allow me to continue using the cell phone as an entertainment device for the baby.

The Mobile Baby Toy is software that turns your phone into a device “that triggers kid-themed pictures and sounds with every key-touch.” Cool, eh? But hold it. I just checked the website. My Sony Ericsson T616 is not supported. Waaaahhh!

[via Mercury News]

There’s this Citibank commercial that cracks me up each time I see it. It shows a woman at a grocery store who mistakes a full-figured woman for being pregnant. The offending woman, embarrassed, utters a simple “thank you?” and all is fine and dandy. The voiceover goes, “It’s amazing what a simple ‘thank you’ can do.” Boy, I wish uttering those two words in real life can diffuse awkward situations just as easily.

“Thank you” songs are similar in a certain sense. There’s something light-hearted about them that takes the edge off of a stressful day. Dido surely feels this way when she sings Thank You, perhaps the most famous pop song about gratitude. Geggy Tah’s Whoever You Are, is so fun to listen to. Its chorus, “All I want to do is to thank you even though I don’t know who you are. You let me change lanes while I was driving in my car,” is a catchy little ditty that never fails to put a smile on my face. Del the Funkee Homosapien ends his 1993 underground hip-hop classic album with a tune called Thank Youse. In it, he takes time to thank his listeners, which is quite a nice departure from the rest of the album where braggadocio lyrics prevail.

Giving thanks has a way of focusing oneself towards the positive instead of the negative. And songs of gratitude, when directed towards the Creator, express the realization that every good thing is a gift from God and is not something earned.

*This was supposed to be my Thanksgiving post but it totally slipped my mind because of the busyness of the holiday.