Happy Donkey Holidays!

Thanks to all that have wished us well during the last month or so. Things have been tough, but we're pulling through. With that, I announce my somewhat non-spectacular return to posting, and what better time of year for me to start than the Donkey Holidays! Pull up a chair and let me tell you various stories inspired by holiday donkness. Yes, this is the time of the year that most people can't think straight and wind up doing all sorts of donkey-like activities. That means that the real donkeys are even worse, if you can even begin to imagine such a thing.

We'll start with my quest for a new TV. After doing a bunch of research, and with a lot of help from a good friend from RGP, I knew what I was looking for. I have a strange built-in entertainment center, so I had a to keep things to a certain size that wasn't very universal. We packed the kids up, went to Circuit City, and after chasing the kids around the store for a half hour and taking some measurements, we decided the 42" Philips plasma TV was the one for us. However, we didn't buy it there, because the price on the website was quite a bit less, and the web site prominently displayed a "free shipping" option for this particular TV.

So the last day of the sale comes along, and I log onto Donkey City's web site. I choose the TV, get the credit card all ready, then run into a snag. By "free shipping" they really mean "you come and pick this big ass TV up yourself." Well, that wasn't too bad, since the store isn't that far from us. But no, it's only available in a store 200 miles away, in another state. Great! I then decide to call Donkey City up, and speak to the same salesman that I talked to when we went into the store. Remember, we looked at this TV on the wall, had him take measurements of it, talked about wall mounting it, and all sorts of stuff. He said that they were out of stock, they haven't had any in for quite some time, and don't expect to receive any for at least 2-3 weeks. Great, thanks a lot donkey boy!

My quest was not to go unfulfilled, however. I started surfing around, and wound up on Sears.com. Sears had the same TV for a few hundred dollars cheaper. Plus, no interest financing for 18 months. Now that's what I'm talking about. I have 18 months to pay this thing off with poker money before the wife has my head. Awesome! So I place the order, decide to not have it shipped to me for $50, because I can pick it up at the local store. I get the measurements for the TV, figure out a little extra for shipping, and then decide how to get it home. I talked to my mom, who inherited my grandpa's big ass Cadillac, and after realizing the back seat was bigger than my first apartment, we figured it had to fit in there.

Last night, off to Sears we go. The guy brings out a tape measure after hearing it's going into a Cadillac, and I see the measurements of the box, which clearly state 37". He measures around in the inside of the door, and gets measurements of 39" all around, then declares "nope, it won't fit." I tried explaining that something 37" high should fit through a 39" opening, but he refused, and I was out of luck because I wasn't about to try this on my own, and their policy is to refuse to release the item unless they can put it into a vehicle themselves. So, we are off to speak to a sales rep to have the TV delivered.

Fast forward 45 freaking minutes. I now have returned the existing TV and purchased a new one. Since it's gone on sale in the last 3 days, I also received $100 back. So we're almost set. After 6 trips back to wherever the hell he kept going, my sales donkey (more on this in a bit) finally has all the paperwork figured out. He has a copy of the receipt for me, all the information for delivery, a delivery date, and we're about ready to go. He decides to write down his cell number in case I have any questions. So he writes his number, and below it wrote, and I quote, "Sales Ass". Wow, did I really see that? Yup, sure did! Now the sales donkey needs to figure out how long my interest free financing goes to. The deal they had was for 18 months. So he writes down 12/13/05 after asking me what date it is. Then he says, "ok, so 12 months from that is..." and he writes down 12/13/06. Then he says "oh man, I wish I had a calendar here, ummm, so if that's 12 months, 18 months is, ummm...man, where's the calendar" so I say "June 2007" and he says "hmmm, well, ok, I'll trust you because I honestly don't know." So there we have it. Math = hard, especially when it comes to figuring out how many months are in a year. With any luck I won't have another entry to post about this TV!

Next we have a short bit that I overheard at work today. The conversation went something like this:

Person1: "Hey, when's that baby due, February?"

Pregnant Woman: "Oh, God no, it's only 6 more weeks!"

Pregnant Woman a few minutes later: "yep, 6 weeks from tomorrow. I hope he comes this year though, so I get the tax break, but I think we'll be cutting it close!"

Yep, math = hard.

I'm hoping to have some donkeys on wheels stories for everyone. We're getting hit by a snow storm pretty much every week now but surprisingly enough, the donkeys on wheels so far haven't been too bad. I have witnessed quite a few donkeys trying to "be the deer," that is, putting their brakes on and just staring straight ahead, unable to comprehend what is going on around them, but nothing that has been worthy of a separate entry.

So, until next time, enjoy, and have a happy Donkey Holiday Season!

Morphy

More Donkeys and Wheels

Today's entry brings us 2 stories dealing with donkeys and wheels, and one of them is quite literally that.

The first comes from Manifestite and RGPer Welshman:

http://tinyurl.com/brs3w (telegraph.co.uk)

So, what we have here is a speed trap. In many places, speed traps are automated. If a driver passes a speed trap moving at a rate of speed determined to be illegal, a camera goes off, takes a picture of their license plate, and sends them a ticket.

Here we have a particularly fast-driving donkey that was hit 4 times by the same speed trap in 1 minute 37 seconds. Now, I wasn't aware of it, but I don't believe there were any donkey races scheduled in Brussels last month.

The next article is, quite literally, a donkey story:

http://tinyurl.com/9ehr2 (ananova.com)

This one is amazing, and I wish I could find more details on it. I'm not even sure how many donkeys were in this story. First we have a group of kids who managed to steal a safe from a local hospital. I'm not sure how that is possible, but I'll just assume it happened. Next, they decided to use a donkey-driven cart to make their escape. Finally, we have the police, who were "unable to keep up with the donkey." ?!?!?!?!

I have a feeling that the actual donkey here is the only one that doesn't really deserve this title!

Until next time,

Morphy