Happy Birthday Shiningknight

[TalonRider]

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Happy Birthday, Dear Stuuud,

Happy Birthday my dear Friend.

[movieguy]

Happy Birthday

[ShiningKnight]

Thanks for the warm wishes guys but where are my presents? Don't birthday boys always get one?

What can I say? I invited a few friends (well 10 actually), most even did come. We had a barbeque in our garden and great fun, espescially when playing darts (I got an electronic dart board) - although our dog escaped almost twice.

I got some money, perfume from my sister, a Simpsons-DVD (always wondered how the original voices would sond although the dubbed German version is a good one) - and 2 little comic books. By 11 p.m. the last guest left.

Oh, and I also got a few returnable bottles. He wanted to fool me a bit. You know, at the university we have an automat who collects old bottles and gives you € .15 for each bottle. Since it broke a few weeks ago and since everybody threw the bottles away or just put them on top of the automat I kept collecting them. By now I have made about € 12 ($ 15) just with returning bottles (€ .15 each)

And I also got a gift certificate for a big electronic store worth € 35. I'll probably spend it on a DVD burner. They attached a nice photograph:

What I did not like about my birthday was the fact that I turned a year older (22). I remember myself always waiting for this special day to be able to say "[Hehe, see]I'm 16, 17, 18 by now" But ever since I reached the age of 21 (last year) I don't like getting older anymore... and there was also the lonely part of my birthday (the evening) - but let's better not go there, or better not here in public at this board...

[TalonRider]

Phil, glad to hear you had a good time. I just wish I could give you a present in person, but I guess for now this will have to do, .

Jan

[ShiningKnight]

Just a quick update on what has happened on my birthday and what I wanted to share here:

On Sunday (a day after) we went to a lake and had some ice cream. The cool thing about it was: My car's gauge showed "Hey, it's time for a refill" and my grandmother said, well then let's have it refilled. What's the special thing about that you over there may wonder...

Normally I always have my car refilled for maybe $10; I just can't afford more. But she gave me a full refill worth € 50 ($60). Seeing the gauge's needle go to "1/1" does maybe happen once a year. Normally it hardly moves out of the red area indicating that it's time for a refill. This is the receipt:

What you see is:

47.66 liters, 1.049 € per liter = 50.00 € (43.10 + 16 % VAT 6.90) (metric system/euro currency)

Now the conversion (US system/dollar):

47.66 liters devided by 3.7854118 liters per gallon = 12.59044 gallons,

1.049 € x 1.30 $ (rough current conversion rate) = 1.3637 $ per liter => 5.1621661 $ per gallon

12.59044 gallons x 5.1621661 $ per gallon = ~ 65 $ for a refill!

Why did I do this? To show and tell you that fuel is a valuable good and that you must not complain about gas prices $ 2 - 3 per gallon and consider this "expensive". Just have a look at the rest of the world meaning outside the US here.

And I only did this conversion for my car that is a diesel gasoline. Regular fuel is currently about € 1.20 per liter = ~ $ 5.90 per gallon!

As far as gas mileage goes: Am I the only one who thinks that SUVs are a horrible invention? My car needs about 6.5 liters per 100 km = ~ 33 mpg. With the quite popular SUVs it's like 22 - 25 mpg. Who needs those "bulldozers"? They are quite useful if you're a large family and do a car pool but... who does? I've seen a family with 5 members each having a separate SUV blink

Oh, the second incident about my car: My uncle removed a few scratches. You all should see what a posh car I have now

(Just an image, not a photograph of my car, just the model)