In my next career I am going to design gorgeous and varied designs of heater/ventilation/lights for bathrooms and make them available in hardware, lighting, electrical AND bathroom design stores. I spent 8 of today’s valuable hours driving from place to place trying to find a bathroom heater/ventilation unit for our bathroom ceiling.

What I found was the same HUGE plastic looking unit that would need to replace the location of our existing leadlight fixture in the bathroom. I just couldn’t do it.

Our electrician, who has been working in our house for three days suggested we get a heater and ventilation unit for the bathroom given it is so cold in there. I mean - it is really ice cold in there. Taking a bath in there would be like jumping in a hot tub in the middle of an ice storm! We think its a great idea but I had no idea at the time I said I would rush out and find one so it can go in while he is there, that it would be so difficult.

I just can’t believe that in 2007 (soon to be 2008) that they don’t have these units in some form that are display worthy or at least discreet so a plastic looking unit doesn’t have center stage. Am I really asking too much? I am sure we had better units in Australia back when I lived there - and I would be happy to go there an find one but the power conversion would be a headache. For my family and friends reading this in Oz, remember those four bulb units that heat up - they don’t have them here or at least not that I could find in 18 stores in Los Angeles??? I did eventually find a two bulb unit but no one had it in stock - I wonder why!!!! Its the only somewhat okay unit anywhere it seems!

I’m not ready to leave the baby business yet…but when I do - watch out bathroom heater companies (all one or two of you) - here I come!

So I’m sitting here packing my brain with useless information gleaned from the idiot box when I stumble upon a show about a man who built an armored car to drive into a tornado.

Into a tornado.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I am planning at some point in my life to go storm chasing and follow thunderstorms around the midwest just to satisfy my own curiosity about what I see as the ultimate proof of Human insignifigance before nature. That being said, this guy actually drives into a swirling mass of windblown air, dirt, cows, barns, trees, tractor-trailers, houses, dogs and what-the-hell-ever the 250 mph wind scoops up from the ground simply to video tape what it is like.  I’m not really sure I can fathom the impulse to drive something into that. In fact, let me save you a pair of shorts, tornado man:

F*@&ing scary.  That is what it’s like.

There, I said it. Now you don’t have to kill yourself trying to figure that out.
Likewise, I don’t get the people who fund him. As someone who would love to have the money to fund scientific expeditions (or, you know, buy groceries), I can’t see myself saying “hey, you are going to go do something with my money that stands a real possibility to get you killed, so here, have at it” and showering him with not only ungodly amounts of cash, but a really expensive IMAX video camera.  I really can’t.

Who knows, maybe I’m just jealous that I’m not the dude getting paid to traipse all over the country side chasing clouds (I am).