Some audio I recorded while walking home from a local shopping center. This audio blog post features some introductory business, depression talk, financial stuff, car sounds and more.

This is my second podcast for NaPodPoMo 2008.

The new Yellowbook phone book came today. Before tossing the thing into the recycle bin (who still uses phone books, anyway?), I thumbed through the book’s back pages because that’s where the useful stuff is: The coupons. I clipped one out for Shawnogram favorite Louisa’s Place as well as one for a local Mexican chain called Taco Roco. (Buy one entree, get one free!) Armed with this shiny new coupon, Jen and I decided to take a walk to a nearby Roco franchise for tonight’s dinner. In the 2.5 years we’ve lived in SLO, we’ve had food from this place many, many times. Overall, we’ve found the restaurant’s food to be decent for the price. Tonight, Jen and I each had an order of Taco Roco’s crispy shredded-beef tacos.

Like any self-respecting Mexican joint should, the Raco offers free all-you-can-eat tortilla chips along with a serve-yourself salsa bar.

I chose the spicy, red salsa (does this stuff have a specific name?) ’cause I’ve had it before and I like it. (Jen tends to avoid salsa because she’s white she has a lot of food allergies.) The chips themselves are fine for what they are: Standard, corn tortilla chips. They’re fairly light (i.e. “thin”), and I’ve never detected much in the way of salt or seasoning with these chips. So, if you’re a salsa lover, these are the chips for you. The only salsa I’ve ever tried is the red stuff mentioned above. (I don’t know why I haven’t sampled the others. I guess I’m also white not that adventurous.) It’s got a good flavor and a nice kick, but its spiciness factor shouldn’t cause your cranium to spontaneously combust.

I found the tacos to be a bit bland. I was surprised by this, as I’ve always enjoyed Taco Roco’s steak soft tacos. (This was the first time I’d had the crispy tacos.) The steak soft tacos are an interesting contrast to these tacos. The soft tacos come with a nice combination of onions, cilantro and salsa. The tacos I had tonight were basic: Meat topped with lettuce and shredded cheese. And I don’t actually mind the basic approach. But, no seasoning? No salsa? Not even a little? To be honest, the same style of tacos from Green Burrito have more flavor. For what it’s worth, I did like the taco shells. Warm and crispy, they did a good job of holding the taco filling in without falling apart. (Some taco shells fail in these most basic of taco-shell requirements.)

Understand that I’m not putting Taco Roco down. I’ve always liked the place, and I think the restaurant has some good stuff on its menu. But I doubt I’ll have the crispy tacos again. Not unless I decide to provide my own garnish. Guess that’d give me a reason to be more adventurous at the salsa bar.

We’ve been living with roadwork and construction nearby for what seems like a year. This video documents some of the work that happened one night. Watch for the road-striping truck.

To see what some of this roadwork has looked like during the day, go here, here or here. Some photos of the construction can be seen here.

Music in this video is by 3rd Man.

I’ve written before about how we don’t get much in the way of weather ’round here. The pattern of boring weather was broken last Friday morning when a rare pop-up thunderstorm hit central California. Jen and I were both awakened by the sound of thunder. I first put it off as a truck or some other large thing rolling by the house. But once it happened again, I was certain that it was thunder. It’s always a nice surprise when something like this happens. And this storm was particularly surprising, as none of the weather forecasts I had seen recently predicted rain or storms. But a PG&E weather dispatched i received just before 7AM that morning confirmed the presence of actual weather:

A weak upper-level low, about 450 miles south of Diablo Canyon, continues to bring monsoon moisture towards our area.

The doppler radar at Vandenberg AFB is indicating a band of lighting and showers over northern San Barbara County moving west-northwest towards San Luis Obispo this morning. The SLO Weather lighting tracker indicates over 1,700+ strikes this morning mostly southeast of San Luis Obispo

As this band of thunderstorms moves over San Luis Obispo, it will produce mostly cloudy weather and lighting with a chance of rain showers. Precipitation amounts south of our area have been mostly light, with most of the rain evaporating before reaching the ground. (virga).

(Any spelling/grammar errors in the above block were copied over from the source.) Naturally, when there’s lightning in the sky, the smart thing to do is to stand near an open window, holding an electronic device that’s plugged into a wall outlet. And that’s exactly what I did, with the video camera. Watch for the time-lapse lightning bolt around 1:18:

The storm did produce a couple of really loud booms accompanied by bright lightning bursts (not on the video, unfortunately) but it mellowed out not long after I turned off the camera. It tried to come back strong a couple hours later, with a few boisterous thunderclaps just passed 10AM. And then it was done. That’s probably the last storm we’ll have for awhile. Still, I’m looking forward to the next one. Even if it doesn’t happen until sometime in 2009.

OK, Wells Fargo isn’t really stealing my money. At least, I doubt it. Jen ahd I have had a joint checking account with the bank since 2005. And in that time, we’ve had several issues with overdrafts. I believe I do a pretty good job of keeping the checkbook balanced. And each time we’ve been hit with overdrafts, I’ve implemented new methods to help keep track of the account balance. And still, every couple months, it happens again. The most recent round of overdrafts happened yesterday. Fortunately, we have overdraft protection on the account, thanks to the Wells Fargo credit account I opened for this very reason. (Though there’s probably still some kind of fee involved, it’ll just be connected to the credit account instead of the checking account.) As it stands, we have no money in the bank. This is especially discouraging, as our finances had been riding high lately due to cash infusions from several sources. But now we’re back to zero. This has happened more times with Wells Fargo than any other bank I’ve ever used. I’m not one of these corporate-conspiracy cranks. I really don’t think Wells Fargo is taking my money. But something is off, and I’m not sure what to do. I suppose that one of the bank’s employees could try and track down the error. Most likely, it was caused by an ATM transaction I missed. The difference between what I was showing in the checkbook and the amount of money that was overdrafted would equal about the same as a typical ATM withdrawal. But I’d really like to just start all over again with a new accoun. I’ve been considering opening an account with a local bank. Sure, the local bank may not have the world-spanning reach of Wells Fargo. But you can e-mail the bank’s president right from the website. That’s pretty cool. And I’ve noticed that throughout my banking history, the larger the size of the bank, the more problems I’ve had. Of course, switching banks comes with its own set of hassles. Between me and Jen, we’d have to get three direct deposits changed, and that’s likely to take weeks. Still, I think now’s the time. Before Wells Fargo has a chance to take any more of my money.