I'm It!

Well, what do you know? Wep tagged me! Seven random or weird facts about me (yikes!). I will probably go with random - you can decide if they're weird or not:

1. I lived with an Amish family for 2 weeks.

2. I worked in a haunted house as a witch.

3. My friends and I had a private meeting with Dr. Phil.

4. I like tacky retro-kitsch - things like dashboard hula dancers.

5. I worked (and got paid) to be a chatroom moderator (The Reflecting Pool, spirituality room) on TalkCity "back in the day."

6. I'm going bowling with my best friends from high school tomorrow (we graduated in 1977).

7. I got married on Grand Cayman Island in a church my great-great-grandfather founded.

You read the rules above...I am required by law and all that is holy in the land of blogs to tag seven others. Yes, that's right, it must be done. So it is written, so it shall be done:

Gary Rith Pottery Blog

Eat Your Veggies!

The Scholastic Scribe

A Shelter From The Storm

Life At Number 14

Decisionally Challenged

Ritch In Love

Now, if you don't choose to do this, I fully understand... or if I didn't list you and you WANT to get after it, feel free!

I may post again later. The colonel just arrived and there's always good material there.

Happy, happy Friday!

Strange Places

Have you ever been anywhere strange? or to a place where you had an immediate connection?

Those are two separate questions, I know, but something I read triggered that for me.

Strange? Um... yeah. A long, long time ago in a land not far away, I used to work in collections for a major auto finance corporation. This job required us to actually make field contacts to collect or repossess. Weird, huh? I find it difficult to imagine myself as a repo gal, but I was.

Anyway, I have been to some of the weirdest places you can imagine. People are so different. One home that I went to belonged to the nicest set of grandparents you could imagine. They were past due on their car payment and weren't responding by phone. I was sent to collect or repo.

When these people opened the door, their house looked like something Clean House would've just sent a bulldozer to handle. I have never, ever seen anything like it again. Trash and clutter was piled so high, there were only trails through the house. Every now and again, you could see a chair or a sofa. I guess they had to take a break from piling junk up every once in a while.

If you got a glimpse at a wall, it would have photos of the grandkids framed and hanging proudly.

Don't get me started on the smell. If you have ever repossessed a car, you know they have a distinct smell that no other vehicle has. I'll try and explain it... combine these odors in your mind, if you can: stale french fries, chicken bones, dirty diapers, old glue, wet dog, smoke, and a cherry air freshener.

This house had that smell. I guess they were up for foreclosure, too.

Now, I have been in Twilight Zone music strange places, too. Aside from vacation spots or just travels that had a pull, I have also, in the course of my former profession, been in the home of more than one real-life gypsy. Now, that, is a strange experience.

Immediate connection? Oh yeah...Seven Mile Beach on Grand Cayman Island. My grandfather and all his family are from here. I just can't express the feeling I get every time I am there. It's as if the sea calls from a connection I didn't know I had. The weird part is I can't stand to be in the sun, but I love it when I am there.

Go figure.

What about you?

I Work In A Movie

Sure, you think. How can that be? She just wants a catchy title for another post. No, no, no.... something is going on in the area in which I work. Today, I went to my office, got there on time, went on up to the 6th floor, entered the office and commenced working. Nothing unusual here - this is NORMAL.

At 11:00am I went to lunch with friend and upon returning. (Ok... I am going to stop here and set up the scene. My building is a six-story glass building. The front of the building faces a vacant lot and a post office directly across the street. The street has road bumps to keep people from driving too fast as there are schools further up the road. Okay, and behind the lot and post office is a large, well-maintained cemetery. Actually, it's the "happening" cemetery right now. You know how they wax and wane over the years, right? Alrighty...keep going further out past the cemetery, you have one of the most "happening" streets in Houston. Oh yeah, I am in the 4th largest city in America, so it's not like we just stepped into an episode of Northern Exposure)

Upon returning, I entered the building via the back entrance and walked to the elevators, which are right up front. Like I said, this is a glass building... immediately out the front doors, on the steps, is a woman, who looks incredibly like a man dancing. Not in a cute, Ellen Degeneres kind of way, just dancing. No iPod, nothing. Just dancing.

Okay, now on the edge of vacant lot across the street and facing the post office is a young man juggling three lime green juggling jugs - what do you call those bowling pin juggling things? He's really good!

Some sort of water line has broken and water is spewing out of the corner between the lot and post office (it was still flowing when I left at 5pm).

So, I looked to the right, and from up the street, comes a very large one-legged woman in a wheelchair scooting towards the post office. She was just going over a speed bump when I saw her. She wasn't wheeling the chair - she COULD - I saw her do it, but she was just pulling herself along with her whole leg.

What happened in that one hour?