This song by Alanis Morissette has been in my head this week.

An old man turned ninety-eight
He won the lottery and died the next day
It’s a black fly in your Chardonnay
It’s a death row pardon two minutes too late
And isn’t it ironic… don’t you think

It’s like rain on your wedding day
It’s a free ride when you’ve already paid
It’s the good advice that you just didn’t take
Who would’ve thought… it figures

Mr. Play It Safe was afraid to fly
He packed his suitcase and kissed his kids goodbye
He waited his whole  life to take that flight
And as the plane crashed down he thought
“Well isn’t this nice…”
And isn’t it ironic… don’t you think

It’s like rain on your wedding day
It’s a free ride when you’ve already paid
It’s the good advice that you just didn’t take
Who would’ve thought… it figures

Well life has a funny way of sneaking up on you
When you think everything’s okay and everything’s going right
And life has a funny way of helping you out when
You think everything’s gone wrong and everything blows up
In your face

A traffic jam when you’re already late
A no-smoking sign on your cigarette break
It’s like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife
It’s meeting the man of my dreams
And then meeting his beautiful wife
And isn’t it ironic…don’t you think
A little too ironic…and, yeah, I really do think…

It’s like rain on your wedding day
It’s a free ride when you’ve already paid
It’s the good advice that you just didn’t take
Who would’ve thought… it figures

Life has a funny way of sneaking up on you
Life has a funny, funny way of helping you out
Helping you out

Once a friend and I went to eat at a restaurant. We had a coupon for a free dinner when you buy a dinner. We ordered … turned in our coupon. Then proceeded to wait about 45 minutes for our food. The manager felt so bad that he gave us a free meal. However, we didn’t get our coupon back and so basically we got what we had already received. Ironic!

Over Thanksgiving my niece, who is 6, was showing my nephew, who is 4, how to open a child safety bottle. We walked in when she was saying, “No, you have to push it down and then turn.” Very ironic!

Yesterday in class I had a student that had quite a body odor problem going on. I seemed to be the only person to notice. At one point he was working with a partner and he (the body odor boy) kept saying to his partner, “Man, you got bad breath.” Unpleasantly ironic!

Today as I was driving in to work I started to slide just a little. I noticed a light that came up on the dash … it was a little car with squiggle marks in front of it. Was it trying to tell me, “Hey lady, you’re sliding!” ? As if I hadn’t noticed … Moronicly Ironic.

So what’s ironic in your life?

This was a good Thanksgiving. But it was not without its awkward moments.

I’ve told several of you already about my Grandpa and the wonderful memories he revealed around the dinner table Thanksgiving Day. Can you say awkward?!

My youngest niece is in that stage where she asks about 9,000 questions a minute. Remember that scene in Uncle Buck? That’s what it feels like. So she’s asking how old I am and realizes that I’m a little older than her mother. In my niece’s mind if her mother is married and has children, then surely I should at least be married since I’m older. I think she’s too young to remember that I was married at one time.

 So she asks, “Aunt Paige are you married?”

I say, “No”.

She says, “Why not? You’re old enough.”

I say, “Yes, but I’m not married.”

She says, “Are you going to get married?”

I said, “I don’t think so”.

Which of course made her ask “Why not?” 

 Which is when her mother kindly called her into the kitchen to get her out of my face. It’s not so much her questions that are awkward. The look on everyone else’s face is what makes it awkward. We sure don’t want to mention the “D” word in front of the children.

What about you? Any awkward or especially memorable holiday happenings?

The straw on the left is from my Diet Coke … the straw on the right is from my very thick espresso shake …

I had one of the wonderful “5 hour window” appointments today with the people to try to fix my TV stuff. My window was from 12-5. I came straight home from Bible study and proceeded to wait until 4:30. Around then they called and said it was going to be after 5 … did I want to wait or re-schedule? After waiting all afternoon of course I was going to continue to wait … no way I’m rescheduling.

They showed up about 5:45 and stayed for almost an hour … and … are you ready for this … I still don’t have TV service. From what I understand the receiver I have is no longer used. They still have some, but the company I’m with no longer uses them and so I will have to upgrade … or change everything. So now I have to make a decision about what to change … to bundle or not to bundle … to just forget it. I’m leaning towards forgetting it. I’ve about decided I could save money by just subscribing to NETFLIX and  watching all my shows by season instead of one episode a week. I’m not sure what I’ll go with, but I feel a reimbursement of some sort is in order here. Should I pay for TV service that I haven’t been able to watch for two weeks … I think not.

So I guess it’s not the technology gods on this one … just the stupid people that feel we have to change everything and make it newer every two months. Most of my stuff is outdated before I figure out how to use it. I’m getting old. The fact that I’m even considering going without tv proves this … eek.

One benefit from all of this … I’m finally listening to all the songs on my ipod!!!

I ask because if they exist … they must hate me. Over the last few months I seem to have had several problems with electrical items and various technologies.

First, my oven started beeping because it needed a sensor or something replaced. This was month’s ago and I’m still waiting to find out about the part. The only way to keep it from beeping is to turn off the breaker … which I’ve done this whole time.

Then, my Dish receiver hard drive crashed causing me to lose over 294 hours of wonderful shows I had recorded and planned to watch sometime soon. They sent me a new one and it worked for about two weeks and then crashed. Only this time it’s not the hard drive … it’s the whole unit … so I can only watch things on the DVD player right now.

I had bought a new computer desk for the desktop computer I had upstairs. Just a short time after I bought the desk, that computer crashed for good.

A few weeks ago, my personal laptop crashed and I had to buy a new one. While I was waiting for the new one I just used my school issued laptop. That is, until last weekend when it got infected with a horrible virus that rendered it unusable.

I’m also in charge of doing the podcasts for The Open. Due to all of these technology failures the programs I use to do these have been lost and so there’s lots of frustration involved in that right now.

My cell phone is due for an upgrade November 20th. If I make it that long I will be surprised … it is hanging on by one little screw.

My tires on my car … which is only 9 months old … have started going flat … at random. Luckily there’s a sensor that tells me when this happens so that I can fill them up. It has happened 4 times in the last month. One tire had to be fixed, but the others have stayed aired up once I fill them.

When I finally got my new laptop the man who ordered it for me said, “Be careful when you sync your iPod the first time because I’ve had people completely erase them. WHAT?! How do you “be careful”? Do you plug it in very slowly? Maybe tip-toe towards the computer? I had no idea, but expected to erase it, the way my month is going. So far … it didn’t erase and it’s working fine.

Maybe things are turning around for the better …

Please technology Gods … if you do exist … leave me alone for a while … : (

Okay, I’m updating this on 11-2. They are definitely out to get me. I just received my new Dish receiver. This will be the second one in about 3 weeks. It didn’t start up like it normally does when you plug it in. So I went ahead and called tech support because I didn’t want to touch anything. The first thing the guy says is, “Press the Home button on the box.” You won’t believe this … when I pushed it … it stayed stuck in there. I coudn’t believe it. Then he said, “Try restarting it.” Yep … you guessed it … my luck continues … that button got stuck as well. Sheesh … someone help me … how do you remove a technology curse? At this point I’ll eat cat paw soup, or drink spider leg tea if it will just cure me of this technology curse.

Another Story of the Day:

“Can I count on you to be there, no matter what?” she said. 

 I said, “No.”  

She said, “What kind of friend are you?”

 I said,  ”The kind who won’t lie to you any time you want.”

I think she kept me around as a curiosity after that.

This made me laugh. Honesty really does make you a “curiosity”. I remember one time I went to Home Depot and bought some work gloves. I thought I was buying a pack of about 20 pair. Turns out it was a bag of gloves that needed to be hung up on the shelf. So they were priced individually. When the woman scanned it the price came up to $4.98. This was for a whole bag of work gloves. When I got home I realized that she had made a mistake. When I took them back they looked at me like I was a circus freak.

How ’bout you? Ever gotten that “you must be crazy” look for being honest?

“If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else’s – - – we’d grab ours back.”

Today I went through a car wash. As I was sitting in the middle of the wash I see the brake lights of the car two feet in front of me come on and off. I had a momentary thought to hit my brakes as well, but luckily I resisted. Instead I sat there waiting to hear the twisting metal of my car hitting theirs. It never happened and we both came out of the wash fine.

But it made me smile. I had this thought … how many times do I struggle with “trusting” and say I just don’t know how to trust? Hello?! EverydayI trust things. Igo through a car wash … trusting it will wash my car and not kill me in the process. I drive down the street … trusting that the car coming toward me will stay on their side of the yellow line. I walk into a building … trusting that it won’t collapse upon me at any moment.  I don’t worry that the building will collapse, I don’t worry that the car will kareen across the 2 inch paint line in the middle of the road and hit me. Why not?

Because I’ve done these things safely over and over again. I’ve seen others do the same things over and over again … safely.

So why can’t I do the same with God? Why can’t I trust the examples around me … the examples from the Bible … the promises from the all powerful supreme God that created it all? I’ll trust the man-made car wash that’s named after a duck sound … but God … nah, I’ll have to think about that one.

Think about this for a bit … what are some things in your everyday life that you trust?

Today I saw a boy wearing a pair of jeans that had tiger eyes on each back pocket. The rest of the tiger’s head went down his legs so that if you were looking at him from behind … it looked like a tiger was looking back at you. What is that about?!

I guess I no longer have to look out the window to experience the freakiness … it’s now right there in the room with me. EEK!

Every morning after the first bell the announcements come on at school. We do the American Flag pledge, Texas pledge (which no one can say correctly … ever) and then we have a moment of silence. Last week I noticed that once in a while instead of starting, “I pledge allegiance …” I would start to say, “Lubbock Teachers Federal Credit Union.” Very strange. Well today I did it again and realized that it’s only when I’m standing behind my desk. If I’m not behind the desk I can say the pledge fine. What’s that about?