I think someone siphoned my gas tank last night while I was at work.
I filled up my tank Saturday. Sunday afternoon, I still had half a tank, which is the last time I really remember seeing the gauge. This morning, I had no gas. Enough to start the car, but not enough to GO.
And I have a locking gas door.
It is possible that I have a gas leak. Which may be worse. There was no puddle beneath the car, though.
Things have been crazy around here for the past month or so - at least from my perspective. Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Gulf Coast area, but it threw the hotel into chaos. Our reservation system sunce then has been unreliable, giving inaccurate availability data for practically every day since then. We've been doing manual room counts every day, making sure we have enough rooms for everyone that was already here and for those who had reservations. FEMA and Red Cross set up a program to pay for the first 14 days of hotel charges for those affected by Katrina, which is great both from our perspective and from the guests's. Helped to lighten a lot of moods around here.
Then Rita hit, and things weren't so peachy keen. My sister came up to stay with us to avoid power outages - when Lily went through Lafayette a couple of years ago, they didn't have power for a week. Bridget told me she was coming and I said, "Yeah, great. (pause) Oh, wait." My sister has 4 kids, all under the age of 4. Ages 3, 2, 1, and 2 months, to be exact. That was going to be tumultuous, I could already tell.
Rita hit, and we lots power, at the hotel and at our house. The hotel rented a generator, thankfully, to run our computer system, and the power was only out for about 14 hours. The city actually turned off the power at 4am to avoid live downed lines in any areas. Pretty smart, I think. We still had a lot of irate guests, especially when our cable system didn't come up until the next day. People wanted to see what their homes, or at least their home area, looked like, and couldn't.
Power wasn't restored at our house until Tuesday afternoon. We spent the weekend at a friend's apartment and cancelled class Tuesday night to clean up the fridge and resulting mess from leaving a vacant house for several days. My sister wen home on Sunday - their power had been restored Saturday afternoon. The kids were wonderful, when the 1-year old wasn't screaming.
In other news... I will likely be closing the karate school. Attendance, and thus fees, has been attrocious. I've been paying out of pocket for a few months now. This was why we moved to a whole new location a year ago, for cheaper rent that my student base could better support, and for no utility fees. Now, I often sit through empty class periods before anyone shows up. I don't need this stress, and I don't need this money sink. I've talked thinsg over with Charlie, and I'm going to restructure to a less commercial enterprise - so I suppose "closing" is a misnomer. I want to move to a less formalized environment, one where I don't need to worry about paying hundreds of dollars a month in rent and thus don't need to worry about my student base. I'll keep a few of my adult students, and that'll be about it. Problem is finding a location. Some place that would be willing to take us in for a percentage of my student income would be perfect - then I could just charge like $10 a month and not care about anything else.
In still other news, I saw Serenity last night, and greatly enjoyed it. I would highly reccomend people watch the Firefly series first, just to get acclimated with the characters first. It isn't neccessary, but it will definitely help. Great action, great comedy, just an all around good movie. I'll probably go see it again.
In further other news, Bridget got paid! <singing>We're in the money! We're in the money</singing> But seriously, if you see me attempting to splurge, STOP ME.
"All unattended children will be given two shots of espresso and a free puppy."
So, I'm reading through the World of Warcraft Warlock forums, and run across this message:
I dont like to stress the fact that the warlock rocks, but he jus does. So, for all you staff users out there, feel free to come in and post, my staff is a good one, but here is how it goes
1. post message in the room
2. LOOK IT OVER
3. dont report anything, i might get in trouble :)
and 4. Have fun!!!
Anyone else understand that? There are now 26 pages of collective WTFs on the forum.
So, just thought I'd share.
At least to me, the pool party was a smashing success - my favorite so far, I think. Two days of nonstop fun - from 9am Friday (Hi Moose!) until 9pm Sunday (Bye Moose!). There was, of course, swimming, as well as poker, boardgames, some Munchkin (wish I had gotten in on that), and some plain nerd-dom.
I am at work, so I need to make this short. Thanks to everyone who came, and I hope everyone had as good a time as I did!
James Doohan died Wednesday. He was the Canadian who played Scottish engineer Montgomery Scott on the original Star Trek.
He's the second member of the original series to pass away - DeForest Kelley died in 1999.
Some interesting tidbits: he served in World War II, losing his right middle finger on D-Day when attacked with a machine gun. One bullet to the chest was stopped by a silver cigarette case. I thought that kind of stuff only happened in movies.
He was given an honorary degree in engineering by the Milwaukee School of Engineering after half of the students there said he had inspired them to join the field.
He suffered from Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and fibrosis of the lungs. It was time for him to go. He'll be missed.
Most of you guys have seen Order of the Stick before. If not, check it out, it's a hilarious little comic.
The author of that strip has another one called Five Foot Steps that is an official part of the WoTC RPGA site. Looks like it's pretty funny, too, from the player's perspective instead of the characters.
Well, yeah. That is all.
