The Science Behind Lost Hubcaps

I've had a lot of cars in my years on the planet earth.

My first car - or the first car my dad loaned me - was a 1976 Buick Century. Rust colored. My expression of my opinion about the appearance of this car was the two fuzzy dice I bought to hang from the rear view mirror. I will say - that hulking beast did set my standards for how a car should ride. Driving a Buick is as close to riding a magic carpet as you'll ever get.

Then there was the 1968 Mint Macaron colored Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. (Yes, even older than the first car). This car was purchased from a dear friend of my mom's mother, from whom I also bought a beautiful four-poster Biggs Company mahogany canopy bed, which still graces my guest room. This was the car that taught me how to jump out at a stop sign, pop the hood, stick a ball point pen in the carburetor flap, start the car, not worry about the flames that shot out, hop back in and drive until it stalled again. Self-reliance is important. At least with these good old American cars you COULD be self reliant and get them running again. Sort of. Someone put a pipe bomb under this car, having mistaken it for someone else's car on our street, and all that happened was the tire had to be replaced. They just don't build them like they used to.

Then I moved on to the 1978 Suburban. Still my favorite car of all time.

Then a Mazda pickup truck, where I learned about Japanese reliability - that thing was amazing. Someone propped it up on blocks at my first apartment complex in Austin and stole all four wheels.

Then after I got married we bought a pickup in 1992 - just a plain, white work truck that ran forever and was SO cheap. Then my first ME car I ever bought was a 1994 Firebird - red. The first of the new body style. I loved that car. Then we had two more pickups, a Yukon, a used BMW (the worst purchase I've ever made and the worst made cars on the planet. If I could have blown that one up myself, I would have.)

All that to say I'm on my 11th car. And not once, in all these decades, all these brands, being rear ended EIGHT TIMES in Austin (city of the world's worst drivers), running over various foreign objects, driving 80 billion miles across the state for work and to Santa Fe for fun - not ONCE have we ever lost a hubcap.

However, I see people with missing hubcaps all the time. And I wonder - what did they DO? How could this be statistically possible that no one I know has ever had a hubcap go missing? Do we have something in common? I don't think anyone in my extended family has ever been missing a hubcap either - so now we are up into the THOUSANDS of vehicles and hundreds of thousands - maybe millions of miles traveled.

I'd love to hear your theories. I wonder this every time I see a sad hubcap on the side of the road, or see someone with 1 or more missing. I just don't get it. I wish the X-files would have addressed this.

I'm spending this Memorial Day weekend listening to tornado sirens and playing with the new host sets. The Floral Wings multi-step stamp was calling to me last night after we were told to take cover in an interior room, so I thought I may as well go out doing something I enjoy.

This new paper makes me SQUEE! LOOK at that writing back there! It's part of the new Neutrals Patterns pack - and it not only comes in all the neutrals, but in SILVER AND GOLD! 4 sheets in each color, two sheets each of two double sided designs. Seriously awesome. Available June 2 if you want to hop in on my open house. (Use hostess code EDU9X7MK at checkout to be included in door prize drawings, no matter where you are!)

Fun, clean images.

This was SO quick too  - it's a 3.5 minute card, which I detail in the video, along with my easy trick for getting the shadow on the vase. Enjoy!

In other news, we had my team video call today, and I have to say - one of my team members just switched to a MacBook and holy cow - we can see her AND her cards now! Before, she would show us a card and it was just like 8 giant, fuzzy pixels. So if you want a good video chatting device, Mac is definitely the way to go. All of us chatting on a PC don't look nearly as good!

Today we've gone about 6 hours with no rain. It won't last, but it sure was a nice break.

Here's a photo shot in Terlingua yesterday from the porch of the Perry Mansion. This, my friends, is what it's like to go through a storm in Texas.

Photo by Gabriel Campos, via Traces of Texas

Stay dry my friends!

Loveyameanitbye.