Time to take over the world!

So last November I was laying in bed one night trying to figure out how in the hell I was going to be able to pay off my student loans with the crappy job I had. Add a random, crazy thought process and suddenly I had come up with my brilliant plan. I believe everyone gets one “million dollar idea” in their lifetime, and this is mine.
I’ve spent every spare minute of the past 9 months working on The Project. It’s taken over my life, but I’m fine with that because the potential it has is unbelievable. I don’t want to go into details as to what it is before we launch (hopefully before the end of the year) but everyone I’ve talked to about it think it’s a great idea.
With that said, I’ve hired on a company to do the layout and logo design for the website. Hustlewood is located in Chicago and Erik’s done some business with them in the past and I *love* their work. I’m super excited beyond words about this, and I can’t wait to get this project off the ground.
I’ll make
a real post with all the details when we launch (whenever that is).
Keep your fingers crossed everyone!! 🙂

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Excuse me miss…

So this afternoon I went to Subway for lunch and while I was standing in line I noticed the 30-something guy behind me was standing just sliiiiightly too close. Eventually he asked me what my tattoo was (for those of you who don’t know, I have a horse on my left shoulder; I was wearing a black wifebeater so it was exposed) and I said “it’s a horse” and he replied “oh, I couldn’t tell from the angle back here” which apparently was an invite for him to then start talking to me. Not that I mind… I’m always up for talking to strangers, despite what they tried to teach me as a child 😉
Anyway, so the next thing out of his mouth was “I bet you’re either Italian, or Jewish” and I was like “member of the Jew crew dude” and the very next thing he said was “And you’re from New York… Near the City.” I was shocked. Yes, I’m from Queens. Yes, I spent the majority of my growing-up years down on the LES. So we continued to have a nice conversation (about Philly being dirty and NJ sucking and how we both miss living in NY) until I had my sandwich and it was time to leave.
Question – is it that obvious that even a total stranger, in a business-park area of Atlanta, can nail the fact that I’m from New York? And no, it wasn’t “my accent” that gave it away because I had barely said two words to the guy and I don’t even have that heavy of an accent anymore after being gone for so many years. Do I have some sort of sign over my head that’s visible to everyone except me?
He apologized when we left if he had “freaked me out” and I was like no way, I’m totally flattered that I “look like” a New Yorker 🙂 Best compliment ever!
This proves, yet again, that you can take the girl out of New York but you can’t take New York out of the girl!
PS. HI EJ!! ❤

Welcome home cars #7 & #8!

Well, 7 of our 8 cars are now living at home (no, none are in the backyard or on the lawn… yet?).
On September 29, 2006, our dear friend Sae Kang passed away. Sae had owned Finishline Motorsports in Marietta, GA and Erik had driven on his race team. Sae owned a 1JZGTE-swapped ’92 Lexus SC300 (Soarer) which disappeared after his death. To make a long story short, the car wound up changing hands a few times and came up for sale on Ebay not too long ago. We bought the car and drove up to Anderson, South Carolina to “bring her home”.
We knew before we left Atlanta that this car was going to wind up being named “Dammit!” (yes, with an exclamation point). We were right. On the drive up, the van (one of the 8 vehicles… a Ford E350 turbodiesel badass party van) was shaking so violently (but the tires looked fine and we couldn’t figure out what was wrong, so we blamed the crappy U-Haul trailer) that trim pieces were falling off of the interior. We made it up to Anderson and picked up the car, which was in much worse shape than we had expected, and loaded it u
p. The two guys who owned the shop were so freakin’ awesome- they had the cutest southern accents. I felt like I was talking to Boomhauer from King of the Hill 😀
Anyway, so we got the car on the trailer and start back home, but the shaking hadn’t gotten any better. I called around and found a local U-Haul place that had a few trailers available, but they were closed for the day. I somehow sweet talked the guy into letting us go over there and swap the trailers by ourselves anyway. Well, now we couldn’t get the car back on the new trailer (we meaning me inside the car steering, no seats btw, and Erik and Ronny pushing) so we had to call the guys we bought it from to come help. Loaded her up, got back on the road, and, well, it still shook… Set cruise control for 53mph (the only tolerable speed) and headed home.
Five miles from our house, in the middle of I-85, the left rear tire of the van blew out. It made this awesome explosion noise and we limped over to the side of the road. Called AAA to come so we could jack the van up and put the spare on, but after an hour of waiting we finally got the van up and the tire on and oh, oh, it didn’t fit! The spare/tire was the wrong size! The AAA guy (who was wearing basketball shorts and hospital scrubs) was nice enough to take Ronny up the road to Sears (by this time it was 8:00pm… we left Atlanta at 11:30am and Anderson is only 110 miles away%2
9 to get a new tire. Almost three hours later, we were back on the road and brought Dammit! home. She had definitely earned her name.
Yesterday, we brought home the ’90 Volkswagen Fox that Erik used to own. Erik had bought it and then later sold it to Tony and Tony no longer needed it so now we own it again. This one’s name is FoxiRoku 🙂

This is how Dammit! looked when Sae owned her… RIP Sae ❤