Yes, that's right. I lost a pair of jeans to my jean eating car. How? I sat down in the driver's seat, in a little bit of a hurry since I was running late for work when I heard a rip near my butt. Embarrassed, I got out and used my purse to cover up the small hole just below the rear pocket (No where near anyplace really embarrassing, but still...) and went back into the house to change.

It reminded me of a time three months ago when a very similar incident when I sat down and my pant tore except in that incident, the pant leg pretty much disintegrated. I chalked that up to my pants being worn out and promptly forgot about it.

But today's incident was a bit odd. The tear originated in the same spot and I had a small red mark on my rear leg that could only come from something hard and sharp, the item that took out my jeans.

So, after getting ready for work a second time and in a different pair of jeans, I went to my car and examined the left side of the driver's seat and I noticed the seat belt buckle was jammed between the door and the seat with the handle sticking straight up. It didn't take long for me to see that this was how I lost my pants. I sat down on this, slid onto the seat and this protruding metal, which wasn't sharp to break skin, but enough to catch fabric, proceeding to rip my pants in two.

From now on, I'll try to keep Kimiko's teeth away from my clothing or any other part of me. She already costs me a fortune in oil and gasoline. I don't need to add my wardrobe to her diet.

Here's a company that need to be outlawed. There is already a controversy about payday loans and how they are bleeding the lower class of all their money, but companies like Drivetime and Cash Call are more sinister. They prey on people who have less than stellar credit in selling them cars (Drivetime / Carmax) or cash loans (Cash Call) and hide everything possible about the terms of the loan.

Drivetime gives you a contract that has payment coupons for the term of the loan, but as the loan is being paid back, you are not given any sort of documentation about how your payments are applied to the loan. Online, all they do is accept payments, but again, there is no way to see how much is remaining; your interest rate, any fees added, nothing. You are expected to make regular payments (Timed to be exactly a few days after your paydays to ensure they will be first in line) and not ever expected to attempt to pay ahead to save money. They work the system to make sure you pay them the maximum allowable under the contract by stretching out your payments as long as possible.

It's bad enough their cars are way overpriced, but to hit you with 17% interest on top of that, extended as long as possible to make as much money from you as they can, is robbery. It's a recipe for bankruptcy for many people.

Cash Call goes one step further. At least Drivetime allows people to make payments over the internet, so they get their money. Why Drivetime even takes credit cards as payment! Rob Peter to pay Paul I might say. Cash Call doesn't allow payment at all from their web site, over the phone, or even by mail. They only accept Moneygram (You pay $6.95 for the privilege of paying your bills. Huh?) and direct withdrawals from your checking account. They already charge obscene interest rates (over 100% on most loans) and they try to hide it by quietly sucking money from your account, behind your back, to ensure that they get their most money they can and under no circumstances will Cash Call allow you pay in a way that they have to pay anything for receiving the money. Only recently was Cash Call forced to provide payment records to customers, but upon reading someone's records, I was appalled at all the fees tacked on. The only thing that separates Cash Call from the loan sharks in Grand Theft Auto IV is that Cash Call doesn't hire thugs to break your kneecaps, or do they?

Recently, legislation was being introduced that will clamp down on credit card companies from adding assorted fees to their bills like $39 late fees, $39 over the limit charges and the practice of sending out a credit card with $129 in charges for membership fees before the customer even uses the card once for a purchase. Let's hope they pass this, and then go after predatory companies who go out of their way to fleece people who can ill afford the lost monies.

No wonder there is a gap between the haves and the have-nots. It's cheap to be a have, low interest, no fees, and plenty of ways to pay. It's expensive to be a have-not with high interest, massive fees and very few ways to pay, causing delays that pile on more interest and late charges.

Go capitalism!

I went to a portrait studio last week and had my picture taken. Looks good, no?

My son and his wife flew up to Seattle last Monday and are staying with me until Friday (Today) so they can see the city and we can go house hunting. Yesterday, we found this really nice house for rent and we filled out all the forms and put a deposit down. Hopefully, everything will go through and we'll be able to move in in May.

Every evening, we went on little tours around the area taking in the sights and it's been fun. They are flying back today and I'll miss them. Thankfully, they'll be back for good in about four weeks from now.

When they came, they brought a suitcase full of my clothes from Dallas, and my cat Alucard. Now both of my kitties are here with me. One thing I forgot about Alucard, is that he knows how to open doors. As I wander around the apartment, I'm finding all the bedroom and closet doors mysteriously open and my cat Alucard sittng down looking innocent.

At least Bob isn't by herself anymore when I'm at the office.

My poor kitty is so sick now. She's almost 20 years old and she's acting her age. Most of her time she lies under a window basking in the sunlight. At night, she lies next to me with her head resting on my arm. With the way she's waddling instead of walking, I'm sure she's got arthritis. I'm afraid to take her to the vet because I don't want to put her to sleep. :(

Bob spends almost every moment I'm home by my side or lying on top of me when I sleep. I feed her gourmet cat food (Meow Mix Market Select wet food is her favorite) and I try to make her as comfortable and as happy as possible.

It really saddens me that my time with her is coming to a close. I don't know if it's week, months or even a year I have left with her, but I do want to make my kitty's last days, happy ones.

YAY! My car, Kimiko, a '98 white Firebird convertable just arrived from Dallas. I had it shipped here to Washington State so I didn't need to make that 2,200 mile trek. I'm so happy!

I've finally settled down in my place and am searching for a permanent place to stay. Looking at real estate prices and the turmoil going on, I'm really not thrilled about buying any real estate here, or anywhere for that matter. I've already been to six different rental homes and with every one of them, my potential landlord slapped me with the "Rent to own" option and was utterly uninterested in a simple rental agreement.

As I mentioned in my journal last week, "Rent to own" is nothing but a thinly veiled sham, with terms so strict that the odds that it turns out in the renter's favor are only slightly better than winning the lottery. It's a way of raising the rent $433 a month, but forcing you to pay that premium in advance. Right now, all the talk is of people losing their homes to foreclosure, I think that next year, we'll be hearing about the crisis of people having to relocate every year due to housing scams. It's pretty scary.

In other news, I hope to post a Sailor Ranko novel chapter in the next few days, and the comic is right on schedule. I've got one more week before I start at Microsoft, and I'm getting excited about that.

My cat, Bob, is so finicky. I feed her good cat food and she looks at me as if I filled her bowl with sand. Bad kitty!

It's only been live for a week and a half and already word of mouth is spreading. So far, just 5 pages have been released, but the number of people visiting the site is climbing fast. :)

In other news, I'm now back on the west coast, living in a large apartment on Mercer Island, WA, until I can find a home that isn't held hostage by a rent to own scam. I'm liking it here. The clean air, the misty skies and the greeness of everything.

My cat, Bob, is here with me, and she's a cranky old woman. She eats, sleeps, eats, sleeps and meows whenever I'm around, then she sleeps some more.

My flight is booked, my car is "boxed up" for transport and my bags are packed. I'm flying out on Sunday to Redmond WA and will be living in a temporary apartment until I find suitable housing for me, my brain-dead lap cat Bob, my step-son and his wife and my two kids who will be joining me from Los Angeles. Oh, yes, everyone else's cats and dogs are coming too.

One trend I'm seeing which is a bit disturbing in the housing market is the way new home builders are trying to sell their properties. They are "renting" their homes at what could be considered teaser rate payments with an option to buy. But to get into this program, you have to cough up a non-refundable payment of $5,000 in addition to your standard security deposit and first month's rent. If for some reason, at the end of the lease, you can't buy, you can keep renting (At a higher rate) and they pocket your payment.

I don't know about this. Because if someone were to participate in such a plan, they're betting that mortgages will be available again and housing prices will go up. I don't see that happening for at least two years, so the odds that a buyer will not be able to obtain a loan to buy the house is pretty good, and why lock in a price when it's likely that the price will fall in the near future?

It appears this "Option-to-buy" rental plan is the market's way of "selling" homes they can't move at the prices they want since the housing market is currently in shambles. I'll have to put on my business suit and see if I can strike a good deal, since it is a buyer's market right now.

If anyone knows of a 3 bedroom home with a fenced in backyard suitable for large dogs in Redmond WA or the outlying areas that's available, let me know.

I've just released chapter #3 of Sailor Ranko: A Love Story. Please leave a review. I love to hear from my readers.

On another note, my webcomic Sailor Ranko has finally started. It's on a three time a week schedule and I'm very happy with the quality of Wraith and Aakashi's artwork. Working with them on getting the pages to spec is a blast and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as we have in creating it. :)

In personal news, I'll be reporting for work 3 weeks from tomorrow (Monday) at my new job at Microsoft, so in the meantime, I'm going to try to get some chapters done on my stories to make up for some lost time. Love Story will wrap up in the next chapter, then I'll focus on Thrice in a MIllennium.