Shoelace!

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So. On my way out of the parking lot at the fiber fair — and by “parking lot” I mean “grass” — there was a bump which caused me to scrape the underside of my front bumper, pulling out onto the street. I thought little of it beyond “damn, you guys could fill in the craters once in a while.”

Five miles down the road — in some suburb between Crystal Lake and Elgin — there was a mild bump in the pavement, after which my car started making an unpleasant scraping noise. I was on the phone with Kim at the time, and pulled off into the nearest handy parking lot, which happened to be a (plant) nursery which was closed for the day, which at least kept me from getting funny looks from anyone except a couple of employees leaving for the day, one of whom eventually walked over and stared at me without saying anything — I assume he was planning to ask if I needed help but couldn’t quite find the courage to actually speak, and/or overheard me talking on the phone with Kim and figured I was crazy for babbling about yarn while messing around the underbody of my car. Anyways, I got out and looked under the car, and what had happened was that the skid plate — which is a plastic sheet that covers under the oil pan, etc, between the two front wheels, from the front lower valance all the way back to behind the axle — had lost its front bolt and fallen, and was scraping along the pavement.

(Side note: a replacement skid plate is $160. I say again, Crystal Lake, you couldn’t fill in those craters once in a while?)

But I am a girl of no small amount of ingenuity, and I fixed my busted skid plate, right there in the parking lot of the Platt Hill Nursery: I tied it up with a shoelace from my ice skates. Laced it up nice and tight right through the bolt holes – the ones other than the one in the front which was ripped, presumably from the force of a bolt being pushed through it. I even tucked the ends of the laces away neatly so they wouldn’t drag on the asphalt.

Hey, it worked. Shut up!

okay, time for falling down, going boom now. am exhausted!

i am getting in my car tomorrow and i am driving to cleveland and by god nobody better get in my way because i will drive *over* them if that is what it takes to get a *vacation* around this madhouse.

i still have not posted about my final parcel from my SP9 because i wanted to knit some of the project i started with its contents so i could post a picture of that — and i have only had time to get 7 rows in! 6 of which are garter stitch!

and it’s 11 PM and i am still not ready to pack the car up and go tomorrow morning! MY BRAIN IS MELTING.

“sooo, what brings you, a female, to linux fest?” (sadly, no: emphasis not added.) … there really is no **SIGH** loud enough, some days. did like the guys at the check in desk being mildly flirty though. that part was good. then it was off to spend the rest of the weekend with Kim and family (and animals)… which was just sort of chilling out, relaxing (playing some b-ball outside of the school), followed by a nice, orderly 5.75 hour drive back to chicago. (i had a joke about that but upon transcribing it, it no longer seemed to mathematically make sense. lesson: do not try to do math, niqui, while tired from roadtripping.) anyways. time for bed now. 0600 shift tomorrow! aaaaaand i get to take the pager home with me! HOORAY!!!

depart the office: 1600 on the nose. in the hotel room preparing to call asleep: 0100 on the nose (ET). time spent in chicago stop and go traffic: five minutes, working my way up the skyway ramp from stony island. time spent in ohio stop and go traffic: half an hour to forty minutes, as we hit construction on I-70 about 20 miles east of the IN/OH state line. i should note that although miles and miles and miles of highway was blocked off to one lane, i saw two trucks, neither of which appeared to have anyone doing anything. on the phone to the front desk to get security to tell the idiots in the hallway to shut the hell up: 0230 (ET). (score one for security: i heard drunken laughter and conversation, then MUMBLE MUMBLE IN A STERN VOICE, drunken mumble, MUMBLE MUMBLE, then blissful, blissful silence.) i’m not normally a very vengeful person about stupid bullshit like people being giddy but i have to say that i am just the slightest bit sad that my call was not the call to result in those idiots being thrown out of the hotel. y’all, i was tired. alarm went off at 0730, but it doesn’t matter ‘cos i was already awake. no force on earth could compel a restful night’s sleep for poor sleepy niqui. … also, the christians need to change their marketing materials. i have found hell, and it was neither on fire nor did it smell particularly brimstoney. however, it was unpleasant and i don’t recommend anyone go there: centerville, indiana, where they may have a Warm Glow Candle Outlet but their one BP apparently shuts off the lights and closes for the night at just after 10 PM (especially annoying when you’re down to 1/8 tank and the car is beeping at you to feed it). what are we living in, the dark ages? closed gas station on the highway?? — and then you stop in richmond for what you expect to be about 12 gallons of “shit i gotta get gas before this road trip goes even more wrong” gas and the sunoco pump claims to have sold you 15.58 gallons instead which is strange because — you have records of every time you’ve ever put gas into your car, and the most you’ve ever put in it was 13.6 gallons, and you were pretty sure the gas tank only holds 14 gallons. plus the gauge was still hovering at the top of the 1/8 mark, so either (a) you do have a 14 gallon tank; the pump measures wrongfully and you got ripped off, or (b) you do have a 16 gallon tank, your gauge is reading wrong and in need of repair, and you narrowly averted the disaster of bone-dry fuel injectors. i am not actually sure which of these scenarios is less annoying but i will be checking my owner’s manual as soon as i make it out of the hotel this morning to see what it has to say about the size of the fuel tank. also i am cranky because i was hoping that with my shiny, lovely new tires — installed last weekend, as you’ll recall it took FOUR AND A HALF HOURS — my fuel efficiency would have returned to its pre-august 2005 levels of 32-34 mpg highway. alas, i still did not break 30. i am cranky about that whole situation. am thinking i might write in to click and clack about it actually. am tired of mechanics staring at me funny when i ask about things like spark plugs misfiring or timings needing adjustment (YES I KNOW IT’S COMPUTER CONTROLLED BUT THESE THINGS HAVE A WAY OF GOING WRONG TRUST ME I KNOW QUIT PATPATTING ME ON THE HEAD LIKE A SILLY GIRL AND JUST PLUG IT IN TO THE DAMN DIAGNOSTICS). ahem. … in other news, two linux weenie — by which i mean poorly socialized nerds, the kind of person who’ll bitterly, bitterly argue about why his choice of distro is the best and anyone (such as you) who uses something else is clearly mistaken and must be corrected at length, using as much sarcasm as possible. if you’ve been to any geekly events i know you know what i’m talking about — sightings so far, one last night before even checking in, and i haven’t even made it to the conference hotel yet. i fear for the future. … yes friends, sabrina’s cranky today.

whether or not it will turn out to be terribly useful is unknown, but i am interested in several of the sessions (integration, mysql tuning, ruby on rails, …), and hey, it’s free. and i dunno if i’ll stick around late enough to see it, but maddog is doing the evening keynote, and he’s a fine person to listen to. work’s pitching in so i don’t have to foot the bill myself. so, that’s cool. now if only i could knit while i drive…

things i learned this weekend:

• i-pass and ez-pass are, like, run by the same people. this means i didn’t actually have to pay tolls on the pa turnpike. now if only ohio and indiana would get their asses in gear i would be cooking with gas. indiana are at least planning to implement ez-pass in 2007, but ohio is whining a whole lot about how they don’t have commuters and since they use the ticket system, people ought to just pony up their nine bucks and shut up. i wrote ohio a letter and tried to convince them they were wrong. it probably didn’t work.
• pittsburgh is very hilly. i should have remembered how hilly philly is, and not been surprised, but nooooo, i’m a dumbass.
• pittsburgh also has lots of trees. this, in combination with the hills, means pittsburgh is definitively not “midwestern.” flat states represent!

friday: dinner at penn brewery (appetizer of kartoffelpuffer, entr�e of schweinebraten, and a pint of penn dark — the schweinebraten was fabulous and the portion was hyooge; i was sad at the waste but i could not eat that much food!, and the beer was pretty tasty) followed by driving around until my poor sleepy self could not cope anymore (and/or my host could not cope with my whining about being sleepy anymore; six’a one, half a dozen t’other). saturday, brunch at pamela’s in squirrel hill (i thought very hard about the french toast, which sounded yummy, but in the end went with an omelet) followed by a jaunt out into the countryside to watch some folks get hitched.

then off to shootz on the south side for pool and pints of yuengling (“ying-ling”), to shoot some pool in our wedding-guest finery (though i am forced to admit to having changed my cute t-strap pumps into chucks before leaving the reception — not just to make a fashion statement, either; though, d. changing from a button-down to a clash shirt was fashion-motivated, i believe!). shootz was a bit crowded with the just-turned-21 crowd, but they thinned out after a bit and the table was nice so it all worked out well in the end. also, i did not suck completely, so i was feeling pretty good about that. of course, unlike at kasey’s, there was chalk, so there was opportunity to suck less. sunday involved a strange sammidge-shaped culinary experience involving pastrami, provolone, white bread, french fries, and coleslaw. it actually turned out to taste pretty good, unlikely a combination as it sounds. the fries i don’t think did a whole lot for the sammidge, but the coleslaw was tasty — kinda like mild, crispier sauerkraut. and everybody loves sauerkraut, right? so that was at primanti brothers — well spotted, jonathan! — in (i think) north versailles. then a couple more games of pool, and i honestly do think i play better on three-quarters size tables than full-size tables, oddly, though i think i ended up losing in the end. alas. on the way back from sammidgelandia, picked up a case of iron city beer to take home with me. it’s currently in the trunk of my car waiting for me to head north and pick up the keys to my new apartment, where it shall be the very first personal possession taken inside the new digs. because i have my priorities right in line, my friends; yes i do! then six and three-quarters hours rolling, a smidge over 7 hours in total, straight back home, listening to the game on WMVP AM 1000 (which i picked up just west of cleveland, handily enough) until the rain delay hit. got home just in time for my guys to crush cleveland. i declare this road trip a success.