My son Arturo is a genius. He’s always on the computers and says he wants to be an astronaut. One day I caught him looking up out of the window, half his body hanging out.  I asked him why and he said “I like to stick my head out the window and smile for a satellite picture.” Then he showed me that on the Internet, but I didn’t see his head.

He sure didn’t get his brains from his father. That man completely spent his last paycheck on lottery tickets. I said, “Xavier, how are we going to pay for our car and health insurance this month” after none of the tickets won. He didn’t have an answer and good thing he didn’t.

I had to find some money for the insurances so I had my daughter help me find a car title loans company.  We went to Waukegan Title Loans, which got us our cash in two days.  That was exactly what we needed.  If I’m going to raise an astronaut, I have to keep the bills paid!

By the way Waukegan is near Gurnee, Lake Bluff, North Chicago, Wadsworth, Waukegan, and Wintrop Harbor.

My grandmother always said, “never answer an anonymous letter.”  That’s the kind of advice we need here in the Internet era.

My sister never listened to grandma.  She is one of those people who got an email from some guy in Kenya who convinced her to give him her bank account numbers.  She thought she was getting $10,000; instead, she lost $670.  Loser!  I barely feel sorry for her, everyone’s heard about that scam.  Oh wait, maybe not if you spend every waking moment watching American Idol, America’s Got Talent, Deal or No Deal, Are You Smarter than a 6th Grader (she’s not).

So that little problem cut her short on cash, boo hoo hoo.  My concern was she already owed ME $300 (yes, stupidity runs in the family). And she needed to fix her car so she could hold onto her job.  So I told her she needed a car title loan.  Of course that took some ‘splainin, but she went online herself (shocking) and found North Chicago Title Loans, where she got $900 for that old Saturn of hers.  She paid me back, got her battery replaced, and kept working down at Gurnee Mills.

And I think she learned a lesson in all of this.  We can only hope.

By the way North Chicago is near, Waukegan, Lake Bluff, Gurnee, Wadsworth, and Beach Park.

You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive. I learned that not only on the Tri-State Tollway, but also every time I drive to my girlfriend’s house in Libertyville. It’s like these people never saw snow before.

But my car is the most important thing I own.  It gets me to work, up to Wisconsin to fish, down to Chicago to party, and lately I learned it can help out with a shortage of cash.  How?  My credit has been bad for several years, and then I had a car accident.  Some babe out of Hunt Club Farms, wouldn’t you know it.  My insurance deductible is $500, and I didn’t have that anywhere.

So I went online, searched around, and found out how car title loans work.  You can use your car’s value to finance anything, and a car repair made a lot of sense to me.  I used Gurnee Title Loans, a car title loan company that works entirely online.  You fill out a form, get approved almost instantly, then get your cash sent to your checking account.  I didn’t have a reason to swear at anyone on that.

By the way Gurnee is near Waukegan, Grayslake, Wadsworth, Milburn, and Antioch.

I saw a woman at the Metra Station wearing a sweat shirt with “Guess” on it. So I said “Implants?”

Both she and my wife weren’t too happy about that. Oh well. I used to do stand up at open mike nights in Chicago in the 1990s, but as you might guess my career didn’t go in that direction. Thank goodness I had my accounting degree. Too bad I worked in print media. I’ve been out of work for seven months now.

The worst part was when the water heater broke down and I wasn’t sure where the money to replace it would come from. So I searched online and found Grayslake Title Loan, a car title loan business that allows you to borrow using your auto as collateral — car title loans are more or less like how a home equity loan borrows against your home value.  You go online, fill out the forms (takes less than 15 minutes), and the money arrives the next business day in your checking account.  We ordered that water heater as soon as we were approved.

It was the thing I needed to keep my family warm this winter. And that’s not a joke.

By the way Grayslake is near Libertyville, Millburn, Wadsworth, Hainesville, and Lake Forest.