Friday, July 30, 2004

Oh yeah, it's been a while. And you won't be getting the glorious week post I've been meaning to do, because I'm tired. This will suffice, at least for now: I bought Tales of Symphonia last weekend, and am around thirty hours into it, which I am glad to say isn't near the halfway point.

Superopie and Sageypie were here yesterday and the day before. We played some great DnD and watched various anime and a little Army of Darkness with commentary (that was last week, but still).

My dad woke me this morning, asking what this letter for me was. It was the SASE included with my poetry submissions that were doomed to failure (this was because I misinterpreted one of the submission guidelines). It's even a pink slip, which I found hilarious. Anyone worried for my state of mind will be comforted by this: I opened it, peered down muzzily at it, brandished it (backwards) at my dad whilst mumbling an explanation, and went back to sleep. I may have rolled over to do so, which would have been more dramatic, but I can't be sure.

Today was different, for a hideous reason. I drove into town on my continuing quest for teacups. I failed again. But when I got into my car to head home, I found a hideous clicking noise where my "car start" vroom should have been. Something in the electrical system was (and is) dead. I assumed the battery at the time, but more options, testes-tremblingly more expensive as I heard them, were presented to me. In the parking lot, however, I just needed a jump start (oh, how foolish I was). I circled the shops, and one of the two sandwich constructors at Subway came to my aid. And there was a truck parked to one side of me, and his cables wouldn't reach from the other side. As more people gathered, after another run of help-seeking, to push my car out of the spot so the guy could come around, I looked up and found my cousin Deven standing there. His twelve foot cables reached easily, and I started my car. He did not charge up the battery, which might have been useful. On the hideous ride home I dealt with a speedometer that spent more time on zero than an actual description of my speed, constantly blinking panel lights of all sorts, and a stop-go approach to fuel injection that shuddered my vehicle all the way home. Of course, as I approached the last place I would be likely to require stopping (stopping apparently being a great boon for my vehicle at the time, as it was harder and harder to progress forward after each stop), which was a bare two miles from my home, opposing (and this is true in every sense of the word, really) traffic forced me to halt again. My car didn't make it through that one. Everything died, leaving me in a vague coast with no brakes to speak of and almost no control of my steering. I wrestled the thing through the turn (nearly running into the metal guard things - name of which I can't recall just now) and aimed toward a graveled bit of ground next to a gate that would take my car safely off the road. I got there, found the brakes responded to frantic slamming about as much as they had the forceful pressing of previous, and just geared into park. Luckily I had no real speed, so there was no screaming metal or whiplash. I started the long walk home. After about six minutes a relation who lives across the road, Steve (he was one of the guitar players at the family cookout I wrote about previously, actually) passed by and picked me up. My parents, on their way home from work, stopped and tried to get the car home, as they could jump it, but they jumping was ineffective. So there it still sits, and I've no idea how long it will stay there.

So that was my day. We're dangerously low on soda pop and there's no useful option for getting more, now. (I was going to pick some up after looking for teacups.)