So, I'm not really sure where May went. May was so packed full of things, it felt like I didn't really have a real month at all, just a long series of events.

Let's see, there was my mom's birthday. Happy birthday Mom! Then, Mother's Day. Then Brad went to Canada and rented an apartment (he's moving soon!). Then, I got sick right before vacation in San Antonio. Flew to San Antonio (flights complete with tornadoes in Denver!). Then, my uncle got married. Congratulations Uncle Rod & Diana!

Everything was fun, but I'm ready for some rest and relaxation where I don't have to do anything or go anywhere. In the course of the month, I had the opportunity to experience Redbox and What-a-Burger, finish the Chronicles of Narnia (finally), and see just how big things in Texas are (including Sea World).

I plan to post about such things soon. However, it's been so long since I posted anything (given the crazy month that was May, I figured I'd just update a few things first).

I have discovered the glory of Redbox. They are in pretty much every HyVee in Omaha, which is fairly convenient in my opinion. The rentals are only $1.07 ($1 + tax) per night. So, if you have a grocery store on the way home, or fairly close to your home it's pretty easy to grab a movie or two, take them home, watch them and return them the next night. You have to return the movies by 9pm the next night or you're charged for another night. However, I rented 3 movies when I was sick and returned them after 9pm but only paid $6.42 for all three movies. Still a pretty good deal. Less than Blockbuster.

The way it works is you can either reserve your movies online by creating a login and picking out what you want to rent or you can pick out your movies in the store at the kiosk. The good thing about creating a login online is that it will e-mail you when you've made your reservation, when you've picked up your movie, when you've returned your movie and when they've charged your credit card so you have a paper trail for the whole process. All you have to do is walk up to the kiosk, swipe your card and it dispenses your movie(s).

They kiosks look something like this:

The disks dispensed look like this:

When you return them, you just hit the return button and stick the disc in the side of the kiosk and you're good to go.

So far I've rented 27 Dresses, P.S. I Love You, Atonement, and Waitress (yes, all girly movies because John wouldn't want to watch them with me so I watched them while I was sick). I liked 27 Dresses the best out of all of them and honestly that's the one I expected to like the least. I thought the other three were too depressing.

Tonight, or rather last night as it's obviously this morning, Jim hosted a party for my friend Brad who is leaving for Canada next week. We arrived rather late and left later than anticipated. We had almost made it back to my apartment in Omaha. We were almost to Exit 402 (by Cabella's). The next exit was the "L" Street exit. I was in the far left hand lane.

All of a sudden, I see something move in the middle of the road by the concrete barrier separating eastbound and westbound traffic. Then I hear John yell "Deer!" "Deer!!" In a split second I thought "What is that? That can't possibly be a deer. What the hell is a deer doing in the middle of the interstate?! Oh, shit!" I tried to dodge the deer by braking and steering to the left. The point of impact was my left headlight. I think I knocked the deer around and I'm guessing it died on impact.

I pulled over to the side of the road, directly in front of the Exit 402 sign and I looked at John and said "What is that smell?!" John handed me his phone and I called the police. Then, he got out of the car to look at the damage. He came back and said it didn't look too bad, mostly cosmetic. I got out of the car to look and I couldn't really say anything. As I was getting back in the car, I noticed something on my mirror. It looked like dirt or tar under the light on the interstate.

I had the car towed because the seat belts had locked up and there was no way we could breathe and have them on. Plus, the front bumper was rubbing against the front tire. The tow guy was nice enough to drop us off at my apartment complex and then we followed him to the dealership. As he was unloading the car, he noticed me looking at the mess on my car and he looked at me and said "Yup, that's deer poop."

So, not only did I hit the deer and kill it, I actually did scare the shit out of it. All the way down the driver's side of my car.

Without further ado, here are the photos:

The white thing you can see is the container for my windshield wiper fluid. Directly behind that was my battery from what I could see.

The beginning of the poo:

And, most of the poo...yeah, that's gross:

I swear I have some of the worst luck with cars. My poor baby...

John bought a wet/dry vacuum recently. His air conditioner had started to leak and he wanted a quick and easy way to clean it up if needed. We actually tried to get a vacuum twice before he finally bought what he was looking for. We went out to Home Depot on our first try. As we were parking in their parking lot, the weather sirens started going off. We walked into the store to be greeted by an announcement over the loud speaker saying that everyone was supposed to report to the break room. So, our options were to cower in the break room (above ground) with everyone else or we could leave. We left. The break room wasn't going to be any safer than the rest of the building. On our second try, we stopped at Wal-Mart, but their selection was lacking some. We went back the next day to Home Depot and bought what he had attempted to buy the first time.

Anyway, after he opened the box and started using it, John came to the conclusion that it reminded him a little of a baby elephant he could drag around by the trunk. He brought it over this weekend and used my garage to clean out his car (given that mine is at the body shop...poor car). While he was over, I made some eyes, which we stuck on the vacuum. I think it does look surprisingly like an elephant. Perhaps we need to move the "tusks" to the front though.

We decided to name it Walt. It sounded like a good name for an elephant-vacuum. So, here is Walt, John's baby-elephant-vacuum:

Now we can be like Michael (in the show Lost) and run around frantically yelling Waaalt! Waaalt!

In case you didn't know, Mutual of Omaha sponsors the U.S.A. Swim Team. How could you miss the billboards, city buses, news reports, and commercials about it? Oh, and of course, Mutual itself. Yes, that's right, the Mutual of Omaha building has a swimmer on the front of it. This photo was taken by a guy in the Mutual media department. I was too lazy to find someplace to park with all the construction so I could get a good photo.

Mutual hosted an invitational swim meet over the weekend. As an employee, I received two free tickets. John and I went on Saturday night. They built an Olympic regulation swimming pool inside the quest center. Pretty impressive:

It was my first swim meet. Things ran similar to a track meet and I definitely enjoyed the experience. I'd definitely go to another one given the chance. I even had the opportunity to see Michael Phelps swim and speak after his race was over. So, all in all, a cool experience.

So, for those of you who don't live in Nebraska, you may not know that there has been a ton of storms in the last few weeks. Monday night, John took some cool pictures of the weather (and the Mutual condo work site).

Surprisingly, nothing really happened Monday night. The worst night was definitely Wednesday.

Well, this time I acquired my rental through Hertz. I have to say, the experience, and the car is much better than my experience with Enterprise. Not only did the guy stay after closing time by 15 minutes because I was caught in traffic, he didn't try to push their crappy insurance on me.

So, the car is: a VW Jetta. So, first and foremost, the things I like about the car (besides the fact that it definitely doesn't look like a shoe, as you can see).

I like that I can adjust the seat height. This works just like my Civic. Pull up to lift the seat and push down to lower the seat.

I'm happy I have power windows and locks (another thing that was annoying about the shoe). Plus, there's plenty of room to stuff things in the door.

I'm also a fan of the extra blinkers on the mirror. It took a little time to get used to the blinking in my peripheral vision, but it's pretty cool.

And my favorite feature: the key! I have been playing with this thing since I got the car.

I do have some features of the car, I'm not so sure about. They're okay, but I'm not sure that I'm just totally enamored with them.

First would be the trunk. I haven't decided if I like that the trunk completely opens or not. My trunk key on my Honda pops the trunk open, but you have to lift the lid. I think I lean more towards my Honda because then the trunk is open when I get to it, but you'd only know if you were standing next to the car. With the Jetta, it's going to be completely open for anyone to steal something out of it. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that unless I'm very close by.

The radio would be another thing I'm not so sure about. It's not bad. It has an mp3 CD player (another huge step up from the last rental). I'm not sure I like the buttons. They almost scream "We didn't want you to get lost so the buttons and the text is huge!"

The shifter is okay. It's not as stupid as the shoe. It's a little odd because you have both Drive and a "Sport" option. I looked up the difference between the two in the manual. Basically, the Drive gear is more fuel efficient than the Sport gear. They claim Sport is supposed to be more "fun" to drive but suggest you leave it in drive. Yeah...no idea on that one. Plus, it's sort of like a weird half-ass manual. It doesn't even have a clutch. You can move the shifter to the right when you're in drive and then you push up to go up a gear and down to go down a gear. It just makes me miss my manual.

The control for the wipers is okay. Nothing really special to note. You can pick the frequency they clear the windshield like most cars.

The Jetta has cup holders. But I'd definitely say my Civic's cup holders are better. They limit the size and I miss my cute little sliding door.

Finally, things I'm not so crazy about. First would be the dashboard. It's not bad, but it's certainly a step down from the design inside my Civic. I've been spoiled by the digital speedometer and the digital face on the Jetta's dashboard looks cheesy in comparison to my car.

I'm not so much a fan of the crank on the side of my seat. The one that helps with back support makes sense. The one that cranks your seat angle forward and back is annoying.

Yet another dumb feature is the light above the visor. My thought was that the goal is to have the light shine on your face. This light isn't all that helpful. Plus, it's just one more thing that can break. Are you really going to take your car in because the sliding door on the mirror doesn't turn the light on anymore?

Another thing that has gotten in the way and also confused me when I first got the car is the center console. I'm sure it's supposed to be clever, but it's just generally annoying. If you don't pull the lid up high enough, it won't go back down.

I also hate the turny-button for the lights. Yes, that's right a turny-button. But it doesn't lie. However, it's below the dashboard, between the driver's side door and the steering wheel. I am so used to turning the end of the blinker stick towards the front of the car, that this is annoying, plus what is on the blinker stick is probably what makes this worse.

That brings me to the stupid blinker stick. Which also has the cruise control on it. Yes, the cruise control. This is where you turn it off and on and you set the cruise speed or resume your speed. Putting the cruise control in this stupid location means you have to tap the breaks to cancel your cruise or you risk accidentally turning your cruise control on. Oh, plus, if you nudge the blinker, it blinks like 4 times after it's already been returned to the "neutral" position. Yeah, this thing drives me crazy.

Last, but certainly not least, the Jetta doesn't get nearly the gas mileage my Honda does. So, while I would definitely agree that I was given a "comparable" car for a rental, I am glad I didn't buy one. I had considered it for a bit when I was looking at cars, but I'm not so sure I'm the type for "German engineering in 'da house." However, I hope you enjoyed your tour of the Jetta. It's a nice replacement, but I miss my baby.

I'm looking forward to getting my car back. However, it sounds like they were just able to start work on it this week and the stupid deer caused about $4,500 worth of damage. The body shop cited me about 9 days of work.