Yesterday morning while Kyle and I were looking at pictures on the computer, he asked to see “racecars”, then “blue racecars,” then finally he asked for “fast cars.” So, as we were browsing the plethora of “fast cars” online, we came across the image you see here. When I expanded the image so he could see it better, he simply said “broken car.” Gotta love kids!

This morning started off great. I didn’t have to be in to work early, and since Kyle was going to have to stay a little later than usual b/c of my football game, I decided to just hang out with him at home. We had a blast playing with cars, eating breakfast, etc., and for those of you from work that may be reading this…yes, my computer was on and I was responding to emails also. Anyways, around 9:30am I decided to move the car from the street to our garage so it would be easier to pack it up, and low and behold as I opened the driver’s side door, I saw a bunch of shattered glass on the seat. Looking up (slowly), I saw that the passenger’s side window had been smashed through, and on the passenger seat all of our stuff from the glove compartment was scattered about. My next thought was what was in the car that they wanted…and it hit me that both Barbie’s and mine iPods were in the center console. I figure the crooks saw the tape deck had a wire that ran into the center console and figured there was an iPod or MP3 player of some sorts in there, and voila, they got two for the price of one.

So, for the next hour and a half I got the car cleaned out as best as possible, while also dealing with the insurance company, police, Glass repair shop and Lexus service center. Geico, our insurance company, gave me the name of a couple of places to call, only one of which was available today for the repair…total cost should be around $200. Barbie asked that I look into the Lexus dealership to see how much their repair would be as it would be certified Lexus parts, and come to find out, there price was almost $500!! Geico told me that they would cover it so long as their labor rates were in line with the market rates for a glass repair technician, which is apparently $40/hour. In speaking with the Lexus dealer, they told me their labor rates were $155/hour. I’m not sure what extra benefits you get for triple the price, but in this economy, I don’t have the money for the extra love that Lexus techs put on the window.

After all of this, I finally got ready to go, and realized that not only had the crooks gotten both of our iPods, but the 1 time in a hundred that I would leave my cell phone in the car was last night! Unfortunately for them the phone will be of no use to them to get any of my data off as it is locked, and if they are seen walking around with it, it will be quite obvious that it is not a normal phone as I believe only people at my work really use it since no cell phone carrier ever picked it up.

At the end of the day, I’ll have lost 2 iPods, my cell phone, racked up a couple hundred dollars worth of repair, and hopefully not have to deal with this anymore. The silver lining in all of this is that I didn’t leave my wallet in the car, which would have equated to them getting another couple of hundred in cash (just went to the ATM), as well as all my credit cards, which is a serious pain to try and cancel, and then wait for the new ones. All in all, we lost some electronics, none of which cannot be easily replaced…so that is the good news.

The guy in this video is probably one of the luckiest people in the world. I have no idea how he survived this, but he should be thanking his lucky stars.

The media is great about misleading their users, whether it be to prove a point, or to add some sort of shock value. A couple of weeks ago I was listening to a local morning radio show was ripping into Northern Trust bank for taking $1.6 billion in bailout money and then sponsoring a PGA Golf tournament and throwing a week’s worth of parties before the event that included dinner for clients and entertainment by people like Sheryl Crow, Earth Wind & Fire and Chicago. Needless to say I was somewhat ticked off at that, but I recently heard the truth from none other than Rush Limbaugh.

Rush informed me that Northern Trust never wanted the bailout money in the first place, but the government basically forced them to take it since they wanted every major bank to be a part of the bailout (nationalization anyone?). Also, Northern Trust had agreed to be the sponsor for the PGA tournament back in 2007, and that none of the money from the bailout was being used to sponsor the event. Heck, they didn’t want the money b/c they were one of the few profitable banks and didn’t need it.

So, just the other day I saw this article headline on news.google.com “Northern Trust takes $1.6 billion in bailout, then sponsors PGA event.” The headline leads you to believe that they took the money, then decided to sponsor the event, which we have all learned isn’t true. The article itself is very fair and explains the truth, but the headline doesn’t. So, just be wary of headlines, as they are often skewed to rile you up…much like Kyle enjoys doing to me.