Wow…I didn’t even realize it had been quite that long since i’ve had an actual post. Last I left off it was what, April? Doesn’t quite seem like that long, while at the same time we are galloping into August so perhaps i’m just trying to slow the year down.

There’s been much to blog about, however just as with many other blogs (and as i’ve stated before) the time really hasn’t been there for me to really sit down and write like I wanted to. I’ve missed blogging, i’ve missed getting on here and throwing down my thoughts, ideas, concepts, opinions, and verses of my life for people to read. But alas, i’ve fell victim to the 140 character God social network called Twitter. I fell victim to the vacuum that is my job, and the drain that puts on you after you’ve clocked those 10hrs….the 1hr+ drive home.

Tack in time to throw something in the microwave cook dinner and it’s pushin’ a solid 2000hrs. No way i’m doing anything else that night after being up since 5am. No sir.

Anyway, here’s the break down of the past three months.

The Bad

My car has cost me a solid $2000 in repairs, and maintenance (everything from brakes, to tires with holes in the inner tread wall). I know I should probably get rid of it, but she was the first car I ever purchased and besides most of the cost incurred was maintenance and not things that “went wrong” or “broke down”. And considering that if I didn’t know the people I do, or the cost to fix it wasn’t so low, I would be seeing that number to double. Although, getting some of the things fixed in the car has cost me nearly three precious days of sick unscheduled leave……shame…. I only have oh, 120+hrs left of. Whatever shall I do.

My family came to visit me for the first time…..ever (really) in my new place. And suffice to say they loved it, especially my mom. So much in fact that they stayed an extra few days past the weekend, and so I come home like usual expecting dinner because they are there and all, right? No, reality check, I come home to my A/C on full blast set to 72, EVERY SINGLE LIGHT in the house on, and my sister proudly informed me that she’d been running my washer and dryer ALL day long.

The company I work for made it’s final transition into the company that purchased us last year, so that I am now officially one out of ten’s of thousands  (a number basically) of employee’s for one of one of the largest defense contractors in the world. Note: Don’t get me wrong, i’m not complaining about having employment, what i’m not happy with is the abolishment of divisions, and the “letting go” of scores of people just because those above them haven’t produced and needed to save their own tails or, so they could “cut costs” when they could’ve fired one or two VP’s and saved the same as they did by cutting 5-10 people.

I spent my hard earned $10.50 seeing Terminator Salvation. Not a bad movie once you suspend all sense of reality and logic, and when I say all I mean all!

IHOP @ 2am. Worst decision ever. Here’s the short version — I get out of a seeing a movie pretty late with [a loved one] not far from my house, and we are hungry. Not having the desire to cook, and finding out that the local Silver Diner is closed (WTF), we mosey on over to IHOP. It starts as soon as we walk in. I open the door of course and allow my date to go in before me, somehow I lagged a little behind and she had already begun to talk to the host who was very enthused to see an attractive woman walk in by herself, and eagerly asked with the million $ grin “table for one?”….I pop up, his expression dropped & he said “oh…. table for two.” Everything from that moment went down hill.

1. Our waitress was high as a kite & was outright disappointed to see us finish the meal “oh you guys ate it all?” Had you planned to eat what was left or something?
2. The brotha’s in the booth next to us trying to act all hard were about to jump eachother’s bones, it was pretty sad A little discretion or self control in the future fella’s, not everyone wants to see that or pick up on those vibes
3. We spotted at LEAST two confirmed hookers in the spot, mostly because of their attire and the wigs
4. A group of misfits all rolled in half way into our meal looking like they were going to knock over the joint after they finished raising the decible level up about 20pts and eating the entire menu
5. My date was being visual molested by the convicted fellow fresh out of the pen guy sitting across/behind me, suffice to say that stopped once confirmation was made that it wouldn’t be tolerated by yours truly.
6. Lastly, the gay Hispanic cowboys/strippers/village people hanging out in the parking lot as we were leaving Next time i’m just going to mow someone down acting like they can’t see me pulling out of a space, full throttle out the parking lot

The Good

I moved out of my old place & into a townhouse about 20min south of where I was living before. Why? Because it’s bigger, has a garage, feels more like home then living in a condo on the 15th of a 18 story building. The move itself was rough because I didn’t have a lot of help waited till the last minute to pack, and was unsure of where exactly I wanted to move to. I’m enjoying the new spot though, even though i’m nearly too busy to take a second and soak it in.

Successfully co-hosted and organized the single largest Maxus event since it’s inception some 11yrs ago. It was a lot of work, and a lot of time spent on trying to get this thing off the ground, and then trying to keep it from plummeting back down to earth.  It was so successful that I’m helping to host/organize next years event in NYC.

I bought a couch. For the first time, ever. Which is a little sad when you think about the fact that i’ve been on my own for several years and it’s one of the last things i’m buying for my residence.

I’ve 150% perfected my rib recipe! Last year i developed my own unique sauce/method of cooking ribs, tried it out on a few people and scored some giant hits and great feedback. So I kept working on it, and now i’ve got it exactly where I want it. The sauce is brown sugar based, not to be used as a dipping sauce, while the ribs are preps over the course of three days….and that’s all i’m going to say about it until I can get a patent for this or something. Yes, it’s that serious.

I have the awesomeness that is called FIOS. That is all.

I went to more weddings in the past three months then what i’ve been to in two years. Some were really cool where there were rainbows arching over mountain tops, and others were the very essence of ghetto and tacky in which basics like water and napkins weren’t available but coolaid, was.

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Ah! Crazyness, right? Most of this is pretty condensed but I think you get the jist of what i’ve outlined.

Now i feel as though you all are pretty much caught up on everything, I enjoyed this so much that I really am truly going to stay on top of blogging and post more then on a near quarterly basis

B.Price

31.6MPG by 2015…..

Let’s marinate on that for a second if you will.

Are we good?

Ok then, as some of you that already know me might already be aware of the fact that i’m a bit of a car enthusiast….a “bit” meaning that a gorgeous streamlined automobile can turn my head faster then a gorgeous half dressed woman can. It’s just how i’m wired, and who I am.

So first off….lets get down to what CAFE is.

C.A.F.E stands for Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE), it is a law setting minimum average fuel-consumption levels for cars and trucks sold in America. The law has been in effect since 1975, two years after the first U.S. fuel crisis. Since 1985, the law has required that an automaker’s line of cars average 27.5 mpg. The current truck standard of 22.2 mpg was raised 1.5 mpg over the past three years…….Where the problem now lies is in the congressional approval of a bill to raise the CAFE standards to 31.6mpg by 2015.

This is ridiculous and absurd. Newer cars a burning less gas, cleaner, and emitting less pollution then they’ve been in the past 30 years. Cars can up 5-7,000 miles without oil changes, bio-degradable tires, synthetic oils, engines that are lasting 150,000+ miles without any major emission related issues, state and local annual emissions tests/standards and hybrids…..hybrids are everywhere. Not only that, but our government now is going to make what is already an extremely volatile market (all because the government wont take the same stand against the oil cartels like they will for “the environment”) for automakers even more difficult now that they have to scramble to cut models, scrap engines, destroy or cease making legendary brands that we’ve come to love and appreciate.

In addition our government is abolishing the stigmas of what makes us the American automotive consumer….that stigma being the SUV (as well as the pick up truck). No where on God’s green earth are these automobiles more popular then what they are in this great nation of ours. We already are in a recession and the price of gas is now at an all time high, so now somehow congress thinks that forcing the automobile companies to change their entire lineup to make cars burn less gas and ultimately abolish what drives the automotive economic engine in this county will help improve the environment…..Here’s some cold hard facts

• According to Automotive News the big three automakers in Detroit who combined make up more then 2/3’s of SUV’s on the road will pay about $30.6 billion — including $15 billion by General Motors alone — to bring their fleets inline with the new regulations. This on top of the combined 25.4% sales drop from their respective brand last month compared to the numbers from last year. (HUMMER alone dropped 61.7%)

• Honda passed Chrysler in U.S. sales for the first time…..EVER. What’s more, the Honda Civic beat out the Ford F Series pickup to become the nation’s best selling vehicle for the first time on record as well. The Toyota Camry also topped F Series sales in the month. Just to so there’s a clear understanding of how significant these numbers are….the best selling minivan in the history of automobiles in the Dodge Caravan with an astonishing 11 million cars sold The best single-month sales of any car ever goes the Ford F series back in July 2005 of 126,000 units.

High gas prices are not new. They have been creeping steadily higher for a decade. So I don’t want to lose focus and concentrate on that topic, gas isn’t what this post is about. This post is about the government crippling the automotive industry in order to “save the environment”, which is garbage. You know why? Because overseas governments aren’t in the least bit imposing the same crap that congress has and they output an enormous amount of pollution (not to mention gas prices are on average….AVERAGE 25% higher then what they are in the US).

You want to do something? Light a fire under some of these other nations to get in the ball with their pollution issues, do some actual good for a change. Put those billions (of people CHINA) to good use.

Some places that deserve an honorable mention:

1. The People’s Republic of China (Linfen) A superpower that has 16/20 of the most polluted cities on the planet
2. India (Ranipet)
3. Russia (Dzerzinsk, Norilsk, & Rudnaya Pristan)
4. Peru (La Oroya)

Oh and for the record, alternative fuels (at least the ones that are currently out there) aren’t the answer either. The main problem here is that producing alternate fuels and hybrid cars often requires CO2 emissions that offset or cancel the benefits of improve vehicular design. Take ethonal for instance – ethanol is made from corn, more than 75% of its energy value is spent on its production. Filling up one large vehicle fuel tank one time with 100% ethanol uses enough corn to feed one person for a year. So yeah, ethonal = not so good idea.

Electric cars? Ok, If an electric car is recharged with electricity produced by a fossil fuel burning generator, there will be little to no net benefit to the atmosphere. A real solution would reduce air pollution beginning at source materials and would continue through the use cycle of the vehicle.

My solution is biodesiel. Why you might ask? Because a biofuel should provide a net energy gain, have environmental benefits, be economically competitive, and be producible in large quantities without reducing food supplies.Biodisels do just that. Ethanol yields 25% more energy than the energy invested in its production, whereas biodiesel yields 93% more. Compared with ethanol, biodiesel releases just 1.0%, 8.3%, and 13% of the agricultural nitrogen, phosphorus, and pesticide pollutants, respectively, per net energy gain. Your precious greenhouse gas emissions are reduced 12% by the production and combustion of ethanol and 41% by biodiesel. Biodiesel also releases less air pollutants per net energy gain than ethanol. These advantages of biodiesel over ethanol come from lower agricultural inputs and more efficient conversion of feedstocks to fuel.

No solution is better than reduced vehicle use. Congress, get more money into public transportation!!!

So to me it’s a no brainer on what we should be focusing on as a country and as members of planet earth. Sorry for the long post, but I just had to get this stuff off of my chest.

-B.Price