Block Island and the BI sticker

I will be on Block Island for 4th of July weekend on my mother and stepfather's sail boat, "Gone With The Wind." Get it? A sail boat, wind! Plus my name is Tara, it's all really cute in their yachting world.

Anyway, Block Island is a little Island off of Rhode Island that can only be reached by ferry. I'm taking Amtrak to New London, CT and then the high speed ferry over. I don't need my car since the whole island is walkable and there are bikes to rent on every bend.

You know those oval stickers that people put on their cars that say where they vacation, like VT or MV? I figured although I like Marthas Vineyard and I do go skiing in Vermont, getting a Block Island sticker would be more appropriate since I've been going there every 4th of July weekend and on other occasions since freshman year of high school. Two years ago, I tell my mom and stepdad that I'm going to go buy an oval BI sticker for my car when I went walking into town that day. My stepdad goes, "You're going to drive around with a sticker that says BI?" I had not thought of it that way, so I defend myself and the sticker by saying, "No one will think that!" He then says if he saw a woman with a BI sticker he'd think she was BI. I ponder this a minute, wondering if I could pull off a BI status or if I even cared. With a determined shrug I told him that I'm getting the sticker anyway. Much to my luck, I found a larger oval sticker that read, BI (a picture of the island) and then RI.

So although BI%RI sounded stupid, I figured it was a good solution to my bumper dilemma. I was pretty happy with it too, until the next year when a guy told me that the picture of the island's layout looked like "The Money Shot." Eww! Now that I'm living in the city my 91 Honda Accord is in my mother's driveway, rotting away, sticker fading in the sun.

Fortune Cookies
My family has a tradition when it comes to opening fortune cookies. You can not open your own. You select which one is yours and then hand it to another person at the table to open and read aloud for you. Then you or another table member will reciprocate until all of them are read out loud. It makes reading the fortunes more fun. I even make my friends do that now when we eat out for Chinese. Of course you can always make it more interesting by adding "in bed" to the end of the fortune.

I hate when you get ones that are not fortunes but words of advice and caution, grr that isn't a fortune that is a mini lecture.

I seem to get a lot star and cloud sayings. I've always been a wish-upon-a-star type of kid growing up, and I still do, but it is rare that you can see the stars here in the city. I've probably wished on dozens of 737 commercial planes.

My recent fortune:
There appear to be many clouds; but they quickly pass.
Lucky Numbers 13, 17, 18, 19, 41, 43

Years ago I got one that said "The stars appear every night, all is well." I always loved that one, which is why I remember it to this day. I had it taped to my computer screen but it faded until you couldn't read the red ink anymore. I just taped the new fortune to my office computer though.

Does anyone else save them, the good ones? Look at all those people who won the lotto by playing their lucky numbers.

Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?
Remember the computer game and later TV show? I had the DOS game with the 5.25 floppy disks, good times, good times. I remember The Where in Time version was really hard, but I had liked that one the best.

Try This: If you type in "Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?" in Google's search engine, it actually tells you where.

A location appears above the search results after you type in the question. lol! I thought it was funny. Go check it out HERE

RIP Tigger and Piglet: The voices of piglet and tigger have both died this week. Two in one week, it's a conspiracy. Do you think Elmer Fudd hunted them down?

Answering machine woes, or why I suck at leaving messages
I hate people who take their time answering their cell phones. Not that I mind waiting, but because after 4 rings I think it's usually safe to say that they are not there or are not going to pick up. So I start planning a message in my head of what I'll say on their answering machine. Like a quick prepared speech like, "Hey there, it's Tara, sorry I missed you. I just want to say---" But then you get a real voice saying "Hello?" and there goes the message and any chance of a cool opening line or sounding breezy. Instead I'm startled and go, "Oh, hey, yeah it's Tara, you're there." It's terrible!

I practice phone messages in the first place for a reason. I'm a terrible message leaver, I either say way too much or make a joke. But it's a machine so the joke is just hanging there and so I fumble to make up for trying to leave a joke on a recording, so there are a lot of "ums" and "anyways."

Once when I was calling back a guy I had started seeing, my friends were actually holding their heads in pain. I freakin started talking about the weather on his answering machine. I was like, "yeah well I'm on my lunch hour, and it's real pretty out..." I then see my friends giving me the axe/cut-it signs and then I'm grabbing for more straws.

I also can't say "Call me back." I think it's rude and needy, so I say "talk to you later," thus implying I don't want a call back even if I do. Once I said "Call me back if you want to," which just sounds stupid. I mean, why wouldn't they want to ;) It's me! Haha, just kidding.

Conan Sighting
I just saw Conan O'Brien on Bleeker street around 8:00 tonight on my way home. He was walking with a hippy looking woman, and man is he tall! I don't know why I never realized it before, but he looked like a giant when he turned the corner and almost ran into me. I didn't say anything, played it cool, just kept walking. But I do love his late show..."for me to poop on!" ;)

Also I reached 7,500 hits just with Blog Explosion alone