Smashed like bug

A new carpet!!!

We won!! Sent the letter to the landlord and now we are having all the carpets torn out at no cost to us! Yay!! Even better, they replaced the carpet in the family room yesterday so the house smells better and Monkey has a little play area set up! Finally, no more super bored child at my heels day and night!
I feel better. The whole carpet thing should be done and over by the beginning of next week and we can (finally) move in.

Today Monkey is staying the night at Ellen's while Lee and I go see Kevin Smith and a screening of Clerks. (Not Clerks II). It should be neat. Jay and Silent Bob's Secret Stash is here in Red Bank, so it makes sense that Kevin Smith would come here for a special event. We are looking forward to it as we both loved that movie. (This may say something unflattering about our personalities but cest la vie.)

This morning we had to go to the ER to get the results of our Saturday throat cultures. They were supposed to call us and tell us the results, but no one had. I called them and they told me HIPPA prevents them from giving our info out over the phone and we had to come in person. (Never mind that I had previously signed a release allowing them to tell me over the phone). So, down to the hospital we go, to the place the person on the phone told me to bring my ID. Except the person there told me I had to go down to records, where they made me fill out another release for each of us and had me wait while they contacted the lab. (Nevermind that the person on the phone has said printouts were already waiting for me.) Finally, we got our records, indicating that no, we do not have strep and we can discontinue the anti-biotics. sigh. This is HIPPA in the extreme. There is no legal reason I should be unable to get my own bloody health records without signing three seperate releases.

However, despite being heavily populated by HIPPA extremists, Red Bank is starting to grow on me. The state of New Jersey is still rife with petty annoyances and difficulties that insure I will not lovingly sigh and call it home for quite some time.

How I long to pump my own gas!! Apparently, there was a bill up to allow New Jersians to pump their own fuel, but one of it's biggest opponents argued that there would be state wide panic because no one here had ever had to pump their own gas before and would have a hard time learning how. (Oh yeah, the 10 seconds it took me to figure out how to pump my gas at 16 when dashing off with my brand new driver's license will break the simple minds of this guy's constituents.) A guy at Lee's work has an interesting plan for combatting this brilliant legislator's argument. He wants to visit gas stations under the cover story that he is traveling across the country, having never left Jersey before, and is terrified he will be unable to pump his own gas. He plans on asking all the station attendants he can find to "teach" him how. If nothing else, it should be an entertaining blog to read when all said and done.

For all you law geeks: Is a law restricting citizens from learning how to pump their own fuel an unreasonable limitation on interstate commerce? Is this terror of self-pumping chilling New Jersians right to travel freely among the other states?

I know, too much time and too little law make Scylla go something, something.

More tomorrow,

Denver Girl signing out.