This and That

I saw a couple of things today that I thought were truly absurd.

1. ESPN was airing the Championship Team Paintball Competition - that's so wrong on so many different levels, I scarcely know where to start. But I'll try, anyway: A major sports network is broadcasting Paintball as a Team event worthy of commercial endorsements. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, over?
2. A Nissan Sentra, their next to smallest model car, was driving in front of me. The driver's side mirror had one of those wide view morrors attached on top of it. Why?

And speaking of cars...

I had lunch today with a couple of friends. Dian and Claudia are delightful companions. We always have a great time together. Wonderful stories, lots of laughter, and we pick good places to eat. Well, a couple of lunches ago, Dian was talking about buying a Cadillac. Frankly, I'd forgotten to ask her about it last week. I got distracted by the two US Public Health Service Officers sitting at the next table and the conversation we got into with them. But I remembered to ask her about the Caddy today. She had bought it. I asked her what color it was and she told me it was champagne. She said she really liked the car, except for the gold trim. I joshed her, and said she could always start a side business as a "pimp".

If you knew Dian, you'd know how silly I was bein'. She is one of the most ladylike, polite, sweet, genuinely nice women I know. She once came to pick me up in the pouring rain, when my Jeep broke down in the middle of one of the busiest intersections in town. And she brought not one, but two, mechanics from the shop she and her brother run with her! What a GREAT Friend. I almost, but not quite, feel guilty for what I'm about to write.

She's got the strangest dang car I've ever seen!!! I think the paint designers at Cadillac are drunk when they mix the colors. Or at least when they name them. Claudia's Cadillac and Dian's are parked next to one another. Now Cadillac calls Claudia's car "pearl". No, it's the color of champagne. Dian's car at 25 yards is either a light grey, or a very dark lavender, maybe even orchid. At 15 yards it begins to look more orchid, or maybe even mauve, unless you move to the other side, and the light hits it at a different angle, then it looks taupe. {Don't you wish your parents had loved you enough to buy you the 64 color box of crayons?} When you get right up on it, it keeps changing color from dark lavender to mauve, UNLESS the sun goes behind a cloud, then it's taupe again.

Now both of these Cadillacs have what Dian called {I think} an "Opera" roof. And a row of snaps all around the base. On Claudia's car they are chrome, But on Dian's car they're gold. All the trim on Dian's car is gold. It's sooo Pimpilicious I doubled over in the parking lot laughing! This row of snaps, BTW, is supposed to make people think the car has a convertible top.

Now, if you've read this blog for a while, you know I drive a convertible. If you are a new reader, go back to September and find the blog where I'm blathering about my Dream car. So I know that a real convertible doesn't have snaps. This convertible ain't my first rag-top. Flo's Miata doesn't have snaps. In fact the only "convertible" with snaps, I've seen made in the last 23 years was my '84 CJ-7. And it had snaps to hold the soft top onto the body. You either had the top and doors on, or you could take the doors off, or you could take the top and doors off. But all the convertibles I've seen, the top is on a mechanical fram that lowers the top down into a "well". Therefore, no snaps are necessary on the body of the car.

SO these snaps on the Cadillac are just another affectation. A gold-colored, pimpilicious affectation. If you know Dian, and you see her driving down the street, give her a wolf whistle. She still blushes.