1. I am currently out at a job interview and will reply to you if I fail to get the position. Be prepared for my mood.

2. You are receiving this automatic notification because I am out of the office. If I was in, chances are you wouldn't have received anything at all.

3. Sorry to have missed you, but I am at the doctor's having my brain and heart removed so I can be promoted to our management team.

4. I will be unable to delete all the unread, worthless emails you send me until I return from vacation. Please be patient and your mail will be deleted in the order it was received.

5. Thank you for your email. Your credit card has been charged $5.99 for the first 10 words and $1.99 for each additional word in your message.

6. The e-mail server is unable to verify your server connection and is unable to deliver this message. Please restart your computer and try sending again. (The beauty of this is that when you return, you can see how many in-duh-viduals did this over and over.)

7. Thank you for your message, which has been added to a queuing system. You are currently in 352nd place, and can expect to receive a reply in approximately 19 weeks.

8. Hi, I'm thinking about what you've just sent me. Please wait by your PC for my response.

9. I've run away to join a different circus.

10. I will be out of the office for the next 2 weeks for medical reasons. When I return, please refer to me as 'Loretta' instead of 'Bob'

Sorry I haven't blogged in a while.  Crazy busy.

My neice Samantha had a surprise 16th birthday party at my mom's house Friday night.  It was boring for us adults, of course, but Sam had a good time.  I watched a couple periods of the hockey game.

Saturday, we went and look at a few rental houses for my in-laws who are moving down here next week.  We found them a nice place off Tryon Road near the RGA golf course.  Bob will certainly like that!  The other places we looked at weren't very nice.  One of them was really crappy, looked like it had been empty for a while, and the landlord charges a $25 appointment fee to view it.  That's no way to rent out an empty house!  Needless to say, after seeing the ouside, we had no interested in forking over $25 to see the inside.

I lazed around the rest of the afternoon watching the Florida-Kentucky game before heading over to my mom's house to watch the Michigan-Illinois game with her.  I hate night games.. by the time the game was over (Michigan won, their 6th in a row!), it was after 11:30 and I was beat.

Sunday was pretty uneventful too.  I took Emily to the driving range for the first time.  We bought her some clubs about a year ago at a garage sale for $5.  She enjoyed going, I think - though she definately doesn't have a natural gift for golf!  Neither do I.

So, last weekend our old Maytag washing machine died.  The timer stopped working, and last time we had it repaired, we were told that if the timer ever stopped working, we might as well buy a new washer.

I assume this means that the timer is an expensive part, and there's not much point in paying $200 or so to repair a washing machine when you can buy a new one for $400.  Of course, since this is my first ever purchase of a washing machine, and I know that washing machines last forever - hopefully - I wanted to get something nice, and that meant a front-loader.  Which also meant that it wasn't going to cost $400.

So I borrowed a Consumer Reports from my mom, and headed over to Home Depot.  Naturally, they didn't have most of the specific models that Consumer Reports reviewed - go figure.  But I came across a Maytag Epic MFW9600SQ that looked interesting at $799, and Home Depot was having sale for 10% off all appliances, and a Maytag offered a $100 mail in rebate on the purchase of a washer/dryer pair.  Seems like a good deal, and all of the Epic series washers from Maytag were rated pretty well, including the newer model Epic MFW9700SQ which was the third or fourth highest rated washer they reviewed.

So I headed home to do a little research on the 9600 model.  Seems it's just an older model of the 9700, and got fairly good reviews on various web sites.  Sears only carried the 9700, and Best Buy had the 9600 on sale - for $949!!!

Since the same washer at Home Depot was basically $670 ($799 - 10% - $50 rebate), I ran back to Home Depot to pick it up.

They're going to deliver and install it on Thursday, so I'll let you know how it goes (Yes, I did buy the matching dryer to go with it)

Saturday morning, I headed out to mom's house to pick up Emily and take her to bowling.  After bowling, mom and Samantha (my niece) went up to Hasentree in Wake Forest to look at multi-million dollar homes on the Wake County Parade of Homes.  We looked at 5 houses ranging from around $2 million to $4.5 million - but the nicest one was this one, at $3.9 million, built by Don Collins Builder Inc.  Having gone into the $4.4 and $4.5 million homes, I'm stunned that this one was less expensive, because it had so much more character, so many more "special features" over the other two, it was just amazing.  The pool was the coolest I'd ever seen, with a small pool up on the main level, with a hot tub, and water flowing down through a man made rock garden with numerous smaller pools on different levels, flowing down to the main pool on the ground floor (the walkout basement).  There was also a water fall going from near the small pool up above to the main pool below.  It was amazing.

The family room directly off the kitchen had beautiful vaulted ceilings with giant wooden beams, and the master bathroom had vaulted wooden ceilings.  The basement - always my favorite part of any house - was extravagant and cozy at the same time.  This builder definately knew my tastes.

Now, if only I could come up with $4 million so I can buy this house. :)

Seriously, if you're not watching The Office on NBC, you should be.

For the uninitiated, it's filmed sort of like a reality TV show taking place in an office, the Scranton branch office of the Dunder Mifflin paper company (and to the Office fans out there, I apologize for spelling that wrong, which I assume I did).

You can find lots of clips on YouTube if you're interested in a quick look see ... here's one titled "What The Office Did This Summer"

Check out the new poll results showing John Edwards leading republican opponents in a head-to-head matchup by an average of 9% - greater than Hillary Clinton's 6% lead and Barack Obama's 5% lead.

While Hillary does beat all republican opponents, she barely beats McCain (46-45%) while Edwards beats McCain 45-41%).  Edwards shows a 9% lead over Giuliani, a 13% lead over Huckabee, an 11% lead over Romney, and a 10% lead over Thompson.  Compare that to Hillary's leads of 5%, 8%, 9%, and 8% against those same opponents.

I wonder, will people learn that Edwards is simply the best candidate?  Hopefully they'll figure out early, because Edwards has to win the early primaries if he wants to make it through the primary season.  Because he's elected to accept public financing, he'll be limited on spending to $50 million until the democratic national convention in early September.  The federal government will match all contributions up to $250.

Maybe you could help out as I have ...