Car Technology Jeeping Up on Me

Five vacation days and approximately five hundred miles later, I can tell you that, while technology might be fun and amazing, it's not always for the best.

We - my wife, her dad and I - rented a Jeep Grand Cherokee 4X4 for our recent beach tryst. The vacation went smoothly until five minutes down the road. I hadn't even left my home town when I thought I heard my mother's voice.

"The speed limit is 35 miles per hour," the car said.

The two other occupants in the vehicle found this wildly amusing. I silently cursed Jeep and plotted Gretta's demise. Gretta was the name I assigned the disembodied voice that Jeep put into the car to torture me for the next 200-some miles to the coast.

Somewhere around the 120 mile mark, we ran into a cloud burst. Just as I started to reach for the wipers, they began working. I nearly ran off the road. Stephen King's classic, Christine, ran through my mind.

Turns out the tailgate lifted itself. The high beams come on and off on their own. The vehicle told me how much fuel consumption I was using when I switched to manually change gears, which was considerably lower than when in automatic. Must be a Jeep glitch and not my driving. I'll mention that in my complaint letter to the company.

While I'm not 80, and I don't need a car to parallel park for me (I'm perfectly capable, thank you very much!), I will admit that I did particularly enjoy the seat warmer and cooler-offer. 

Curse Jeep for utilizing technology to try to make me drive safely and keep me safe, as well as create a comfortably enjoyable ride! I'm most upset for the technology Jeep didn't employ... Ejector passenger seats. By utilizing THAT technology, I could have slipped it into four wheel drive and really given that SUV a proper test drive!

My four wheeling suggestion made my passengers antsy, so to speak. New technology, Jeep, and I won't be drafting that official letter of complaint.

What's in a Name?

My mother, the family genealogist, believes in the power of names. She utilized family names for her own children, creating solid foundations for my sisters and myself.

It has been my understanding that when I was born, there was a lot of discussion that took place. Not what to do with me, but as to what my mother should name me.

According to my mother, she was leaning toward Edward, Stuart or Harper. Of these, Harper was a family name. My grandmother strongly suggested Beauwater, which she claimed was a traditional family name. Thank  goodness I dodged THAT bullet!

Some other family member suggested she use Harper for my first name. His reasoning? The best presidents and greatest men in history had the same first and last initial, like Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover and Calvin Coolidge. According to my mother, these were the only examples he gave. Hmmm...

My mother entertained other suggestions and... Well, she entertained them. Harper just seemed a bit unusual to her, so she relegated it to my middle name. Phillip, though, just sounded right to her.

The irony in my name, however, is that Phillip means a lover of horses in Greek. While I don't hate horses, I can't say I'm a big fan of the furry, oversized creatures. I'd like to say the reverse is true, but it's not. Horses hate me.

Healthy... Or Harmful?

I recently turned 50 and made a shocking discovery about my mother. Despite evidence to the contrary, it turns out that she really wasn't trying to kill me off when I was younger!

For years she slipped the most peculiar things into my food. Then, she had the audacity to insist that I eat it! I was given no choice or voice in the matter! A couple of times she went so far as to threaten to save it for me for breakfast the next day. My life was like a horror movie, except I persevered!

Some of the poisonous, foreign objects were square, some round and some shapeless. They came in all colors like orange, red, yellow, brown and green. The textures and consistencies were sketchy too. Nothing digestible actually squeaks when you bite into it!

Most of it was unrecognizable, though some was. I always recognized the mushrooms. They were of the poisonous variety. I knew they were because every time I ate one, I would fall out of my chair, gagging for oxygen, while different colored orbs danced before my very eyes.

I accidentally ate one of these poisonous mushrooms recently. Yes, it squeaked when I bit into it. Magically, I didn't fall out of my chair. I didn't gag. No colors. No near death experience. By the grace of God, it seems that my body has built an immunity to the toxins.

That incident sent sparks flying through my neurons and synapses which, of course, led to my discovery. I started flipping through some of my recipes. Could it be that she was feeding me red, green, yellow and orange peppers? Onions? Cabbage and celery? Mushrooms, certainly. But squash and okra?

The items listed above are all items that I cook with consistently. My wife has even witnessed me consuming said items. Some of them I even find tasty.

Surely the onions I love to put on nearly everything I eat aren't the same as the ones my mother tried to feed me! Her opaque, and sometimes translucent, food articles she called onions sometimes sent me reeling. If memory serves me correctly, I developed hives after eating them. Or profuse sweating. Or maybe convulsions...

Roomba Missing! Reward!

He, as I call it since I've not ascertained the gender of my Roomba, was last seen in the hallway heading towards the front door. He's very short, round and black. He has moving parts on his underside and some glowing symbols on his back. He looks very similar to the one pictured below.

His dock has remained in isolation now for about six days. I suspect the dock is depressed due to its lack of activity and listless nature.

A reasonable facsimile of my Roomba.

The way I see it, one of three things has happened.

One, the Roomba is in hiding. I perceive the black coloration of my Roomba to be a flaw in his design. I've looked under the sofa. I've looked under the bed. I've looked under the furniture with the TV on it. I've even looked upstairs. No Roomba.

Two, Bob attacked and ate Roomba. Bob has been known to eat some strange things. Usually, these strange objects tend to show in his, um, excrement since they generally don't digest too well. However, nothing unusual has been spotted. Yet.

Three, the Roomba couldn't handle all the dog fur from three fuzzy, black dogs and somehow broke out of the house and is looking for a new owner. During the short while we had him, he sure complained a lot. It beeped constantly for its owners to empty its refuse containment unit.

Sadly, option three seems the most likely to me. So if you locate a loose Roomba roaming around the streets of High Point, please contact me at the offices of Fuzzy, Black Dogs, Inc.

Fuzzy Dawg Numba For

Dis is Lilly. I may be da smallest but I da smartest. So dis is my blog post.

Im relly not liking dis krismus thing. First, dese humans move stuff all over da plase. Then dey put a tree inside da hous! Reely?? Dey hang soks out of reach where we cant eat dem and put boxs unda da tree. Put bags unda it to. I rememba food unda it wonce. It was good. Den dey stopped dat. Kwazy humans.

Ya no, dey used ta put water unda da tree for us ta dwink. Dey dont even do dat any mor! I got soo tirstee!!

Any way, dis last krismus reely sucked. They got a new dog! Dat is NOT us hidin fwom da new dog in da stoopid pichur you see.

It must be a boy hes so stoopid! Kinda like Bob. He gos bak and forth. He liks da flor but not like Ace. He bumps me when Im on da flor. He skares Bob reel bad. He dont mess wif Ace. I dont twust him. Hes got no hair. Hes rownd like a cookee. Hes blak. Hes noisee.

Da humans namd him ruma. Rumba. Rooba. Somten. Here he comes agin! Gotta go!

Dear Santa,

I realize that Christmas is practically upon us. While I realize this may be short notice, I wanted to give you a brief list of those items that I may want, or need, for Christmas this year.

First of all, you might want to know that I'm no longer working with kindergartners, Santa. I have my own classroom of third-graders now! I'm moving up in the world! Well, I guess you could look at it that way...

Regardless, I need seat belts. Lap belts, actually. It doesn't matter what car they go with since I'm going to specialty attach them to certain third-graders seats. I'll even take some old time-y ones that don't have a quick release mechanism.

I need a mute button, Santa. That way, after one student has said my name more than three times within the space of 10 to 20 seconds, I simply hit the mute button and, voila, no sounds!

As for myself, I think I need to replace the randomizer with an accurate scale, Santa. This morning it told me I was 191.3, then it told me 186.7. I went with the lower number, but I think accuracy may be required.

How about a little Christmas Santa magic and create MS LessonPlanner. All you have to do, MicroSoft, is create a software that all I have to do is plug in my students, their levels, the reading and the math standards and my daily schedule and... POOF! Your software spits out a daily lesson plan! Should be simple work for a computer geek, right?

Anyway, I know you probably keep a backlog of other requests previously sent. Feel free to pull from any of my previous lists I've sent.

Thank you,

Fuzzy, Black Dogs

Wrong Time for Wallet Cleaning

When vacationing, it's important to have activities available to kids for long car rides. It's just as important to have activities ready for spouses for those same rides. A bored spouse can be a dangerous thing!

Let's back up for a moment, however. What guy likes to drive five hours with a fat wallet tucked in his back pocket? Exactly! So I do what any normal guy would do. I pull it out and set it in the central cavity below the radio in the middle.

Approximately three minutes into our five hour drive, my wife says, "What'cha got in there?"

"Stuff," I reply.

"This may be the right time to clean out your wallet."

My entire body tensed. Shock and dread coursed throughout my system."Be careful," I said, hoping to distract her with my wit and humor. "There's no telling what you may find in there! You might not like it!"

She proceeded, regardless of my distracting wit and humor.

The "stuff" in my wallet.

"You know you have more than one insurance card in here," she asked.

"Yes. I keep an old one in case I lose the newest. It's good to have a back up, you know."

"So if you lose 2017, 16, 15 and 14, you'll still have 2013 to show? Ridiculous..."

This was not going well.

“Why do you have two Sheetz cards?”

“The small one is a membership card. The large one is a gift card. One saves money, the other has money. Get it?”

“Sure honey," she said with a brief pause. "How much is on the card?”

“Probably enough for three hot dog purchases,” I replied three thoughtful miles later. I may have been driving, but I think I heard her eyes rolling.

After what seemed like an hour of calls to 1-800 phone numbers, she figured out which cards had expired, which had money and how much money they contained.

Once completed, my poor wallet could best be described as an old man – a worn out, tired old man who’d lost a lot of weight and looked like a deflated shell of himself.

“What lesson have we learned here,” my wife asked, her teacher side coming out.

“That I need a new wallet. And never leave your wallet where your wife can reach it. And…”

Funny. I thought I heard that eye rolling noise again.