LONGWALKABOUT

Voltaire said, “I have begun to be somewhat merry because I have been told that that is good for one’s health.”  While “being merry” is more or less a choice, it’s nice to have a little outside help.  Here are some little things that have made me smile.

1. Hearing and seeing the birds in my yard.
2. Pushing my cart around the supermarket while my five year old rides underneath (on the part where you put the jumbo packs of toilet paper).  I get a lot of, “he’s a horrible parent” looks.
3. One time I was at a small zoo where the squirrel monkeys were allowed to climb in the trees outside of their cage.  There was an annoying family there harassing the monkeys, and a monkey peed on one of their children.  Made my day.
4. Using Q-tips.  It’s very satisfying.
5. Swimming in a natural swimming hole.  Creek, lake, river.  Doesn’t matter.
6. Watching an unmanned shopping cart roll across the parking lot.  (Extra points if it hits a BMW)
7. Dr. Pepper.
8. When a really aggressive driver gets in the left lane to pass me and then gets stuck in traffic.  And I get to do the whole head-turn long stare while I roll on past.
9. Sitting down after everyone else has gone to bed.  That way I know that no one can ask me to get up for anything.  (Extra points if I don’t have to get back up to find the remote.)
10. When one of my children says something thoughtful and kind.  A lot of the time I think they’re just tiny vikings.
11. The New England Patriots getting caught cheating at anything.  Hearing that Tom Brady cheats at checkers would not surprise me, and would also make me happy.
12. One lady at our gym.  She’s probably in her sixties.  She slowly gets onto whatever machine that she is going to use, and then frantically pounds out like twenty reps.  It’s hilarious.
13. Post Honey Graham Oh’s.  They’re delicious.
14. Whenever the one magazine I subscribe to arrives in the mail.  Usually I’ve forgotten that I actually have a magazine subscription, so it’s like a gift to myself.
15. Realizing that I am one year younger than I thought I was.
16. Whenever the Pirates win.
17. Hearing my wife say something that makes absolutely no sense when she wakes up from a deep sleep.
18. Laying in a hammock.
19. Combining coupons with the Cartwheel app and the Red card at Target.  I am singlehandedly driving them out of business.
20. Reading a book that has a great twist that I didn’t see coming.
21. Picking my kids up from school.  (Unless they got in trouble.)
22. Free food.  Even if it’s just a sample at the supermarket.  Still a win.
23. Tripping and falling, then looking around and realizing that no one saw me.

LINKS

• I don’t watch a whole lot of soccer, unless it’s the US national team, USA, USA.  Even I know this goal is pretty awesome.
• Today is the 7oth anniversary of VE day.  Here’s a cool write up from USA Today.
• Forgot to add other people falling to the list of things that makes me happy.  This is Shaq falling on TV during a halftime report.  You know it was a good fall because he lost a shoe.
• I mentioned swimming holes.  Here is a website with a countrywide list of places to cool off.  Some are even clothing optional.  Wink wink.

You know those guys that hold the signs or flags at construction sites?  The ones that tell you when it is safe to proceed on past them.  Well, I’ve always thought that job would be one of the most boring jobs you could have.  Some people say that when you’re in a coma, you are actually aware of everything that is going on around you, but you can’t participate in anything.  That’s what I think being a flag man is like.  Unless.

I had just picked up two friends that I was working with in college, and we were headed to our job.  On the way to the job, we had to drive through a neighborhood that was a little rough around the edges.  I was driving my parent’s Oldsmobile station wagon because my car was in the shop.  As we rolled along down the road I was chatting away with my buddy.  I guess the conversation was interesting, and I guess I wasn’t paying attention to the road like I should have been.  When I looked forward,,,,,, there was a flag man.  If this guy’s day had been boring, it wasn’t now.  He was jumping up and down and waving that flag like crazy.  I’ve never seen someone from a road construction crew move that fast.  I realized that probably meant he wanted me to stop, so I slammed on the brakes and my tank of a car lurched to a halt.  Whew.  The flag guy settled down and regained some of his composure.  Eventually it was our turn to go and he waved me on.  Crisis averted.  Except that one of the cars behind me had a light bar on top, and he had seen the whole thing.  When I got through the construction zone, those lights came on.

I dislike being pulled over by the police.  I really don’t need that kind of stress in my life.  The officer approached my window and asked me some questions.

“Do you know why I pulled you over?”

“I believe I almost ran over the guy with the flag.”

“License and registration please.  If I search this car, will I find any drugs or weapons?”

Me nervously laughing, “No.”

Like I said, the area was not great.  This was about the time that backup arrived.  Yep, backup.  I’ve seen myself in the mirror plenty of times.  I never thought, “wow that’s a dangerous looking dude.”  I usually think things like,  “Yeah you can get away with not shaving for another day.”   Or, “I wonder if this t-shirt is dressy enough for going to dinner?”  Apparently, this officer saw me and my friends and thought.  “Oh, I’m gonna need some help to keep these guys under control.”  We were all asked to exit the vehicle.  We were all patted down.  Then we were all asked to sit on the curb while the other officer searched my car.  Aside from being embarrassed, I didn’t mind my time on the curb all that much.  The weather was nice and it was a relatively comfortable seat.  Eventually they let me go with a warning.  I really appreciated that.

I learned one thing from all this.  I must have the look of a criminal.  So, I’ve had to take that into account since then.  Now when I look in the mirror in the morning I think things like, “Do these cargo shorts make me look more or less dangerous?”  Or,  “Will this sweater help to soften my image?”

 

 

My five year old eats three things.  Chicken, grilled cheese, and fruit.  Oh, he also loves soup.  All the rules change when it comes to soup.  You could put anything in a pot with some broth and he would probably eat it.  His brother, on the other hand, will eat anything.  It’s kind of a pain.  One kid wants chicken nuggets, the other wants sushi.  At times I wish the the little dude was a little less picky.

The other day I was thinking about this and I realized that when it comes to food, I am almost as much of a pain as he is.  I’m going to have to cut him some slack the next time he refuses to eat a perfectly good bowl of macaroni and cheese.

Marc’s Food Rules

• The first and most important rule of food is, if Mexican food is available, always eat it.  Given the choice between 5 star anything else and a taqueria, I will always choose tacos.  I believe I may have personally paid off the local Chipotle manager’s car loan.
• Fruit and bread should never be together.  No peanut butter and jelly.  No Apple pie.  No cakes with fruity fillings.  No cakes that even taste like fruit.  This is an unholy union and must be avoided at all costs.
• I’ve heard it said that even bad pizza is still pizza.  This is not true.
• I’m a vegetarian.  I’m going to lose my mind the next time someone hears this and then asks me if I eat fish.  Sure, the fish that grow on trees, those are delicious.
• Soda and milkshakes are the best desserts ever invented.  Therefore, a root beer float is a near perfect dessert.
• Tater tots go with any meal.  I’ve done the research myself, and it holds up.  Chinese food and taters.  Sure.  Italian and taters.  Why not?  Indian food and taters.  Absolutely.
• My kids may love soup, but to me it’s just a bunch of food that got too close to the water and accidentally fell in.  There are exceptions to this rule.  Tomato soup is a good compliment to grilled cheese, and broccoli and cheddar soup, wellllll, it’s basically a melted block of cheese, so you can’t really go wrong there, can you?

LINKS

• I became an instant Jeremy Renner fan this week when he sang this Hawkeye song on the Tonight Show.
• Recently they found one of these rare pocket sharks.  I would love to put some of these in my bathtub.  Then the villainous Lego guys could threaten to throw the good Lego guys into the shark pool.
• Forty years ago yesterday the Vietnam war ended.  As a Steelers fan, I’m pretty familiar with the Rocky Bleier story.  For those of you who aren’t, it is an interesting story about the intersection of war and professional sports.
• Here is an article about IKEA being dangerous to your marriage.  I knew it.

Did you know that tickets to most of the late night shows on tv are free?  Letterman, Leno, well I guess not Leno anymore, Conan, and all the new guys.  I figured this out when I was in college.  Free things were very important to me in college.  I developed a certain radar.  Free breakfast, I’m there, perfect stranger invites me over for lunch on a Saturday afternoon, sounds great.  My appreciation of free things extended to entertainment.

Somewhere around the turn of the century, my buddy and I got tickets to see Letterman in New York.  Saying things like the turn of the century sounds cool, and also makes me seem old and wise when I’m not really either of those things.  Okay, maybe a little old.  The guests for that episode were Charles Grodin and Edward Burns.  Not really the most star studded line up.  What I want to focus on, though, is the musical guest.  They were a three man alternative band.  Their hit song was about hanky panky and sugary snacks.  That should be enough of a clue for some people.  For the rest, it’s really not all that important.  That was their only hit.

We arrived early to the studio to get our tickets.  The Ed Sullivan theater is on Broadway in New York between 53rd and 54th Streets.  If you walk around the side of the building, the stage entrance and exits are right there.  On this day, the other thing that was right there was the tour bus for the musical guest.  It was early so the band was still on the bus.  We could see people through the open windows.  My buddy was the talkative type, and I was the easily entertained type.  He got the attention of someone inside, and asked a couple of questions.  Instead of answering the questions, out through the open window came a blowup doll.  The adult kind.  The guy in the bus held on to the doll and started telling my buddy to bark like a dog.  My friend proceeded to tell him in impolite terms where he could go.  This cracked me up to no end.  Not the doll part, but the part where my friend advised the guy what he could do with the rest of his morning.  I looked to my right and saw a stage hand from the Letterman show standing by the side entrance and laughing.  This was going nowhere, so we spent the next four hours wandering Manhattan and looking for a soda called cola champagne.  For some reason my buddy wanted one, and me, well I’m easily entertained.  We came back for the show.  After it was over we exited back onto that side street.  The tour bus was still there.  Together we decided to wait for the band to come out of the building.  We had some critiques of their music to offer.  We waited and waited.  I didn’t have any problem waiting for a while.  Waiting was free, and there would be good entertainment value in the confrontation.  Eventually we gave up on them, though.  I think we may have been hungry.  I like to think that we looked super intimidating, so they chose to stay inside the theater and play with their doll.

If I ever see them on the street,,,,,,, absolutely nothing will happen,,,,, because, you know,,,,,, one hit,,,,,, I’ll have no idea who they are.

Over spring break, we took the kids to a National Geographic IMAX movie about great white sharks. It was long.  It was really long.  In fact, if I ever do see a shark in the wild, my natural reaction may now be to just get drowsy.  Since it was made by shark nuts, they spent the whole time explaining how wonderful these animals are.  (In an Australian or South African accent.)  “We as humans are much more dangerous to the shark than they are to us.”  That’s all well and good, but when those nutballs went free diving with the sharks they were like, (again, Australian accent) “We always go into the water in groups of three, so we can maintain eye contact with the animal at all times.”  As funny as that is, they are right about your chances of being eaten by a shark.  They are virtually nil.

Summer is almost upon us, and it is almost time for our family to go somewhere warm, where I can spend the majority of the day in the water.  I may have mentioned that the movie Jaws scarred my wife for life.  I have been trying to undo that damage for a while now.  Before we had kids, we took one of our almost annual trips to see family in Puerto Rico.  While we were there, we took a boat ride to a small island called Caja de Muerto (Coffin Island)  off the south coast.  I dragged my wife to the end of the main island so we could snorkel in the channel between it and another small island.  You may ask why I couldn’t just stay at the beach where everyone else was.  Because,,,,,,just mind your business.  We really didn’t see much of anything out there except for sea urchins with spines that were twelve to eighteen inches long.  We didn’t stay long either.  My wife freaked out like she saw the kraken, which in turn scared me, so we swam back to the beach.  She told me that the whole time we were out there, she felt like she was in the middle of a shark highway.

So, to prepare her and everyone else for beach vacations, here are your chances of getting killed by stuff other than sharks.

1. Bicycle accident.  1 in 4,535
2. Pedestrian accident.  1 in 704
3. Falling off a building.  1 in 6,115
4. The cold.  Not only is it awful, it can kill you.  1 in 7,399
5. Falling from some kind of furniture.  1 in 4,238
6. Dog bite.  1 in 116,448
7. Lighting  strike.  1 in 164,968
8. The flu.  1 in 63

Shark attack.  1 in 3,748,067.  The most important thing to remember is that you have a 100% chance of eventually kicking the bucket, so get in the water and enjoy yourself while you’re still here.  Chicken.

LINKS

• Mila Kunis is being sued by a childhood friend for,,,,,,,,,   wait for it,,,,,,,,,,  stealing a chicken.
• We were visiting some friends recently, and they were telling us all about their trip to Sri Lanka.  Add another one to my travel wish list.
• If you lived in north Jersey or New York in the 80’s, then you remember Crazy Eddie’s.  Here’s the story of the chain’s rise and fall.  Click it just to see the hair on the Federal Marshall in the picture.  Legendary.
• Cool photos of the volcanic eruption in Chile.

When one of my sons was around two years old, we were finishing the good time that is also known as potty training.  He was doing really well.  It was fall, time for hayrides and bonfires.  One weekend we decided to get together with some friends of ours to visit a local orchard where they helped grease the wheels of commerce by having a huge fall festival.  There were the obvious things like apple picking, cider, and a corn maze.  They also had a small scale train for the kids to ride, a playground with an impressive number of wooden structures for the kids to climb around in, and they actually put on little shows on Saturday and Sunday.

It was busy on the day we went.  We found a parking spot in the large dirt lot and walked down to the main attractions.  The kids got ice cream and took a ride on the train.  Then we let them loose on the playground.  This is the point where I need to explain something about my little guy and his bathroom habits.  He was not what you would call regular in the number two department.  Sometimes I think that he just didn’t want to take the time out from what he was doing, other times I just think that he thought that it was gross.  He’s a little bit of a clean freak.  Needless to say, this created a backup.  Like I said, we had set the kids loose on the playground.  I saw my guy across the way.  He had that thousand yard stare, the one you get when you are having battle flashbacks, or are about to make a deposit.  I recognized that look and I ran to him to ask if he needed to go potty.  I was too late.  So, we ended up in the bathroom cleaning him up.  The bathrooms had seen some heavy use on that day and when we left it, I decided that he may have had the right idea about pooping outside.  It looked like a Woodstock bathroom.  Doesn’t matter which Woodstock, they were all disgusting.   Luckily the damage had been mostly contained, and I was able to send him back to the playground commando style.  Bullet mostly dodged.  The kids got back to playing and I sat down on a bench.  My wife was following the munchkin around.  It was about a half hour later when my guy stopped in the middle of the play area.  My wife saw him.  I saw him.  There was nothing we could do.  He stood there in his shorts with that same look on his face.  In slow motion two poops rolled right out of his shorts and landed in the mulch.  My wife stood there in shock, looked at me and said, “It’s like having a pet duck”.  Well, now it was time to go home.  No one had realized what happened.  We took a bridal shower invitation out of my wife’s purse, looked around to make sure we weren’t being watched, and I bent down to pick up after our son.  I’ve had dogs since I was a kid, but this was my first time picking up after a person.  I put the loaded invitation into a slurpee cup that we had and put that in the trash.

I’m saving this story for his fiancé.

Like most people, I have a bucket list.  Every year in January, I take that list out, and say “I think I could realistically knock five things off of the list this year.  You know how many things I actually do?  Two, if I’m lucky.  It gets a little depressing.  I know that the reason that I don’t accomplish some of these things is because I tend to set the bar a little high.  I mean, I’m not sure if I’ll ever get around to riding a sea turtle from the Galapagos Islands to Esmeraldas, Ecuador, or beating Sir Richard Branson in an arm wrestling competition.  There is nothing wrong with aiming high, but if you really want to have a list that you can eventually finish, I suggest a second one.  One with goals that you actually may accomplish.  I made one for this summer.

1. Learn to speak Spanish with my kids.  Mommy is a super-cute latina.  She is also the only one in our house that can speak good Spanish.  This is something I have needed to fix for a while.
2. Build a killer treehouse for my boys.  We are blessed enough to have some good places in our yard for a treehouse.  It needs to have at least these three things to make it awesome.  (a)  A rope ladder. (b) A trap door.  (c)  A pirate flag.  My oldest son keeps asking if his treehouse will have indoor plumbing.  He’s probably going to be disappointed.
3. Get some arrows.  Someone I know was cleaning out there garage and asked me if I wanted an old bow that they had.  I said, “sure, my boys will love that”.  This may sound like a bad idea to some people, but I had a bow and arrow when I was a kid, and I never hit anyone.  The only thing in danger will be my neighbors cat if it keeps pooping in my flower beds.
4. Take the kids to the Statue of Liberty.  I haven’t been there since I was a kid.  My memories of that day include lines and being hit by spit from someone who was in line on the stairs up above me.
5. See a movie in the park.  They show movies outdoors at one of our local parks.  This sounds lovely and kind of small town charming.  In reality, mosquitos love me.
6. Attend Reggae in the Park.  Toward the end of summer they hold a large all day reggae concert in Fairmount Park.  Because when people see me, the first thing they think is, I bet that guy is super into reggae music.  This is not one for the kids, because let’s just say that the air will probably be thick.
7. Spend lots of time at the local library.  It’s free and the kids love to read.  If only the good people there would not sell candy in the lobby.  Last time we went, I ended up chasing my five year old around the stacks and under a table because I said we weren’t buying any.
8. Take the kids to two movies in one day.  You know what I mean, two movies, one ticket, wink wink.  That’s right, we’re going to spend the day at the theater.  We might even bring a picnic.  You may say, “Isn’t that a bad lesson for your kids’.  No, charging four dollars for a soda and eight for popcorn is a bad lesson.  I really wouldn’t feel bad if we found a way to take one of the theater seats home with us.
9. Keep the car clean all summer.  Most days it looks like a miniature tornado hit a miniature trailer park inside my car.
10. Finish my book.  Yeah that’s right.  I’m writing a book.  I hope all three of you will buy it.

I think that all of these things are attainable this summer.  Well, maybe except for the car thing.  I will do an update in September.

LINKS

• Cool story about a WWII treasure that has  just been recovered.
• A neat way to cut mangoes.
• New Star Wars teaser trailer.  Han Solo.  Enough said.
• Since it’s the wet season now, (unless you’re in California, sorry) here is a DIY way to waterproof all your gear.

Spring is finally here and it is almost time to fulfill a promise that I made to my five year old last fall.  It’s time to take him backpacking.  My dad and I have taken his older brother twice now.  Each time my youngest has watched us leave with a disappointed look on his face.  It is now time to induct him into the family tradition.

I have been backpacking from time to time since I was a kid.  I’m not one of those super intense guys with pricy gear.  You may know the type.  The ones who say these type of things.  “Hey man, I found another way to lighten my pack.  I don’t carry deodorant any more, and,,,,,,, no toilet paper bro.  Oak leaves work just as well.”  Well, no, no they don’t.  I prefer to be clean and to smell reasonably good.  I’m just a guy who likes to get out in the woods once in a while.  There’s something about carrying everything you need for a couple of days on your back.  It’s fun to exercise a certain level of self reliance.

One of my bucket list items is to finish the Pennsylvania section of the Appalachian trail.  I’ve been doing it piece by piece for a while now.  Last November, my dad, my nine year old, and I decided to do a short five mile section.  Yes, November in PA can get a little chilly.  We got onto the trail late on Saturday afternoon.  The plan was to hike in a short distance and find a place to set up a camp for the night.  Instead of following the plan, we engaged in another family tradition,,, pushing things farther than we should.  We hiked, and we hiked, and we hiked.  We passed several campsites along the way, before the trail led us onto an exposed ridge line where the wind really picked up.  Darkness fell, and we spent an hour looking for someplace to set up out of the wind.  Eventually we set up our tent in a field.  Because of  the wind, we couldn’t build a fire.  We ate granola bars and apples for dinner, and hunkered down for the night while the thirty to forty mile an hour winds buffeted the tent.  I was hoping that the morning would bring calmer weather, but, no luck.  After a breakfast of more granola bars and apples, we packed up and set out to get off of the ridge as fast as possible.  Since I was not expecting the gale, I had only worn two layers for warmth.  I started out the morning with those two layers, and a trash bag over both of them so that the morning wind wouldn’t cut straight through me.  (At this point my wife would like me to tell everyone that she told me to bring another jacket.)  Two and half miles and one of the steepest descents that I’ve ever done on the trail later, my wife picked us up and we enjoyed the warm car and some Burger King.

The day after this trip, my son came to me and said, “Thanks for taking me out in the woods dad”.  I loved that.  He’s hooked now.  A new generation of the family that will carry on the tradition.  It’s good for kids to get out once in a while and play somewhere wild.  Somewhere the play surface isn’t lined with rubber to minimize the damage when they fall.

(Since my wife always likes to point out that she told me to take an extra jacket on that trip, I would just like to tell everyone that on her first backpacking trip, she brought hair conditioner.  Her father actually tried to get her to bring a baseball bat for self defense.  Rookie ; )

My wife loves me. This is something that I never need to wonder about, because I have evidence.

• A week after she got a cast off of her broken ankle, I took her to a concert where we stood for six hours.  She didn’t complain at all, but a drunk hippie guy in front of us kept bumping into her.  She ended up shoving him really hard.  It was pretty awesome.
• When my oldest was two, I dragged all of us out to Steelers training camp in Latrobe, Pennsylvania.  Training camp is in August and it was wicked hot.  While I stood up near the players trying to get autographs, she watched our son, who eventually got bored and took off.  The crowd that had gathered to watch practice, ended up watching my wife chase a two year old in a Polamalu jersey around the hillside.  Every time that he juked and got away from her, they cheered.  At the end of the day, instead of being frustrated with me for keeping us there for hours, she was happy for me as I stood there with a big goofy grin and showed her the Ben Roethlisberger autograph that my dad and I had gotten.
• Every time a big
  

  Big Ben and someones flip phone.

  sporting event comes around, and I say “Man, I’d love to go to that”, she tells me to go.  I would have missed out on some great sports memories if she hadn’t encouraged me to go.

• She dresses me.  I don’t mean in the morning, although I wouldn’t mind.  I mean, if she wasn’t around, I would be wearing threadbare shorts and t-shirts to nearly every occasion.  Weddings, graduations, funerals.  I would reserve my best shorts and t-shirts for those events.  Now, I have considered that maybe she just doesn’t want to be embarrassed when she goes out with me.  That is possible.
• We went on an island vacation together last year, and she spent every day in the water with me, even though the movie Jaws scarred her for life.  Only once did she swim back to the beach.  This might not sound like a big deal, but I’m pretty sure she checks the swimming pool for sharks before she gets in.
• Our first anniversary activities included going to a Pittsburgh Pirates game and sleeping in the back of the car at a state park.  To be fair to myself, we did also spend a night at a bed and breakfast,,,,,,  and tour a submarine.  I’m quite romantic.
• Like I said, I’m very romantic.  One year for Christmas, I gave her a Steelers jersey and a can of Jerome Bettis trading cards.   She graciously waited an entire year to point out how ridiculous the gift was.

So, I look back on all of this and think, wow I would have complained about some of that stuff if I was her.  I think that maybe instead of complaining, she has just decided to get even, and never do laundry,,,,,ever.

LINKS

• Over Easter weekend there was a huge jewel heist.  I know it’s a crime and everything, but something about it is awesome.
• Somewhere out in Colorado, goldfish are taking over a lake, and they are using something called electrofishing to get rid of them.  Here is a video of electrofishing.  I find it funny for some reason.
• Happy National Sibling Day, from the people who bring you Failblog.
• So, this week Directv had to stop running all those Rob Lowe commercials because apparently Comcasts feelings were hurt.  Here is the USA Today story with links to the commercials.

I may have mentioned before that I was at one point an EMT.  Aside from doing emergency calls with the local rescue squad, I worked for an ambulance transport company.  This is really just as thrilling as it sounds.  Ten hour shifts of transporting people from the hospital back to nursing homes or rehab centers.

There were about 12 of us working out of the local office.  We would rotate partners throughout the week.  Some people were good to work with, some not so good.  One day I came into the office, called the dispatcher, and found out I was working with one of the girls.  That was ok with me.  She was perfectly nice, aside from being one of those people who thinks that other people are constantly looking at them.  I don’t know if she even knew that she suffered from this affliction.  It was always like, “Did you see the way that doctor was looking at me?” or “Those nurses were really staring today.”  It became kind of an inside joke.  Whenever she worked with another one of my buddies, I would call them on the radio and say stuff like, “Hey Joe, I’m having the weirdest day, everywhere I go it feels like people are watching me.”  All of this flew right over her head.

We worked our full ten hour shift and returned to the office.  She was driving when we pulled into the lot.  Now, to have this make sense, I’ll have to describe our parking lot.  It ran along on entire side of the the office building and continued past it into a wooded area to the rear.  The parking spaces faced each other across the middle lane that you would drive in and out of.  All of our employees parked on one side and the ambulances parked on the other.  My partner on this day was a pretty good driver, but when she pulled into the lot and tried to back into one of the ambulance spots, she wound up crooked as all get out.  I was reading a book, but I noticed and kind of laughed a little bit.  She put the truck back into drive to pull forward so we could straighten out.  Then we plowed right into the car in the parking spot in front of us.  It was kind of amazing.  My partner started freaking out, jumping up and down on the brake.  We weren’t moving very fast, but the little Ford or Mercury, or whatever it was in front of us looked like we hit it going 30 miles an hour.  We crunched the back of it and pushed it up and over a curb stop and into a tree that crunched the front end.  I guess that 10,000 pounds does a good amount of damage no matter how fast it’s moving.  Because I wasn’t the one driving, I found the whole experience really amusing.  The cops came, the company accident investigator came, and they all thought we were lying about how fast the truck was going.  It didn’t matter, they still had to fix the employees car.  You know why?  The brake line on their ambulance had broken.  These are the moments when you know God is watching.  We drove those ambulances fairly hard.  There were plenty of opportunities for the line to blow during that day.  It finally blew at a time when no one could get hurt.  These are also the days when I know that my guardian angels sense of humor is similar to mine.