Last night, as Snackpants and I were driving from our home in Middle Georgia back to Orlando, we made a slight detour in Gainesville to partake of one of my favorite chains: Tijuana Flats. Because the closest one to us is in Jacksonville, every time we come back to Orlando I insist that we have it at least once. Due to time constraints and pre-existing plans for this trip, Gainesville was really our only option.

The TomTom faithfully got us to the UF Plaza where the Tijuana’s is located, and we proceeded to park my car in the lot before enjoying some of the tasty goodness. We were in there for about 30 minutes and upon returning to the parking lot, Snackpants says…

“Where’s the car?”

It took a few minutes for my anxiety to fully kick into gear. I stared up and down the row, knowing full well that the car had been there and now there was a different, not-my vehicle parked in its place. I admit that I even did a ‘faculties’ check in my mind to see if I had gone insane.

Now, instead of being a rational human being, my mind automatically went to the worst possible scenario: someone stole my car. It took about 30 seconds for me to begin bawling on the sidewalk and mentally running through the list of everything we had just lost: 3 laptops, 2 iPods, my digital camera, my knitting. I ran the mental circle of “well, we have to report it stolen, but the VIN number is on the car and the registration is IN the car along with the insurance information, which I could also access online but my computer is gone” and all that jazz.

Snackpants managed to keep mostly calm, while he did a pretty poor job of keeping ME calm or being soothing in any fashion (sorry honey, but it’s true!). Fortunately, though, he was still in the right frame of mind to realize that we were surrounded by 22 signs signs stating “TOW AWAY ZONE” and he had misread the list of businesses for which the parking lot was used.

Luckily for us, but rather unfortunately for the owner of the car being towed next, the tow truck pulled up about 3 minutes into my hysterical crying and Snacky was able to verify that he had, in fact, taken my car not 20 minutes earlier, which was about 5 minutes after we parked it. Turns out the plaza pays a guy to sit and watch people violate the parking rules and then calls in their vehicles to be taken away.

From what we learned on the ride to the tow yard, towing is a HUGE business in Gainesville. There are about 12 companies that run around the clock picking up cars, which apparently have NOWHERE to park in that city that is actually legal. And far be it from anyone in the plaza to let us know that we were being retarded and failing to read the signs. Oh no. They couldn’t even be bothered to say “It was towed” while I was standing there losing my mind along with my tears.

Next trip, we are stopping in Ocala instead for some Flats.

A few months ago, a skinny kitty appeared downstairs at my apartment complex. We believe that she is an abandoned house cat because of her burning desire to try and sneak into the house at every chance (she has only been successful once). She’s real friendly, moderately vocal, and even comes when I call her. If Snackpants weren’t so insanely allergic, I would totally keep her.

Now that the weather has cooled down a bit in Middle Georgia, we have taken to opening the windows during the day and attempting to get as much of a cross breeze as possible. Now that the windows are open more often, Kitty can hear us inside and makes her presence known. Tonight she scared the crap out of me as I rounded the corner, because she also has a fondness for talking to me like this:

I think it’s really cute and funny when it’s not making me wet myself because she’s doing this at night. Nevermind the fact that she looks like a demon cat in the picture.

Now we just have to make sure that she doesn’t choose our porch as the birthplace for her kittens. Not sure how long cats let the babies cook before they birth them, but I think she’s getting close. She went and got herself knocked up while she was in heat a few months ago. Because having one stray cat to feed isn’t enough for all of us.

Earlier this week, for what constituted our “weekend” on Monday and Tuesday, Snackpants decided to take me to Savannah for a little getaway. We had an awesome time wandering around the city, being tourists, and exploring many of the local pubs, of which there are a great many.

Monday night we ended up in Kevin Barry’s Pub on River Street where we found ourselves sitting at the bar with a party of drunk middle-aged guys. There were about 8 of them and we later found out that they work for a company that sells sewer pumps and had budgets due the next day so they were drinking away their worries because they were not going to hit their sales goals.

As the night wore on, one of them got slowly more and more drunk while the rest of them went home to get some sleep, and this one guy kept hitting on the waitress at the bar. Turns out she has a cop boyfriend, though he continued to pursue her anyway. In an effort to boost his morale and “help him out”, Snackpants made the following comment:

“It’s only serious if there’s a ring.”

Excuse me, what?!?

He tried to save himself after this one, but the damage had been done. That’s how you define serious, Mr. Snackpants? I can see we are going to have some problems then. Being that we live in a military town, I don’t think I would have too much trouble finding another casual boyfriend (or two) since I appear to be mistaken about the commitment level in this relationship.

When you come home to find me gone, having run off with some 19 year old recruit, remember that you dug your own grave with this one! Then you’ll recall the immortal words of the great Beyonce: “If you liked it then you should have put a ring on it.”

Dance it out for me, Ava!

**Note: I am not actually going to find another (or more) “casual” boyfriends, in case you were seriously worried. I threatened Snackpants with a post about this one so here it is.

**Edit: I know he is getting a lot of crap about this one. I also know he didn’t mean it the way it came out. Blame it on the 3 Irish Car Bombs. I do.