Oh my. I can’t believe this is happening - I feel like I should probably not drive ever again. Let me start at the beginning.

When I lived with my parents, they let me use their 1986 Toyota on occasion. I drove pretty well, but I didn’t drive very often. When I moved in with my girlfriend, her parents sold me a 1983 Chrysler for $200. My driving abilities at that time were atrocious: I had several “minor” fender-benders that happened, for the most part, because I wasn’t paying attention. Eventually I got rid of the car, and we decided I wouldn’t drive anymore. After a while of this, my girlfriend slowly started letting me drive her 1998 Saturn for short trips together, and eventually on errands by myself, etc. When I started interpreting, we borrowed one of her parents’ cars; she drives that and I drive the Saturn. Except I keep having little “oopsies” - snagging a little bit of curb while turning a corner, knocking off a side-view mirror while trying to back out of the garage, things like that. So far nobody else has been involved, which is a good thing.

Today, at around 11:45, I was on my way to work at the mall. This is about a 15-minute drive, just a few miles. I was taking my usual route, but when I went to make a right turn on red (I was hoping to get through before the other cars started coming, as their light had just turned green) I made a big mistake. I clipped the curb big-time, and heard a sickening crunch that terrified me. Fortunately there was a gas station right there, so I pulled in quickly. I got out and looked at the right front wheel - yikes. The hubcap was a little dented, and the tire was deflating right before my eyes. I ran into the shop but the woman said nobody was there who could help me, but that I could try the Mobil across the street. So I did, and they sent one of the mechanics to help me. He was able to get the car jacked up, take off the bad tire (it just had a little hole, from the rate of deflation I thought it had been slashed up), and put on the spare from the trunk. I followed him back to the Mobil and went in to wait; I expected I’d have to pay at least for his time. I waited a few minutes, and one of the other mechanics said “let’s go out and look at that tire.” He determined that they wouldn’t be able to get one for me until Friday, which was fine because I want to shop around anyway. He said, “you’re free to go - Happy Thanksgiving.” Wow! I thought that was really nice.

On the way home after work, though, one of the idiot lights came on - the bright orange one that says SERVICE ENGINE SOON. I have no idea why or what it means or anything, but as I pulled into the driveway I thought I smelled something funny - I don’t know what that’s about.

So once again, I’m afraid to drive at all. I’m supposed to drive up to my parents’ house tomorrow for Thanksgiving, but I don’t want to now. My friend C could drive for me, but what with the spare tire and the idiot light I don’t know if it’s even safe. I’m trying not to be mad at myself, I’m trying to tell myself that accidents happen - but I know these things happen because I’m lazy or not paying attention. They’re not accidents: they’re my fault…and that makes me feel so worthless.

To my astonishment, I can get free high-speed internet access from the mall! There’s an Apple store between L.L. Bean and my store, and they have a few dozen flashy machines (mostly iMacs and iBooks) set up around the store. I walked in and didn’t have to deflect a salesperson - I’ve been standing here for 15-20 minutes and nobody’s offered to help me yet! I figured the server would block me from accessing anything outside apple.com - but I was wrong! So it’s just free fast web for me. Mwahaha!

Oh my goodness. I have found the youngest editor at ODP. He will turn 13 three days before Xmas. I feel positively paleolithic.

My delightful work schedule continues. Today I am interpreting for two and a half hours in Capitol Heights; MapQuest’s directions route me straight through the city and claim I’ll need 59 minutes to go 28.1 miles. I may just take the Beltway…I think going around the south way would be better at this time of day, but I’m not sure. Alternately I could take the same route I do to get to my elementary school - today’s job is near there. After I finish that at 3:30, I have to hustle over to the mall and work there from 5:00 until closing, which means I’ll be done around 10:00pm.

Tomorrow morning I’m going to the airport to pick up a good friend I haven’t seen at a while. Unfortunately, he’s flying JetBlue, so he’ll be getting in at 7:15am! (Did I mention he’s a good friend?) Then I’m working noon to 4:00pm tomorrow, and after that my friend C is coming from New York; we don’t know yet what time his train will get here. Busy busy busy.

I haven’t been writing much over the past few days because I’ve been working a tough schedule at the mall. I feel like my entire life now revolves around that store, but I have an interpreting assignment tomorrow afternoon to look forward to. (Immediately after that, I have to go to the mall.) Tonight I’m working on a few things that have been on my to-do list for a long time, including posting the pictures from Montréal, and the pictures I took of our Hello Kitty bathroom. I’m also considering writing an “airplane crashes” metanode-type document at Everything2, but I haven’t decided yet if I want to. Last night I filled the nodeshell that was Luxair flight 9642, so maybe I’ll look for other nodeshells to research and fill.

Here’s today’s Monday Mission:

1. Have you ever made a wish that came true?
I don’t remember anything in particular, but I try to be realistic with my wishes. Last year I kept wishing for a digital camera for Xmas, and was disappointed when I didn’t get one. My parents gave one to me for my birthday, so that was a pleasant surprise.
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I was curious to read the article that sparked the riots in Nigeria, so I paged through Google News looking for it - the newspaper was called This Day. I came across a couple of interesting differences:

Article from Ananova UK - “Miss World and Muhammad claim leads to arson”
Article from Ireland Online - “Miss World and a prophet claim leads to arson”
Article from ABC News - “Nigerian Muslims Riot Over Miss World Report”
Article from ABC News - “Nigerian Islamists Riot Over Miss World Report”
Article from South Florida Sun-Sentinel - “Nigerian Islamic militants riot over Miss World report”

The situation between Israeli and Palestinian interests is no better. They need to stop fucking retaliating. An attack by one side does not mandate a return attack. Peace can only begin when violence ends. There’s been far too much bloodshed already.

I may not be able to take any action on the fraud front today, because I still don’t have enough information. The SSA’s guidelines for reporting fraud say you must have as much identifying information as possible, preferably including Name, SSN, Date of Birth, Address, and Telephone Number. And I am kicking myself, because I had my hands on both his address and SSN. The latter I got when I interpreted the phone conversation so he could sign up with Verizon to get the second phone line, but I put it on a piece of paper that ended up vanishing. The address - it’s a P.O. Box in DC - was on his pager, which used to hang out on the table upstairs where I could see it anytime. Damn! Hopefully his ex-boyfriend will be able to weasel the information out of him, if I can’t. I still like the thought of going to Velvet and snarling at him, but my mom is right that it’s not such a hot idea. So I can’t contact SSA just yet, because the guidelines also say that you get an autoresponse to your e-mail and then you won’t hear from them again. If I want this to work, I have to get the information right the first time. I don’t care if I have to wait till Monday to accomplish anything, though - I definitely still plan to follow through. What a fucking asshole.

I’ve just discovered Project Dolphin, a setup similar to SETI@Home or other statistics programs that work in the background while you’re computers on. This one counts your keystrokes using a little (61k) program called Pulse, and then periodically pings the Project Dolphin server with the number of keystrokes since the last ping. (It also lets you set it to only ping when you tell it to.) I’m not sure what the point of the project is - as far as I can tell, it’s just fun. But it requires a lot less computer muscle than the distributed computing projects, so I’m playing along. I’ve founded a team for bloggers - there were already a few out there, but none had more than a few members so I figured I’d try starting my own. If you check out the project and decide to do it, do consider joining my team!

It seems to me that this week’s Weekly Wrapup would have been more appropriate for next week, but maybe Mariann is planning to take the day off from devising questions.

1. What is your most favorite Thanksgiving memory? Why?
Probably the family dinner we had for Thanksgiving 1993. If I remember correctly, that was the last time the entire family got together for Thanksgiving. That, too, was the reason I waited until the day after to become a vegetarian. I’d decided to do it a few days before, but we had planned such a big dinner and I didn’t want to ruin everything.
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This morning we realized that the Scumbag Tenant was eating our food, too. I thought I would calm down with time, but right now it’s getting worse. His ex-boyfriend says ST is at Velvet Nation every week…so I’m toying with the idea of going tomorrow night. It’s a club night primarily for gay men, but I hope they get a couple of women in there from time to time. I could get myself in trouble, though, so I’m not sure I’ll do it. I don’t know what I would say to ST, either, but the idea did come into my head so I’m thinking about it.