My wife Lisa and I (for fun) have been talking about our top 5 “Laminated Lists“. After some thought here is what I came up with, though I suppose it is subject to change as I remember new people. For the most part it’s not people most would think of, but I don’t care…

#1 Amelia Warner

#2 Kristin Bell	#3 Scarlett Johansson
#4 Emilie De Ravin	#5 Sophia Myles

Is it odd that the top one is brunette, and all the rest are very blonde? I hadn’t really thought about it until seeing this… So there it is, comments welcome!

Halfway through a long weekend – awesome! My wife and I left and got a hotel room Wednesday after work, just came home today and still a couple days left. We don’t take long vacations, but this sure was nice.

Would have been better if last night a wedding party at the hotel hadn’t kept us up until 3AM, but it’s cool… we complained enough that the hotel comped us for the night.

Hotel stay away from the kids, saw a decent movie (Knight & Day… better than I expected) and had good food. Overall not so bad.

For those who don’t know me, I am an automobile insurance adjuster – which means I get to spend the bulk of my days listening to people lie to me about the things they did, and then paying them. What it boils down to is that people just don’t pay attention to what they’re doing! Right now I’m working on a claim where a driver stopped in the middle of a parking lot, then just stopped and started going in reverse… right into the car behind them.

While I find the insurance industry interesting, it continuously amazes me how little attention people pay while in their vehicles.

Okay, I had an unusal night for dreams last night. All night I had fairly consistent dreams involving aliens and all centered around a nice villa on the coast of San Francisco. Why San Francisco? No idea, I haven’t been there for many years and have never seen a villa quite like this one. In some dreams the aliens were using the villa as their base (to prepare their conquest of Earth, obviously, that’s what aliens do) and in others I am trapped inside the villa with other people unable to escape because there were aliens waiting for us just beyond the grounds of the villa.

In one such dream, I, brave soul that I am (in dreams anyway) decided to try and make my way out to alert people outside to our plight. On my belly I left the main house and started crawling through some tall grass to avoid alien detection. Well, the aliens were obviously pretty observant and started firing at me with their nifty energy weapons. That particular dream ended when an alien laser sight targeted me (insert Predator targeting effect here) and I had no cover to escape to. I was saved from certain death when I startled awake.

That didn’t save me for long though. As soon as I fell asleep I was back in San Francisco, driving at night on a highway high above the villa, observing the aliens arriving in a flashy transport beam. Beside me was my buddy Hannibal King from Blade Trinity, we were making plans on how to stop the aliens.

The night of alien invasion ended in a different dream, as some of us stormed the villa with some stolen alien guns (not sure if Hannibal was with me in that one), and after a mighty battle we were rounding them up in the courtyard of the villa as the alarm woke me up.

Overall very strange to have a running theme in my dreams for the entire night, and to remember so much of them later. Strange enough for me to want to record it for posterity… The aliens by the way sometime looked totally human, and other times were strangely… alien.

Being an auto insurance adjuster on a Monday is a bad thing. If you figure on an average day I get 2-3 claims (2-3 individual accidents) to deal with, after a weekend when they’ve had a chance to build up you’re lucky if you only get 6. 6 claims means 12 drivers to talk to and 12 cars to deal with, each with their own special circumstances.

Being and auto insurance adjuster on a Monday is a bad thing. If you figure on an average day I get 2-3 claims (2-3 individual accidents) to deal with, after a weekend when they’ve had a chance to build up you’re lucky if you only get 6. 6 claims means 12 drivers to talk to and 12 cars to deal with, each with their own special circumstances.

Next Monday will be even worse, after the 4-day Thanksgiving weekend it’s going to be more like 10-12 claims… ouch!

At my particular company we have have a fairly rigid timelines for trying to contact people as well… we need to try and reach both drivers in an accident within 2 hours of the claim being reported to us. Great for customer service, but rough on the adjusters. Doubly frustrating when I need to contact other insurance company to discuss a claim, and they’ve barely even touched it after having it for a couple days!

Maybe I should go back into IT…