Safety Fork, the

As I was picking through the pile of papers atop my printer, I discovered—and was therefore reminded that I have—a $200 gift certificate to any Luther dealership. Since I’m probably not going to buy another car before May 31^st, if you or a good friend or relative is buying a car from a Luther dealership before then, let me know and I’ll happily sign it over to you. No sense having it go to waste.

Since this is going on the wide world of web, a caveat: if I don’t know you, don’t bother asking me. Your best shot is befriending someone I know as swiftly as you can manage…

I used to read credit card offers, just in case I cared, but I get so many now that I just open suspected offers to make sure that’s really what they are and then throw them away.

One particular offer last week caught my attention because it was a little heavier than usual, so I examined it more thoroughly and discovered that the usual faux credit card was, instead of just a cheap piece of card stock, an actual refrigerator magnet. Score. I like refrigerator magnets, as long as they’re not the sort that fall whenever I close the freezer door.

As I stepped into my kitchen, I noticed that in the lower-right corner of the magnet it reads, “THIS IS NOT AN ACTUAL CHARGE CARD.” No, really?

Let’s assume for a moment that I think this is an actual charge card. Let’s assume that I just ripped it out of the envelope in my excitement to drive the value of the Dollar ever lower by amassing more consumer debt. Let’s assume I didn’t notice that there is nothing where the back of the card usually has a signature line and a magnetic stripe. Even in this edge case, I’m still going to be skeptical that Your Name Here would ever be issued a line of credit, don’t you think?

Those of you who have worked in retail, please—for the sake of my sanity—assure me that you have never seen anyone try to make a purchase with a refrigerator magnet. Because you haven’t, right?

Here are some things I learned on vacation:

• It seems weird that if I drive between seven hundred and nine hundred miles in a day I do not get sleepy, but I get sleepy sometimes driving for less than an hour.
• It’s fun to drive through the mountains. The road is constantly curving and rising and falling, going through tunnels and over bridges.
• Interstate 70 from the west of Colorado to Interstate 15 in Utah is seriously empty. Empty as in the traffic wouldn’t make for a busy two-lane highway.
• It’s nice to go somewhere warm in the Winter. I was able to spend a couple of afternoons reading outside in the sun, which I did on my balcony on warm Summer evenings (and will again).
• It is Not Cool to find that one’s car is not where it is supposed to be.
• Refrain from parking in unmarked fire lanes that you do not know are there. Your car will be towed anyway.
• Make sure your motor vehicle registration card is in your motor vehicle before taking your motor vehicle one thousand seven hundred miles away from the state in which it is registered.
• It’s less fun to drive through the mountains at night in a snow storm (not a real storm, but in the dark with concrete barriers on either side of the road and steep hills and sudden curves, even moderate snowfall seems heavy).
• A good vacation makes it feel nice to get home.

There’s just something about an enormous block of concrete (enough concrete to build a sidewalk around the world at the equator four feet wide, three inches thick, I’m told) that I can’t help but really, really like.

This morning while I was talking to Kris, Zero (pictured above) came tearing down the stairs with a plastic bag looped over his head. He banged into the wall in the opposite corner of the room, turned around, and dashed back upstairs. A few moments later Bethany called down to ask for Kris’s help because Zero had literally been “scared shitless.”

I took to calling him Poopycat, at least until he was given a bath. Then I felt bad, because there’s not much that’s quite so sad-looking as a wet cat.

Can you find the rest area in this picture? It’s almost at the top of a mountain between Denver and Glenwood Springs. Behind where I was standing to take this picture was a median piled with eight or so feet of snow; between that, the glare of the sunlight, and the building’s natural camouflage, I couldn’t find it until I’d driven twice in circles around the parking lot.

I stopped in Denver to visit my cousin Liz and family, including their new baby. It was a balmy eleven Celsius there, so while I was off of the freeway, I drove around with both windows and my sunroof open.

This is pretty much what I looked at today. I left Eden Prairie at a quarter to eight in the morning on the first leg of my eighteen-hundred mile drive to Las Vegas. Today’s drive of about seven hundred miles took me through Iowa and most of the way across Nebraska.

I was a little disappointed in Iowa, actually. The first thing I noted as I was entering the state was that the signs for the rest areas claimed that they had wireless internet. I finally stopped at one of them and indeed, my PowerBook discovered an open wireless connection. However, although I was on their network, I couldn’t convince their captive portal to let me onto the web. I couldn’t open even the portal in Safari. Seriously, Iowa, get your act together.

The second half of my drive through Nebraska I listened to A Prairie Home Companion. I was pleased to find that there was a good public radio station. Strangely enough, it was being broadcast from Morris, MN. They even had the UMM Men’s Choir sing “Children of the Heavenly Father.” I was surprised, though, when Garrison said show was in the gymnasium. So as I prepare for bed at the Super 8 Motel in Ogallala, Nebraska, I leave you with a question: UMM graduates, is there really no better place (an auditorium or concert hall, perhaps) than a gymnasium from which to broadcast a radio program?