Limo Business

I think the chances of my dad buying the limo, either as a loan for me or to just help me buy it, are pretty high. This is partly because I showed him how much I was into this idea, and also because I know that he is interested in making a small business out of it.


To me, making a business would be the coolest thing. I would love to drive people around as a job. I would always get dressed up and I would get a funny looking limo driver hat. I might even buy some white gloves. I could make posters to put up around my church and some local schools. I could even drive for proms.

But there is a big problem. Without being 18, I cannot obtain a chauffeur's licence. Without this, I cannot legally charge people to give them rides. I think I have a way of getting around that, though. I can drive people around for free. If they so choose, perhaps they could give me an early birthday present. If I got pulled over by a cop, I'm almost sure that he wouldn't buy that, though, but I think that I might be able to defend myself pretty well in court.

Since I'm not actually legal driver, I know that whatever my standard under the table wage is would have to decrease. But for a kid who can only make minimum wage anyways, that isn't bad. A normal limo ride might charge upwards from 100 dollars per hour. I read that one can get a 2006 Sedan to come pick them up and drive them around for 60 dollars an hour. That's like a taxi driver making 60 dollars an hour. Since I actually will be getting a limo, I could probably add twenty dollars to that 60. But it isn't a new, luxury limo. This is an '87 Lincoln Town Car limo with seats for maybe 6. This takes my price down about 20. Now, back at 60, I only have to account for one more thing. I don't have a license. I suppose this should cut my price about in half. Also, because I don't have a license, I couldn't charge an amount, but just earn tips. I think that tips would be pretty high, though, if I'm giving away free limo rides.

Limo Driver

He said he drove a school bus. This was a very important fact that my physics teacher told us about himself. Because of this, he could drive his former students on impromtu field trips whenever he wanted. Also, he could so a physics experiement, where he moved the bus a couple feet with only his body weight (chain the bus to a fence, then jump on the chain, then tighten and repeat). He said that he was a bus driver in the mornings to pick up some extra cash. He shared the route with someone who drove in the afternoon. I thought this was a great idea.

I was on facebook looking for cool, unjustifiably cheap cars. I found 3 items of interest. Firstly, I found a foldout camper, which is very similar to the one my neighbor has, and it was only $500. Compared to other campers, which are above $2000 usually, I thought that this seemed like a bargain. I wrote down the information to show my dad, but neither of us are really interested.

I also found a moped. It was black and white checkered on most parts. There was a hawaiian looking flower on the front fender. It was $600. The person selling it said that she only had to fill it up once every three weeks. Also, it only costs about $3 to fill the tank. Unfortunantly, other people were interested, and so I forgot about it.

The final thing I found was a limo. 1987 Lincoln Town House. It was only $2200. About a year ago, my dad was talking about maybe buying a limo in the future and giving out rides as a kind of part time job. I told him about this limo, and we are going to check it out next weekend.

Bus trips

Yesterday was weird.

It was Saturday morning, I had just woken up at about 8:30, which seemed very late to me. I got ready for band. I packed 2 pairs of sweatpants, 5 pairs of socks (two blacks, one green baseballs, and two short whites), a white shirt, a sweatshirt, and some oatmeal creme pies. I got to school at 10 to practice. We practiced until 12, when we left to get lunch. We go back at 1:30 to get onto the bus. From school, we chartered to Kingston Stadium, where we had our first competition. This performance was merely a warmup for the one later that night, though. After the performance, we recieved bags of food, that would be our supper. We were to eat on the bus.

And the bus is where we had fun. Lots of fun. About mid-trip, we decided to play the slumber partyish game called truth or dare. Since truths are boring in highschool (for most people), we decided to only do dares. The first dare was given to Carl (I switched the real names up for privacy). Carl had to lick Drew's shoe. Reluctantly, he stuck his toungue out, and was about to poke Drew's shoe with his tongue, when Drew shoved his shoe all over Carl's tongue. The next dare was to a girl who wasn't quite as crazy as the rest of us. The dare was "I dare you to tell us the most dateable guy in band". She didn't ever give a good answer. As we continued going around to everyone, the dares got increasingly, well, daring. Alicia licked in between Kyle's big and second toes, and she thought that all feet were gross. Eventually, we were passing a peice of gum from person to person. This actually didn't make anybody sick. From the perspective of a bystander, seeing kids kissing each other and passing gum, in a way most couples wouldn't even do, we seemed like very disturbed people. For us, though, we were just having the best time we've had in weeks, if not months.

Eventually, the lights turned on and we had to get off the bus. We then performed and froze our toes off. It wasn't until the bus ride home that we got really weird (recall the first sentence of this post). First of all, on night time bus rides, we cannot sit girl-boy. This reaked havoc with the past seating arrangement. But we got it figured out. I ended up sitting by Scott. I was in the isle seat, so I could easily talk to Kali and Carl. At first, we were bored. We had been told to keep quiet, and that resulted in the sleeping of most people. Scott, Kali, Carl, and I all stayed awake, however. We decided about 20 minutes into the ride to play a question game.

It was like truth or dare from earlier, but instead of playing dare, we played truth. I remember saying that we should start easy. The first question was to me. Kali simply said three words, boxers or breifs. The questions following that were very personal, and though the identities of others are protected, mine is not. But I can say that I told those three people things that I never told to my girlfriend, who I had been going out with for 22 months. We told personal stories that have been sitting inside ourselves for years. I explained why I broke up with my ex-girlfriend, and also why I liked her. We were so very open. I am not sure why we did this. I'm sure that being with this same group of people for a long time attributes to it. That is also probably why we did the dare game earlier. I think that we also just wanted to talk to somebody about those things that we had never told anyone. Aside from the awkwardness, it was fun to talk about things people don't usually talk about. It was exciting. Truth or dare was definently my favorite part of yesterday.

Free Rice

Yesterday in my 6th period class, United States history, our teacher noticed that we were all tired and lathargic. Since we were done with what we had to do, and had about fifteen minutes to waste, she decided to make us have some fun.

She logged onto her computer in the back corner of the classroom, and googled "free rice". We knew this because she left the projector on after the notes we took. The first link that popped up went to http://www.freerice.com/. She picked a subject, and then we were taking a quiz. I believe the first subject we took was geography. Since I took Human Geography, a riduculously hard class, considering it is only for freshman and is barely worth anything, I had most countries in the world memorized. I think I impressed my teacher when I knew all the Southeast Asia countries by name. I was disapointed, however, that I forgot some insignificant countries, such as Qatar and Uzbekistan.

I, as well as the rest of the class, had a lot of fun playing that game. Before we knew it, we were quizzing ourselves on german and spanish. But without realizing it, we were actually accumulating rice. For every question answered correctly, 10 grains of rice were donated to fight world hunger. After ten minutes, we donated 1120 grains of rice. It is crazy how much rice we could have donated if we all sat down at our own computers and played.

Following Directions

According to an article in a Psycology magazine I read a couple weeks ago, breaking the rules is actually healthy for people. It caused a small adrenaline rush, which, in moderation, is healthy for the mind and body. When reading this, I was reminded of a time that I broke the law. It was a very small, innocent act, but it was also very obvious and wrong.

I was heading home from a church council meeting one Tuesday, when I realized my horrible luck. I was stopped by a red light on Center Point Road. This road is perpindicular to highway 100, which I was currently sitting under. I knew from paast experience that it is near impossible to turn left at the light I was currently at and make it in time for the next lights. It is always a situation that you can see the green light turn red right before your hopeless eyes. This is often uncommon anymore, because many lights switch based on motion sensors telling it that a car had pulled up to the light. These lights, however, are older.

So I turned left. I decided not to try to hit 70 on this sort-of on ramp, so that I could maybe make the light, and, as a side effect, get some major air from the bump at the intersection. I coasted to the line that made me lose my driving test by one point. After what seemed like 2 minutes, I looked around. There was nobody behind me. I looked right, nobody coming for their green light. I didn't have to look anywhere else to see if I was alone, because those were one way streets, but I looked anyways. Since it was dark, I had my lights on. It would be obvious to anyone who merely glances in my direction that I am running a red light. But the only people around were passing by above me at 60 miles per hour or below me at 70. Even if they managed to see me, and if they even cared that someone was running a red light, though it was totally safe for everyone around, they wouldn't have been able to do anything about it. So I took a last glance in my rear view mirror, and see the absence of lights, pushed on the gas pedal. This took me to another light maybe 30 feet away. It is always lagging behind the first one by a couple seconds. I decided to quick make a break for it, and alas, I was free from the grasp of the overprotective stoplight, which ceased to turn green until I had run its red light. I go on the highway, stuck my arm out the window and let my new criminal self go free.

This reminds me of the essay by Ralph Ellison called "On Being the Target of Discrimination". Ralph says that as a child, he would often slide down the fire escape slides. He found it to be a very fun endeavour that was worth the consiquences. His consiquences were not very high, so almost any fun that he could find was worth trying.

Later in the psycology magazine, it asked how I felt after breaking the rule I broke. Did you get caught? If so, was it worth it? If not, what would've the consequences been? The consequences for running a red light is higher than the small thrill I got from the law breaking. I thought about that at the time, though. I suppose that I ran the light because both I had a low chance for getting caught, and I thought that the light was wrong; it should have been blinking red. Obviously this wasn't too big of a deal, but I still feel proud of myself for not being patient, and for not waiting that extra minute.

Of Caring

What is it that we care about? What is the personal gain connected to each thing or person we care for? Can we truly care about it? No need to stand up, I will provide examples.

I care about my parents. If they lost their job, I would have less spending money and a harder time paying for college. I don't truly care.

On the contrary.

I care about my parents. One time I dropped some shrub cutters inches from my father's toes. I felt horrible, even though he was fine, and if he wasn't, I wouldn't be hurt or blamed for my wrongdoing, because it was an accident.

And of things I cannot care about.

I care about my car. If it was stolen or damaged, I may not be able to drive myself around nearly as much as I do now. It would be bad for me if my car was stolen or damaged. I do not truly care about my car.

I cannot think of any 'thing' that I truly care about, or any argument to support the claim.

But of animals, there could surely be a case.

My dog is always around whenever I need someone to play with. This is important because I am often lonely and without anyone to talk to, so my dog comforts me. I do not care about my dog, I care that I have something to be with while lonely.

I rescued a skinny, furless cat from an animal shelter. I feel that all living things, other than plants, have a right to live a full, outgoing life. Instead of caging Snuggles into my house, I decided to let her go into the wild.

To truly care about something other than onesself is a difficult endeavor, but if someone can acheive this noble goal, thats sucks for them, because they get nothing out of it.

Of Understanding

Right at this instant, I am typing on a computer. I am looking at the screen, which tells me what I am writing, but I do not know at all how it works. I think that when I press a button, the computer does something, and then all of a sudden my letter is on the screen. But even though I don't understand, as most people don't, I use a computer ever day.

The fact that I can type on the computer and blog onto this post infers that I sort of know knid of what is happening, but how much does one have to know? I was reading the book "Flowers for Algernon" a couple weeks ago. Charlie told about the time that his workmates were trying to get him to form a ball of dough. Two people made balls of dough in front of him. Charlie didn't notice the big picture, which is why he couldn't form the dough himself. He noticed that one baker was holding his hands more inward than the other, and that the other baker would lean into the dough more. Charlie was trying to understand things that he didn't have to. If he had focused on the dough, instead of the people, perhaps he could have made a slab of dough spherical. In the same way, if I tried to figure out the components of the computer, rather than what the screen did when I moved the mouse, I would have very little success.

When I think about what a doctor has to do in their ten years of college, I get very confused. Why does a doctor have to go to school so long? All they do is look at a patient, and listen to their problems, and find out what is wrong with them. There could easily be a book that has all the common problems people have with the symptoms and perscription needed. The role of doctor seems so unneeded, yet they get paid such high wages and go to school for such a long time.