Well, that was fun. We were running errands around town, and everything was going fine. We stopped at one place and both of us went in, and then when we got back in the car it balked at starting but finally relented.

At the next stop, only A had to go in, so I stayed in the car and left it running. After a while I thought “it’s not too hot, I shouldn’t let it idle,” and I turned it off. When A came back out, I went to start it…and got nothing. We called AAA and got an estimate of 90 minutes, so we put up the sunshade and waited. I got the idea to try the engine again, and it tried to start. So a little while later I tried again - and it started!

We drove to A’s parents’ house and unloaded some stuff - without turning off the car - and then I drove to Saturn while A followed in her parents’ car. Mine won’t be seen until Monday morning, unfortunately, but this time they better replace the starter.

MP3 Phone Post (362k, 1m41s)

This absolutely, totally sucks. When I leave work, I can either jump onto Route 1 real quick, or I can take I-95. Now, normally I take 95, because I’m going home and it makes more sense to go that way. But today I have to drive to Baltimore, and for some reason I still took 95. So I have wasted about an hour by making that mistake. I am still sitting on the Beltway, trying to get to the Wilson Bridge, and it sucks a LOT. I left work about 45 minutes early because I wanted to get going and get to this event that I’m doing this weekend, and I can’t believe I did this. It would have saved me SO much time to take Route 1, and this is just ridiculous that traffic is this bad. Welcome to the DC area, folks. Because very few places have traffic this bad that you can get stuck for so long in such a short span of miles - FOR NO REASON. It’s not that there’s an accident, it’s not that there’s, I don’t know, a speed trap or something, no - it’s just normal that you’re totally stuck and it just sucks so bad. And it’s my fault, I’m the one who went the wrong way, but I did want to get going and I managed to completely waste about an hour. I’m not even up to Route 1 yet. So I completely wasted a bunch of time, and I figured what else should I do but make a Phone Post? So there it is. Take care, kids. Bye.

It has been an interesting 24 hours. We arrived in NYC at 3:30 yesterday, and parked in what was technically an illegal space until 6pm, but there were so many other cars parked there that we figured we’d be okay. We came back two hours later…and the car was gone. So we found out which impound lot it had been taken to, and how much it would cost to get it back. A then went to the opening event for her perfume festival, and I went to the opening event for the Leather Leadership Conference.

I’d been promised the other terp was on the way, but she never showed up. Two of the deaf guys never came back from “grabbing a bite real quick” but aidan_boi_x was there and I interpreted for him. Fortunately he’s more English than ASL, so my brain wasn’t quite the pile of goo it could have been.

A was waiting for me when I was done, and we walked to the impound lot about a mile away. We paid $185 for the towing - which seems like an awful lot per car - and discovered two $65 tickets on it. The pound attendant told us one would be dismissed, because they’re not supposed to write tickets for the same offense twice. The first ticket was from 4:10pm, and the second was from 5:00, so the second was written before the tow truck arrived from the first ticket. So she told us to fight that one.

We parked the car again - legally this time - and went to bed. I had a hard time falling asleep, because I was worrying about what I would do if I ended up teaching the 9:30am ASL class.

I got back to the hotel this morning - and nobody had heard from the other interpreter. Well, that’s not completely true - she had responded to my email at 1:00am and said she wasn’t due in until the morning anyway and she’d be there. Yeah, whatever. By 9:00 I was seated in the workshop room and people started arriving…but not the other interpreter. So at 9:30 I started the class and did the best I could. Toward the end, a deaf guy came in asking about interpreting services; I said I could do it when I was done with the workshop so he stuck around and helped me answer questions.

When that was done, we went to the session the deaf guy wanted to hear; the other deaf guy in attendance showed up too. It was very interesting, but it was a long 75-minute workshop. After that I got some lunch; I’d meant to bring mine but I wasn’t expecting to be there till lunchtime - or rather I was expecting it, but I was hoping against it.

On my way back in, the coordinator for the event saw me and thanked me profusely. Apparently all the evaluations from my workshop were positive - and I’ve never taught any sort of workshop before! He was very grateful, and I could tell I was saving the day by stepping in to help out even though I hadn’t been asked to. One of the people in my workshop was the coordinator for the contest the other terp holds the title for, and she was “livid” (her words) that the other terp hadn’t shown up. She asked for my card, so I think I’ll be interpreting for that contest too (in Philadelphia), plus with my super-willingness to help out, I should get future gigs from that too. Which means money, yes, but it’s also a point of pride that I stepped in, helped out, and further established myself as reliable.

As for the other terp, who knows. When the coordinator mentioned how great my evaluations were, I asked about the other terp. He said “oh, let’s not even go there…” heh! So I am interpreting another workshop 10 minutes from now, and then probably another after that. A’s perfume events run to 6 or 8:30 (depending on if she goes out for drinks), so I will just relax a bit once this is done. And then I’ll probably be back tomorrow. Fortunately I get to bill for all this extra work!

Health: My health and its insurance continue to be a major pain in the ass. More runaround with Medco and my doctor’s office, but this time the receptionist is planning to put a one-month prescription in the mail to me to hold me over until we get things sorted out. The reason she is mailing it is because she apparently forgot to leave it taped to the door on her way out on Friday, resulting in me driving all the way out there for nothing.

Also, I have to get blood drawn, which I am not keen on because even though I’m not afraid of the needle I still end up passing out most of the time. But I’ve never had my cholesterol tested so I really do need to get the blood drawn. I just hope I can find the damn prescription again.

Car: It’s been making knocking noises since the beginning of the month. I am finally taking it in. It sounds like something is just loose underneath, so hopefully it will be a simple fix, but with my luck it will cost a pretty penny anyway.

GPS: A’s parents gave me a Garmin Legend for my birthday! Unfortunately my laptop didn’t have a serial port, so last night on eBay I purchased a USB-to-serial cable for under $10 including shipping. Hopefully it will actually work. Now I can play around with geocaching, whee! And since the satellites are up in the sky, it actually works in my house, compared to my cell phone, whose transmitter is earthbound and who doesn’t work down in my little valley.

I have vague feelings of being out of control, and my anxiety is a little higher than normal. I don’t like it.

I learned something last night: I cannot drive in New York City. Specificially, I cannot park a car in Manhattan. We had parked for the week on a street with a school, so the signs said “No Parking 8am-6pm School Days.” The kids have been on vacation all week, but this morning they returned to school so we had to repark the car last night. I agreed to do it, and I set off in the dark and rain to attempt to park the car. To summarize: it didn’t work. I was scared of the cabs that kept getting beside and in front of me, I couldn’t keep track of one-way streets, people kept wanting to walk in front of me, I couldn’t figure out where to find actual valid parking, and - worst of all - I couldn’t defog the windshield except for a tiny halo around the bottom. If I hadn’t been so frazzled by the rest of it, I would probably have figured out that the air system was actually pointing at my feet and not at the windshield at all. But everything all put together left me rather freaked out, and I had to park in front of a fire hydrant in front of C’s building and run upstairs to say “I can’t do this! Come help me!” (I’d left my cell phone with my purse, which I hadn’t brought with me.) I think that if it had been daytime I might have been okay, and if it hadn’t been raining I probably would have been fine. But that combined with the usual hazards of city driving just pushed me over the edge, so I’m not keen to try it again anytime soon. The only thing I do trust myself to do is retrieve the car and park it in front of the building for loading purposes…anything else would scare me.

Saturn cars are plastic. Plastic is bouncy. Bouncy is good when you get rear-ended. A couple of months ago I was bumped by someone at a red light near home; it felt very minimal so I hopped out and checked both out bumpers and everything was fine. Just now, though, everything was not fine. It was the same situation - I was stopped at a red light - but she hit me pretty hard. She immediately jumped out and apologized and said “it’s my fault” (which you should never do, even if it was obviously your fault as this was) and offered to exchange insurance info, etc. I saw her hood and one headlight were smashed and I was worried for my car…but the only defect on my plastic bumper was a bit of something that turned out to be a seed pod and not from the accident at all. Because it was dark and windy and cold we just exchanged business cards; she works in my building so if my bumper suddenly falls off I can get in touch with her easily.

I don’t think it will, though. Plastic is bouncy, and bouncy is good.

Well, I made myself late for work, but I was a good samaritan. Someone had struck a deer on Route 50 just before Prosperity, and it was dying in the right lane as people just drove around it. I pulled over and called 911, and within about three minutes there was an officer on the scene. I said “it’s still alive” and she said “yeah, we’re gonna have to put it down.” She made me get behind my car and she looked at the deer for a couple of seconds before getting out her service weapon and shooting it. She took it by the hind legs and pulled it off the road, but it wasn’t dead so she had to shoot it again. I got back into my car and she got back into hers and pulled over on the median in front of me. I was going to just go, but she got out and walked back to me. She asked if I was the one who had struck it (no), and if I had seen who did (also no). She said she would help me get back into traffic (people were driving by to my right), and she stopped both lanes and let me get back on the road.

If you want to hear about the gore, click here to translate the following. I’m sharing this because I saw it, and I have to record it for myself, but it’s graphic so I’m encoding it. If you want to mention this section in your comment, please encode it at the same link.
Jura V svefg fnj gur qrre, vg ybbxrq qrnq. V chyyrq bire naljnl. Naq gura V fnj gung vg jnfa’g qrnq, vg jnf dhvgr nyvir, ohg greevoyl vawherq. Vgf gnvy jnf n srj lneqf njnl naq vgf gnvyobar jnf ivfvoyr. Vg jnf n lbhat znyr jvgu whfg bar irel fznyy nagyre. V jngpurq va ubeebe naq qvfznl nf vg gevrq ercrngrqyl gb trg hc. Vg tbg vgf srrg haqre vg n srj gvzrf, naq bapr vg rira tbg n srj vapurf bss gur tebhaq, ohg vg pbyyncfrq ntnva. Gurer jnf n ybg bs oybbq ba gur ebnq, naq zber pbzvat sebz vgf zbhgu. V pna’g rzcunfvmr rabhtu gung guvf qrre jnf NYVIR. V ubcr vg jnf va fubpx ng yrnfg fb vg jnfa’g va cnva. Jura gur bssvpre fubg vg gur svefg gvzr, vg gjvgpurq n ovg, naq nf fur qenttrq vg bss gur ebnq vg sybccrq nebhaq - jr obgu xarj vg jnfa’g qrnq. Fur jngpurq vg sbe n srj zber frpbaqf orsber gnxvat nvz ntnva. Gur thafubgf fbhaqrq yvxr sverpenpxref - whfg bar ybhq ONAT naq gung jnf vg. Nsgre gur frpbaq fubg, gur qrre sybccrq n pbhcyr bs gvzrf naq gura jrag vagb greevoyr pbaihyfvbaf sbe n srj frpbaqf zber.

As I approached work, I heard a traffic report: “Route 50 and Prosperity, a report of an accident a short time ago.”

Goodnight, Bambi. Sleep well.

Note: I took a couple of snapshots. Here is the deer alone on the road, and here just before she shot it. (The glare in the second one is the sun, not the gunshot!) These pictures are not gory, but they might not be for sensitive readers.

Okay, my car stuff is all up to date. My experience with the Maryland State Police was less than ideal. First, I was waiting out there for a long time, so I finally called back. Sure enough, the first dispatcher I had spoke with was rushed and hadn’t taken information she was supposed to - like my phone number. The second dispatcher confirmed that someone had gone out looking for me but hadn’t driven down I-270 far enough, so they had turned back. When he finally got there, he was able to yank the part off the car (turns out it is called the “lower air deflector”) and he also asked to see my license. He brought it back to his vehicle and ran it - this was before he messed with my car, so I assume it’s standard procedure - and when he came back to me he asked if that was my car. I told him no, it’s my spouse’s, and he asked to see the registration. I pulled it out and he said “whose car did you say this was?” I said “well, my partner’s.” He got it after that, and said “oh, like your girlfriend’s, your wife’s.” He pointed to the address on the registration and said “you live here?” (He had already handed me back my license.) I said I did, and he thanked me and I was on my way again.

I drove straight to Saturn in Fairfax, where I was told they couldn’t do anything for me today. I thought I was going to have to take tomorrow off to get it fixed, but it turned out we could borrow my in-laws’ car so that was okay. But the guy at Saturn was utterly useless - he was totally non-committal when I asked about whether or not I needed to get this fixed right away. So I was planning to drop it back off tonight, but thanks to comments and e-mails from missakins, kg4yef, and others I was able to determine that this really isn’t particularly vital. I called Saturn and got to speak to the other guy in the service department, who confirmed that it wasn’t really necessary to fix that part at this time of year. It pulls air up into the radiator to help keep the engine temperature down, so I will need to get it fixed by next summer, but he said the chances of anything happening now are slim. Whew!

I took the car to Jiffy Lube for its regular service (this was on my schedule for today all along), and I asked the guy about the air deflector. He said it was basically just a piece of plastic and not essential at all. So I’m feeling much better…at least I don’t have to get this fixed tomorrow. I asked the Jiffy Lube guy if I would be okay on road trips between now and when I get the air deflector fixed, and he said that as long as I wasn’t planning to drive over 200mph (!) I would be fine.

Could my life suck any more right now? I just had a very nice breakfast with tikva and I was on my way to meet up for lunch when suddenly the car started dragging something on the ground. Turns out to have been the front flap thing. I bumped the curb when I was parking in Rockville and I guess that made it come of. Now my lunch plans are fucked and I am waiting at the side of the road on I-270S for the Maryland State Police to send motorist assistance. I’m cold because it’s breezy here on the interstate and I didn’t bring a jacket because obviously I wasn’t expecting to be out here. I hope they come soon. I am really disappointed about missing lunch and about having to pay to get the flap fixed. But first I have to get it the rest of the way off so I can drive to the Saturn place in Fairfax. This totally sucks.

Today we went to the Wolf Trap box office to pick up some tickets for shows that aren’t until April. (This one and this one.) It feels weird planning something so short so far in advance. One plans vacations in advance, but a show? How does Wolf Trap even know they will be having the show? Are shows usually sold so far in advance? Weird. We also stopped at a yarn shop called Uniquities.

We tried going to Costco to get my tire replaced, but it turns out 1998 Saturn sedans were made with a bizarre special tire that is no longer available. Cooper Tires makes one that matches the original, but they didn’t have it at Costco. Fortunately the mechanic who helped us mentioned a shop up the road that would have the Cooper tires. So we headed up to Craven Tire & Auto - it was easy to find - and sure enough they were able to do it. A wasn’t sure about patronizing a Christian auto repair shop; they had a sign up that said “our mission is to serve God by providing quality auto service” and a “spiritual literature center” with pamphlets and free NIV bibles. I didn’t care, though - our only other option was the Saturn dealership, and I knew they’d charge more for it. We went to a Chinese restaurant while they fixed the tire, and only had to wait about 10 minutes after returning before my car was done. The total cost for two tires (we should have replaced all four but couldn’t afford it, so we just did the front ones) and the installation was about $160. The tires were $60 each but installation was $18 each, and then they gave us $10 off the total.

Right now we’re watching Neverwhere, which I’d heard was horrible but I’m actually rather enjoying it. I think you have to treat it like the silly British television it is, and look through the acting to the Neil Gaiman story underneath. It’s a good story - I like it so far.