Big Dorks

Tara and I went to see New Moon on opening day (of course). Here are some really dorky shots of Tara we took as we waited in line. Notice the excitement.

Our Ottoman is Stolen Right in Front of My Eyes

I went to Stevens Point with my mom on Tuesday afternoon to pick up our furniture for our den. We were getting s sectional and an ottoman. The sectional came in 2 large pieces that fit into the bed of our truck. The ottoman (which was quite large) was stacked on top, wedged in between the 2 couch pieces. Everything is covered in plastic. (You can tell this isn’t going to go well, can’t you?) The guys from the furniture store supply the straps to tie everything down, but tell me they can’t help for liability purposes. I take the straps and start to make a large X over the load, like I’ve seen Andrew do at least a hundred times. I wanted to run a strap from the right front to the back left and from the left front to the back right. The guy stops me and tells me to take 3 straps, and run them right front to left front, right middle to left middle, and right back to left back. I finish and ask if he thinks it looks ok, that I am headed back to Marshfield, which is about an hour away. He says it looks fine and I’ll make it. I get onto the freeway and I’m not even a full mile down the road when I notice the middle strap flapping in the wind. This does not look right, so I pull over (on the freeway) and get out to take a look. My ottoman is gone. About 5 or 6 cars stop as I’m re-tightening the straps (to my much smaller load) to tell me I’m missing an ottoman and it’s about a ½ mile back (gotta love WI). I exit the freeway, find out I can’t turn left, wait for all kinds of traffic and finally get back on the freeway headed back towards the furniture store. I ask my mom to keep a lookout to see where about the ottoman is. We see this punk, stopped on the side of the road, lifting the ottoman into his jeep. Up ahead, I see a space to do a U-Turn, clearly marked “No U-Turns”. I went for it anyway, thinking this guy will surrender the ottoman as soon as I get to him. We are getting close, I’m flashing my lights and honking my horn… and the guy takes off. Not kidding! I could only get the first 4 characters on his license plate before this guy is off to the races. Now I’m chasing him down the freeway, I look in my rearview mirror and a state trooper is behind me. I call emergency, ask them to contact the officer behind me and have him pull over this joker with the ottoman. The punk exits, (going away from Marshfield, of course), I exit, the state trooper exits. We follow him about 20 miles, all of us stopped on the road at one point, and then he vanishes. The state trooper pulls over and gestures for me to do the same. He lets me know that the county police are out, taking all the different roads to this point. We wait for 10 minutes or so, he comes back and lets me know that no one has seen him and they’ll call me if they do- no joke! My ottoman is gone, my truck is out of gas, and this joker got away with highway robbery! I love it when I throw away $350, don’t you?