What a day…
Well, Tuesday’s come and gone, and it felt like Monday. Why? Well, let’s reflect.
I got up bright and early, and was rather excited to be walking out the door to head for work at 7:45 this morning. Why? With all of the new hires, it’s gotten increasingly difficult to park without having to hike three miles out to my car, and I was hoping to land a perfect spot this morning. I walk out to the car, put my briefcase in, sit down, insert my key, and turn the ignition.
Nothing. Not even a flicker. The car is dead.
I tried my best to avoid panicking (which isn’t always easy when you’re driving a 17 year old Buick) and began to assess the situation. What could be wrong with my car? Surely it didn’t just die overnight, did it?
That’s when I saw it: My headlights were on. I’d come home during broad daylight, and I left my headlights on. Great.
So I calmly, collectedly, walk back into the apartment and rouse my roommate (not like the time I discovered my missed calling and started barking orders like a drill sergeant to my still half-sleeping roommate when my car got towed). Thankfully, Brennan does have jumper cables so, after watching him try to electrocute himself, we got my car running. I go to work, carry on about my day, drove out to lunch. Car’s working fine! No need to worry. Then I get off work, go to my car (three miles from the building), put my briefcase back into the car, sit down, insert the key, give it a crank, and…
Nothing. Didn’t I already play this game? That’s right, I did, only the first time I had my roommate the bail me out. At this point, most of my Farmer’s compatriots have already left for the day. So here I am, stranded, few people left at the office, and no jumper cables. Then Mallorie walked out, so I start shouting at her to see if she, by any chance, has jumper cables. By jove, she does! So I asked if she’d be kind enough to pull around so I could get the car started again.
New learning for the day: If you put a Buick into neutral, it is actually completely possible to push it with only one foot. Unfortunately, Buicks have power steering, so when there’s no power, it’s a pain to steer. But I was able to get back far enough that Mallorie could get close enough to hook the batteries together.
At this point in the day, I had to face a fear of mine. You see, when my car was jumped earlier, I let my roommate do all of the battery hooking. Why? I have this ungodly fear of electrocuting myself. It always sounded like a terrible way to die. Additionally, I’m always nervous I’m going to cross the wires and blow the car up. However, I have a woman helping me out here, and somewhere along the line the testosterone kicked me in the butt and said “Man up and do it, you wuss!” So, with much fear, trembling, and prayer, I hooked the cars together, had Mallorie fire hers up. I get into my car, crank the key, and I get a noise. Not, however, the roar I was expecting out of my caged tigress of a Buick. Indeed, I’m getting some power, but I can’t get it to turn over. I’m now forced to re-face my fear and check the connections. Sure enough, I didn’t have a solid connection on my battery. So I prayed (again) and reached into the engine and adjusted it, walked back to the car, and cranked it again. After a couple more cranks, the engine roared to life, I gave Mal her cables back, thanked her, thanked God that someone I knew was there and had jumper cables, and drove to Les Schwab. As little as I may know about cars, I know if you have to jump it twice in one day, that’s not a good sign. I rolled in,told them what I needed, they told me it’d be about an hour, so I told them “Great, I’m going to get dinner.”
I walked up past Tigard music (which brought back all sorts of warm fuzzy memories from middle school, but I’ll write about that another day) and into Big Town Hero. Ordered a sandwich, told my troubles to the poor high schooler stuck working there, and went about wolfing down the Italian on white.
I then started wandering back towards Schwab’s, decide to detour in to Tigard Music and look about in awe. I can barely play guitar, but for some reason Fender Stratocasters have always fascinated me. I don’t know why, they just looked cool. I also looked at the band instruments a bit, and remembered band class with Mrs. Balk in middle school. I was a trombonist, which clashed horrendously with my personality (Large, loud, brass instrument with the shy, quiet, socially awkward middle schooler… I was almost unwittingly compensating for my underdeveloped social presence..). Oh, why did I ever stop playing?
Wait, that’s right, another time, another blog. Back to the current events.
After killing about 10 minutes just looking at the shiny objects and wondering if they had a music book for the Bourne Ultimatum soundtrack (which would’ve been pointless if they’d had one because I don’t remember much of my music reading from middle school anyway, I know B-flat and can find middle C on a piano, but that’s about it…), I wandered back over to Schwab’s and sat down in the waiting room, fixated on the commercials for deadliest catch. I miss having discovery channel, I wish I could get just that and history channel from the cable company, if only they sold you channels a la carte…
they come to me, tell me my car’s ready, and “Did you know your front tires are looking pretty bad?”
Just give me the battery, when my tire blows out, I’ll call you. :-p
I go on to financial class, come home, and nearly die of a heart attack because where there once was a wall with a closet built in it, there is now… a frame, devoid of walls, or, for that matter, the closet, because they’re installing washer-dryer hookups. I’m moving in a month, can this not wait until after I’m gone?
Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the ability to change those that I can, and the sound mind to avoid burying a contractor out back for messing with my last month living with the best roommate I’ve had by tearing my apartment apart while we’re still living in it… :-p
Oh, and Countdown: 9 days until I’m a quarter-century old. There will be little (if any) fanfare about it, I’ve finally hit the age where I don’t even remember I have birthdays and don’t bother to plan anything because half the people I’d invite would be busy anyway!
Just remember, kids, in spite of all my ranting about it… God is good, even on the days that nothing goes right. =)
Until tomorrow (or the next day, depending on how I feel)…
