Is this affecting you too?

http://www.thestate.com/statewire/story/537108.html

Probably not if you're not in the Southeast, or at least not in North or South Carolina. But still...it's pretty ridiculous.

Not only are motorists in SC and NC paying the some of the highest amounts in the country per gallon of gas (which is even worse considering we have just about the lowest taxes on gas in the country and are therefore typically the lowest priced gas) but at a lot of places here, you can't even find it at all! Basically since Ike was threatening to come through Texas, back in mid-September, we've had a horrible gas crisis here. If a station has gas it all, it's pretty much guaranteed to not have all different octanes, which leaves you driving around town for a while looking for enough for your tank (if the station will even let you fill your tank...many are capping motorists to $50 at a time, which is about 12-15 gallons max).

Last time I went to fill my tank I only drove past 2 or 3 gas stations that were completely out of gas, and only had to wait in line for 5 minutes or so to fill up, but before that I saw as many as 6-8 stations with no gas at all, plus several that only had higher octanes before finally finding one with good old 87 octane. Of course, there was a line there too.

Honestly, its kinda counter intuitive to me that a storm which reports show did little or at least less than expected damage to the refineries should still be affecting us so greatly nearly a month later! I mean, lets think about this...first of all...the Texas refineries sit right on the Gulf of Mexico. Should we expect and prepare for storms in this area and maybe have a back up plan, other than just cutting off the pipeline to southeastern states? If we didn't before, after 2005 we certainly should have had something in the works. Secondly, the official reasoning for our continued shortage is that "pipelines and refineries are still not up to full capacity" and are expected to take another 3-4 weeks to hit that point. I'm not oil expert, so I can't really assess the truth-value of that statement, but if they're able to shut them down and empty the pipeline literally overnight (2 days before the storm it was business as usual, no increased prices, no shortages, etc., but the day before the storm prices skyrocketed $1 or more overnight and suddenly everyone was out of gas), they why on earth does it take a month and a half or longer to get us out of the woodwork? And don't blame it on people hoarding gas. There is no possible way people can be hoarding gas for this amount of time. Did people go fill up their tanks before the storm out of fear? Possibly, but that was a month ago...I guarantee all that gas has been used by now. We're back to normal usage (or possibly below because of increased prices, etc.) by now for sure. I just don't get it!!! Arrghh!!


NOTE: I originally started writing this post last week, but fell asleep while doing so. I sorta forgot about it and never finished until now. So, here ya go...you get it a week later!

A fitting end...

...to such a horribly flawed and troubled administration.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/bush_markets

Since I am unfortunately not at a place now where I have any investments, or even retirement for that matter, and I'm not in a position to be getting a new loan for cars or houses or anything else in the near future, part of me wants to just say "Forget it...let Wall Street sort itself out. The people who were greedy and unwise with their money of the last few years should suffer with the rest of us." But...the compassionate Democrat in me can't let that happen. Not so much because I have compassion for Wall Street, but because I know the damaging effects will trickle down to people who are already so desperately hurting as it is.

I don't know what the answer is...I haven't followed the economy closely enough, not to mention I only had one Economics class in college...and HATED IT!! (Partly because it was all based in theory and nothing in reality...I need practicality, folks...and partly because I just really strongly disliked the professor.) Whatever the case, something needs to be done, but it needs to be done cautiously. We've all seen what happens when people get caught up in excitement and fear and blindly listen to a certain Texan and his advisors.

You all know behind whom I've thrown my support, but regardless of the outcome, January 20th cannot come soon enough!

UPDATE: I forgot to say earlier...My favorite part of the article is how Bush was "tracing the origins of the problem back a decade." I didn't actually see the speech, and am currently too lazy to look for it on YouTube, so I don't know how skillfully or craftily he built this argument, but it is a convenient way to shift the blame just far enough away to make it look like someone else's guffaw (a recurring theme). Now I'm not naive enough to say 100% of the blame for this (or any other of our current problems) squarely falls on the Bush administration, nor am I saying there may not have been contributing factors predating the 2000 election which may have led up to this, but over the last 7 and a half years, our economy has gone through a whirlwind of changes that just 2 years ago many in Washington considered a major feather in their cap. Honestly? Enough crap...time for some people who make sense at 1600 Pennsylvania.

Live on location

I'm blogging to you from Memphis, TN right now. Sitting in my hotel room. Came up here for a training thing for work, so it should be an interesting week. Maybe some good blog fodder will come from it. Who knows! :)

Where's Mark been?

Hey! I think I mentioned in a recent post that things have been kinda crazy lately and that I would be filling you in soon. Well I guess soon is gonna right now.

About 3 weeks ago, one of my coworkers had the day off and we get a call from her saying she's leaving, can't give a two week notice, just has to pick her daughter up from school and is moving back to her parents' out of state. We have a pretty small staff at work, so we're kinda like family there anyway...so naturally we were concerned. Apparnently her boyfriend and she had gotten into an argument the night before (she found out he was cheating on her....again) and it turned physical. He ended up beating the crap out of her (again) and she was done.

We talked her into coming by the office that afternoon before leaving. So after she picked up her daughter, she came limping into the office with a black eye and all. She had some vacation time saved up so we talked her into taking her vacation to go to her parents and figure out what the best plan of action was. Of course we wanted her to stay, but we all knew the best thing for her and her daughter would be to go back to her parents' and her support system rather than staying up here and trying to make it on her own.

After her week off, she called to officially put in her two week notice so she could leave on a good note and move on. But...she still had to work out her final two weeks back here in SC so she had to come back. Obviously she wasn't going to move back into her (now ex-)boyfriend's house and getting a hotel for 2 weeks would have ended up costing her more than she would have made over those two weeks. So, since I live alone in a two bedroom house, I offered up my guest bedroom (her daughter was staying with her parents during this time). So...for the last 2 weeks, I've had a roommate here. Obviously she had a lot going on trying to take care of her final details up here and filing a police report against the scum bag and everything else, but we took the opportunity to go out and enjoy plenty too, lol.

All in all, it was a good time...she and I get along really well anyway so we had fun, but it was kinda a long and crazy 3 weeks dealing with the beating and all. She took pictures of all the bruising after it all showed up and she looked horrible. I mean covered in bruises! Of course, the ex filed some bogus report saying he told her he was tired of her being drunk all the time or something and she didn't take it well. He accused her of flipping out, locking him in the bedroom and beating him up, haha. We got a kick out of that considering she's all of 108 pounds standing about 5'6" and he's a big navy boy, haha. Oh, he also alleged that his roommate (a former navy boy) was a witness to this beating...as though between the two of them combined couldn't pull my coworker off of him, lol. I think he ended up withdrawing the report, or at least never pressed charges on it.

So yeah...that's been my last few weeks. Honestly...there are very very few people in the world I actively dislike. Almost no one I have such a distaste for that I really don't think I could even be in the same room with them. Or if I were out some where and ran into them I couldn't at least just ignore them and go about my business. But now there's definitely one person on that list in her ex bf. It's obviously a horrible thing that he beat her black and blue, broker her toe, everything else...I mean that's enough of a reason to hate the guy. But what's worse is he did all this while her 6 year old daughter was "asleep" upstairs and heard all this going on...I mean, that's the kinda of stuff that can scar a kid for life! Even more so...he had been cheating on her for a while, but was always around looking like the doting boyfriend through it all. He threw my coworker a birthday party last month and invited everyone from work over...trying to look all sweet, all the while he was messing around on the side. He basically pissed me off even more b/c he was acting like a nice guy trying to get me and everyone else to like him while he knew he was a dirtbag. If I had seen a dirtbag before, it'd be one thing...but to play us all like that? Ridiculous. Honestly...he's a little punk and if I do see him again, he'd better hope I'm not behind the wheel of a car...that's all I'm sayin!

...And it's only Monday!

Hey kids...still around. Things have been a little crazy lately. I'll fill you in on some of those details later. But right now...I thought I'd give you a quick summary of my day just to remind you that my life is still incredibly random! haha

So yeah...my day in a nutshell...


bloody stairs, dime bags of crack, talks of a promotion, super-glued penises, squealing golf cart tires, orthopedic shoes, myspace stalker/future roommate, The Hills, and Donovan Marcelle doing Tina Turner on Showtime at the Apollo


I'll have to fill you in on more specifics later...but it's waaay too late here. Oh, and the sad part? All in all, this really wasn't all that random of a day for me. Always something colorful...always something exciting! haha