Rain on my Parade
Today was a wonderful day, but you know something bad always has to come a long and ruin all of those spectacular days in which everything is going right. It kind of sucks.
I went to school blah blah blah… Erin, Kathleen, and I left at 9:30 to go downtown for the CATO Institute seminar thingy but we didn’t really have directions because mapquest kept crashing my computer. So we made it up as we went along with the help of a Houston map and a gay little printout that psudo helped us figure out where we were going. Our improvisational direction skills are not very good. So it took a while to get there and we were late… but that is okay. We arrived in time to hear the first speaker, Representative Jeff Flake, give the opening remarks, which weren’t really that interesting so I didn’t mind missing that. Then we heard Mr. Jerry Taylor talk about energy and the economy, an interesting but utterly useless speech. The best part was when he talked about a letter he had received from a senator that basically said that the rules of supply and demand in economics do not apply to the energy market. Everyone in the room laughed because that really is quite funny. Kathleen and I held the microphones (that no one used) during the question and answer period. Then Ms. Susan Chamberlin talked… about stuff in general specifically school vouchers in DC, it was interesting but on the whole irrelevant. Actually it wasn’t even all that interesting. Then Erin and I held the microphones. Intermission here. It was just a little reception that had lots of people walking around trying to shove wine into our hands even though we kept saying “Uhh… No thanks, I’m not old enough.” Oh well. We did get Mr. Robert McTeer Jr’s autograph though. Kathleen was the one who finally got up the nerve to ask for it after we spent a few minutes eavesdropping to make sure he was the right guy. You know that you are a nerd when you get excited about getting the autograph of a banker… But he might “grow up” to be the next Chairman of the FOMC! Oooh! That is what Greenspan is now, btw. 2004, 2006, or 2008. We’ll see!
Then we went into the dining room and sat down… but not together because we are only lowly volunteers. The people who sat next to me were very nice and they talked to me. Two of them were from the Houston Federal Reserve Bank and they did Fed Challenge. Timothy Hopper and a lady (I don’t remember her name but she was very very nice). The lady said that she would come see talk to us when we went on our tour of the Fed on the 10th. Yay! And the guy on my left was a Frenchman who is in Texas for Germany. Weird I know but he was nice. The food was good too. We had a salad with good dressing, but I wasn’t too very fond of the olives. Then the main course was chicken stuffed with tomato stuff, yellow rice, vegetables, and a stuffed tomato. Dessert was chocolate silk pie. YUM!
Then Mr. McTeer spoke and we learned a lot of stuff. He is an economic dove (good for Fed challenge), a loner, and he agrees with Freeman for the most part. Other stuff of note: there is a section of the Dallas Fed website devoted to McTeer’s weird fancies. It is really funny stuff like poems and vignettes. This is his “A Macroeconomic Haiku”:
The economy
Is recovering nicely
But without new jobs
Ahhh, Good fun. http://dallasfed.org/mcteer/rhyme/index.html
When we left we ended up having to pay $15.00 for parking in the parking garage which is NUTS-O, but okay because I took up two parking spots. You see I did a really bad hurried parking job and ended up parking almost STRAIGHT on the little line separating the spaces. My bad. We had some problems getting back to I-45 South though. We could SEE it but for some reason there were no streets that led to it, they went to I-45 north and I-10 and 59 and 288 but not to I-45 South. So finally after a considerable amount of time and some highly illegal turns and lane changes we discovered that Jefferson led to I-45 South… eventually. When we figured that out we still had to get to a point where we could turn on to Jefferson and we had some problems with stupid idiots who decide that they HAVE TO talk to the guy on the sidewalk. Yeah, some people are dipshits and there is nothing we can do about it.
When we got on I-45 it was really uneventful for the rest of the drive. Mrs. Franklin didn’t have any cookies left. That is sad.
THEN I went to a job interview at BJ’s and the lady who interviewed me told me that they usually try very hard to hire people who have at least 6 months of practice, so they may or may not give me the job… After the interview I was pretty proud of myself and she said she’d call me. GUESS WHAT! I got a job! I start next Saturday training as a Hostess.
And then it had to rain on my parade. My car DIED! It just went Ka-put. Mom told me to go pick up Wes from work, so I was going. I backed out of the driveway and when I go to put my car into drive from reverse and the engine stopped running. Colleen, Laura, and I all had to push the car to get it out of the middle of the street. Originally we tried to push it back into the driveway, but that didn’t work too very well because… well … the drive way is UP. Finally we just parallel parked it in the street so that some one else could deal with it. It really is tragic.
And that was my spectacular day, which ended up being less than spectacular.
I’m going to spend the weekend with Colleen and her family in west Texas, it should be fun I’ll tell you about it when I get back.
AW ####! Mommy got some stupid “Net Nanny” thing that will not let me go to my live journal and login. I’m not happy.
I went to school blah blah blah… Erin, Kathleen, and I left at 9:30 to go downtown for the CATO Institute seminar thingy but we didn’t really have directions because mapquest kept crashing my computer. So we made it up as we went along with the help of a Houston map and a gay little printout that psudo helped us figure out where we were going. Our improvisational direction skills are not very good. So it took a while to get there and we were late… but that is okay. We arrived in time to hear the first speaker, Representative Jeff Flake, give the opening remarks, which weren’t really that interesting so I didn’t mind missing that. Then we heard Mr. Jerry Taylor talk about energy and the economy, an interesting but utterly useless speech. The best part was when he talked about a letter he had received from a senator that basically said that the rules of supply and demand in economics do not apply to the energy market. Everyone in the room laughed because that really is quite funny. Kathleen and I held the microphones (that no one used) during the question and answer period. Then Ms. Susan Chamberlin talked… about stuff in general specifically school vouchers in DC, it was interesting but on the whole irrelevant. Actually it wasn’t even all that interesting. Then Erin and I held the microphones. Intermission here. It was just a little reception that had lots of people walking around trying to shove wine into our hands even though we kept saying “Uhh… No thanks, I’m not old enough.” Oh well. We did get Mr. Robert McTeer Jr’s autograph though. Kathleen was the one who finally got up the nerve to ask for it after we spent a few minutes eavesdropping to make sure he was the right guy. You know that you are a nerd when you get excited about getting the autograph of a banker… But he might “grow up” to be the next Chairman of the FOMC! Oooh! That is what Greenspan is now, btw. 2004, 2006, or 2008. We’ll see!
Then we went into the dining room and sat down… but not together because we are only lowly volunteers. The people who sat next to me were very nice and they talked to me. Two of them were from the Houston Federal Reserve Bank and they did Fed Challenge. Timothy Hopper and a lady (I don’t remember her name but she was very very nice). The lady said that she would come see talk to us when we went on our tour of the Fed on the 10th. Yay! And the guy on my left was a Frenchman who is in Texas for Germany. Weird I know but he was nice. The food was good too. We had a salad with good dressing, but I wasn’t too very fond of the olives. Then the main course was chicken stuffed with tomato stuff, yellow rice, vegetables, and a stuffed tomato. Dessert was chocolate silk pie. YUM!
Then Mr. McTeer spoke and we learned a lot of stuff. He is an economic dove (good for Fed challenge), a loner, and he agrees with Freeman for the most part. Other stuff of note: there is a section of the Dallas Fed website devoted to McTeer’s weird fancies. It is really funny stuff like poems and vignettes. This is his “A Macroeconomic Haiku”:
The economy
Is recovering nicely
But without new jobs
Ahhh, Good fun. http://dallasfed.org/mcteer/rhyme/index.html
When we left we ended up having to pay $15.00 for parking in the parking garage which is NUTS-O, but okay because I took up two parking spots. You see I did a really bad hurried parking job and ended up parking almost STRAIGHT on the little line separating the spaces. My bad. We had some problems getting back to I-45 South though. We could SEE it but for some reason there were no streets that led to it, they went to I-45 north and I-10 and 59 and 288 but not to I-45 South. So finally after a considerable amount of time and some highly illegal turns and lane changes we discovered that Jefferson led to I-45 South… eventually. When we figured that out we still had to get to a point where we could turn on to Jefferson and we had some problems with stupid idiots who decide that they HAVE TO talk to the guy on the sidewalk. Yeah, some people are dipshits and there is nothing we can do about it.
When we got on I-45 it was really uneventful for the rest of the drive. Mrs. Franklin didn’t have any cookies left. That is sad.
THEN I went to a job interview at BJ’s and the lady who interviewed me told me that they usually try very hard to hire people who have at least 6 months of practice, so they may or may not give me the job… After the interview I was pretty proud of myself and she said she’d call me. GUESS WHAT! I got a job! I start next Saturday training as a Hostess.
And then it had to rain on my parade. My car DIED! It just went Ka-put. Mom told me to go pick up Wes from work, so I was going. I backed out of the driveway and when I go to put my car into drive from reverse and the engine stopped running. Colleen, Laura, and I all had to push the car to get it out of the middle of the street. Originally we tried to push it back into the driveway, but that didn’t work too very well because… well … the drive way is UP. Finally we just parallel parked it in the street so that some one else could deal with it. It really is tragic.
And that was my spectacular day, which ended up being less than spectacular.
I’m going to spend the weekend with Colleen and her family in west Texas, it should be fun I’ll tell you about it when I get back.
AW ####! Mommy got some stupid “Net Nanny” thing that will not let me go to my live journal and login. I’m not happy.