The Hunt for Red Hyundai
The first folks I asked for transport to Roanoke had other commitments, and that’s completely understandable: this all happened on pretty short notice. I was getting a little panicky about finding someone.
Then, by the sheerest coincidence, I was talking to a friend on Thursday night who’s a woodworker. He had an appointment in Staunton on Friday, and casually volunteered to drive me the rest of the way down I-81. I couldn’t say no! The trip turned into quite the adventure, as his delivery truck has no stereo, no AC, windows which must be wrestled into place by hand, and (it turned out) a bad left turn signal. But, while the whole excursion was draining, the conversation was great. I have no complaints.
Thanks to missed connections and three separate car-accident highway backups, the trip took nine hours, and I reached Mom’s place around 11 or so. We chatted briefly, but I had to beg off because my energy levels were almost non-existent. When I came back in the morning, we talked for quite a while, and I fixed her air conditioning set up, the new shower sprayer, and her computer’s Internet connection. When it came time to leave, I took her red Hyundai back to Chesapeake as promised. The five-hour drive on Rt. 460 stayed pleasant, and I got home in time to surprise Starr with a scallop dinner after her workday.
Today, I have done nothing useful. I am exhausted, and the house needs a lot of work still, but I have managed little. I will need to make up for it this week. And now to whine about something trivial: today, the ‘not-Easter’ celebration starts in WoW, and it begins with a ‘not-Easter’ Egg hunt. This is a lovely idea, except there’s some nice rewards for collecting large numbers of eggs, and you can’t get to any of the places where they appear; the micro-second an egg spawns, someone else has already clicked on it, and it fades right back out. People are ‘camped’ at all the spawning points, collecting eggs. Perhaps they’ll get bored, or finish, and I’ll have the chance to pick up a few after work later this week. 🙁
Car and house and car
Okay, quick recap of the last ten days: Starr’s doing really well. She’s had to do a lot more physical labor than someone who’d just left the hospital should, but since I was working my butt off as well, I really couldn’t relieve her of the necessity.
The rest of our stuff is out of the storage unit and in the house, and 95% of Starr’s parents’ stuff is out of the house. There’s an epic tale right there, but I’ll just say that this is why she and I are still physically exhausted. The house is a wreck, but we’re working on that a bit at a time.
The insurance company paid off the car loan on the PT Cruiser, but won’t provide for a new vehicle. Of course, we’re still trying to buy a house, and extra funds are non-existent. So, my mom has generously offered to loan Starr her car for a while, which is a perfect solution; if I can pick up the vehicle this weekend, she won’t miss a day of work. Only problem: the car’s in Roanoke. I’m going to need to plead with someone to come up with me and drive one of the cars back. I haven’t figured out who to ask, yet.
I’ve been a little forgetful recently. I think my brain’s overloaded. Have to come up with a workaround for that.
No More Collisions!
How I Spent My Saturday Night (or, another of many reasons I’m behind on much correspondence)
I dedicated my afternoon to the kitchen and living room, as I’d promised – got them looking pretty good, too. Around 7:30, Starr called to let me know she was on her way home, so I started dinner (boxed stroganoff).
Just before 8, my cell lit up with an unknown number, but I went ahead and picked up. It was Starr – she was calling with a borrowed cell phone from the scene of the car accident she’d just been in. I later found out that someone else had apparently missed a turn; and in confusion occupied the middle lane of a 60 MPH highway, doing about 20. Starr came out from behind another vehicle that was spewing smoke (oil leak perhaps?), saw brake lights, and did her best to stop in time.
All her windows shattered, and the airbag fired. The accident totaled her PT Cruiser’s front end, doing an estimated $8,000 in damage. Starr’s seatbelt and airbag did their jobs, and we later discovered that her greatest injuries were bruising from the restraints. A passerby unjammed her door and helped her from her car, and medical professional that she is, she quickly went to assess the other driver for injuries (no serious issues there either).
I abandoned dinner to spoil, issued a quick Twitter note to the world, and jumped right into the car. I didn’t speed – I mean, how stupid would a car wreck on my part have been right then? – but I somehow reached the hospital before Starr. A number of people replied with support on Twitter, Facebook, and email, and I would later find many phone messages after I left the hospital’s signal interference. Thank you all so much! One of the first things I did was pass along everyone’s messages, and they boosted morale for us both! (Thank you, jsciv, for the “Creeps” recommendation: Starr played that until we nearly killed the phone battery!)
Several X-Rays and five hours later, they decided that Starr was merely bruised, and sent us home. We’ve spent much of today trying to recover from adrenaline overdose and poor sleep. We already have some lines of attack with securing a replacement vehicle. The funny thing is that today’s a happy day for us. First of all, Starr literally walked away from a full-speed highway crash. Second of all, we’ve had our friends pouring out love to us all night and day; how could we be grumpy?
Thank you all!
A Fanatical Devotion to Admiral Maddox
Speaking of cons, tonight Starr and I were doing just that (speaking of them, that is). Thomas Atkinson friended me back on Facebook today, and when I told Starr that I had an old costume skit of his on VHS, she begged me to dig it up.
That tape, dating from RoVaCon 15 back in 1990, also contains one of the most elaborate Starfleet Vice skits we ever did. The performers for this installment included myself as officer Stubble, Heather McLaughlin and Valerie Brugh as “Dirty Pair” Kei and Yuri, time_shark as a KODRA Dreadlok, markush as Doctor Whizbang, Tom Monaghan as officer Paisley, Mike Layne as officer Harold, and Beth Lipes as officer Ruth. The camera operator for the con spent most of the skit focusing on the skimpy anime costumes Heather and Valerie wore.
Many of the jokes are esoteric, but some of them are still fairly funny outside of the late-80s Starfleet context. This little performance would be a good candidate for my first test of the new video-to-computer setup, right? I think we all want to see this posted.
Starr says I’m much better looking now than I was when I was nineteen. Any doubts as to why I’m in love with her?
Norf Wind Bwoah!
Somehow, Starr has lived this long without seeing “Duck Amuck” or “What’s Opera, Doc?“! Luckily, Turner Classic Movies put on a special Chuck Jones tribute tonight, and a Tweet from kittykatya alerted me to the fact. Starr’s cultural education is now increased.
Luckily, she’s the type of person who can properly appreciate a classic Looney Tunes short, and her reaction to each consisted of “This is my new most favorite cartoon ever!” The woman has taste. It’s amazing how funny a cartoon can be without focus groups, Nielsen ratings, a merchandise line, or a stream of “notes” from studio executives. The folks at Termite Terrace just made films they liked, and hoped other people would too. It worked.
I note that Daffy Duck used the “D’oh!” exclamation long before Homer Simpson. Also, Starr will never again hear “Ride of the Valkyries” without the word “wabbit” echoing in her head. Heh heh heh.
Nano Nanu
I bought Starr an iPod nano for Christmas 2007, in the hopes that she could use it to listen to her music library and crochet podcasts on her work commute (nearly as long as mine). As well, she received a device that played her iPod through her car stereo. This caused a problem: the device plugged into her cigarette lighter, which hadn’t worked in years.
Today, I finally found the round tuit for correcting that problem. After some Googling, and removing her car’s engine air filter, I found the likely electrical fuse, and learned it was indeed blown. Starr admitted to spilling some liquid in the lighter socket once upon a time, and I had hopes for an easy repair. One trip to Auto Zone later, and the little iPod broadcaster works great.
This just makes me terribly happy. I finally got around to fixing the issue I’d promised to, and fixed it properly with a little skull sweat and some digging under her PT Cruiser’s hood. Getting something done is such a good thing.
Culinary kitbashing
The pichitas are a smash hit. I used sausage, Starr had octopus and aged gouda with hers, and they are utterly delicious. For me, the light sauce, cheese, sausage, and chicken with faint garlic balanced perfectly! Starr ate of hers until she didn’t have a square inch of room.
It was tricky having everything ready and cooked properly, but I think I pulled it off. I’ll be making that again!
Daft music, schedules, and composing
Now that I’m digging the Daft Punk, everyone’s been saying over and over that I needed to get the Alive 2007 album. Picked it up this weekend, finally listened to it with the speakers turned up on my morning commute. That’s some fine commuting music, that is.
It looks like Starr won’t be making it to Technicon Last; she can’t get out of working that weekend. Her shifts are crazy – it’s a regular thing for her to have five days off in a row, but somehow her scheduled weekend shifts always fall on convention dates. It annoys us both. She has more than enough PTO to cover it if she took off, but that requires a great deal of shift-trading, and for some reason few of her co-workers want to work extra weekend shifts. Can’t imagine why.
I may have a very memorable con costume this year.
I like Twitter because it provides useful writing exercise in expressing onself succinctly. I shouldn’t fret, though, if I miss a few dozen because I’m away from a ‘Net connection. Most of the stuff I’ll want to know shows up in LiveJournal, and LJ’s much easier to keep up with. (Blogging of any kind forces me to keep in mind two good practices: try to avoid that cursed passive voice, and don’t write a novel where a couple of paragraphs will get my point across better.)
Ye Olde Abandonede Warehouse
Last night we had the complete gaming group together for the first time since the Shadowrun game started. Jesse’s razorgirl and Amy’s decker joined in as the group looked for a place to hide their rock singer. The group procured a rent-a-squat, obtained food and water, and decided to turtle up and wait out their contract.
Brief updates
- 09:31 @meiran Awesome! Very well done! Are you going to shoot for “Elder” in the last couple days you have left? #
- 09:44 A 32-degree morning seems much balmier compared to the 12-degree ones last week. #
- 10:05 Dangit, I have just accidentally spammed Starr’s work address with the invite to the Shadowrun tonight. Hurr, me use computer good. #
- 11:47 @meiran I picked up the coins for all of Kalimdor yesterday (not counting capital cities). The Horde outposts were a bit exciting 🙂 #
- 12:01 I think the guy two people ahead of me in the lunch line was trying to pay in Euros or something. #
- 13:15 Wish I could leave early. I still have dishes and laundry to put away before gaming. And the Xmas tree should come down someday too. #
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