the everyday adventures of sabrina

i'm happy, hope you're happy too

lately i have not had such a great time of it, what with the $1200 in car repairs, the dream car that burned to the ground, being completely out of free time due to spending weekends working, the concert tickets that never arrived, the post office continuing to lose my parcels (and amazon continuing to send me parcels via USPS Priority Mail even when told to use Amazon Prime 2-day UPS shipping, and then writing worthless responses to email enquiries), and chase screwing up my checking accounts leading to money worries, and class eating up my weeknights, and not sleeping enough because i can’t sleep when stressed, and being out of my mind with anxiousness over everything that is going on (and going wrong). and of course i picked this week to quit smoking again because i wasn’t twitchy enough as it was. so… let me just say…

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.

It would have been really nice if you would have shipped my tickets to this Sunday’s upcoming show at the Auditorium Theatre sooner than today. You see, I’m going out of town for the weekend tomorrow, and was anticipating coming back into town, driving straight to the theatre, and going to see the show. But now what’s going to happen is that the nice FedEx man is going to stop by on Friday, ring my bell, find me not at home, and then he’s going to go away, taking my tickets with him. And then I’ll get home Sunday, when FedEx is closed. I’ll have to go drive over there to pick up the package with my worthless tickets in it some weekday next week, like some sort of deliberate taunt. At least last time I failed to see Modest Mouse it was my fault. I ordered my tickets a month ago though. I’m pretty much off the hook for this one.

Really, don’t you think that shipping the tickets two-day air with two business days between shipping and the concert is cutting things a little close? I mean, I know we’re all indie rock and all but some of us do actually stop giving ourselves bad haircuts long enough to leave our houses from time to time. And even those who are too emo to contemplate the big scary world out there sometimes have nice FedEx men who accidentally lose packages. Maybe a little more time would have been not such a bad idea.

I’m just sayin.

disappointedly,
–s.

i have ten thousand things to accomplish in the next 24 hours.

they are NOT HELPED by my inkjet printer suddenly deciding it has to be fed cardstock one page at a time. or my lack of a hole punch and having to run to staples. or having not yet done my homework for class. or or or or or.

i think my head is going to explode.

AIEE.

if my head explodes, someone go feed my cats, ok?

dude.

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i think i’m in love with the guys at nortown.

they took care of my baby car, fixed her all up bright and shiny, and then when i came to pick her up the mechanic who worked on her took me over and showed me what had happened to my rotors, knew exactly why it was (“do you let the car sit for long periods of time?”) and explained how it had happened (not driving leads to rust building up on the rotors’ edges, reducing surface area for the brake pad to make contact, thus resulting in noise and vibration). and he was totally cool about it, didn’t baby me or whatever, he was just really rational and nice. then he comisserated over the price of my battery (i picked a high end battery, an Optima deep-cycle gel pack, for a few reasons, such as “i tend to let my car sit for long periods of time”), and then casually mentioned that since i was due for an oil change soon anyways he just took care of that for me, for no charge.

which. i mean, i was going to take the car to class next week and do the oil change myself, but, how awesome is having service thrown in for free? i mean, okay, once it’s up on the lift and you’re poking around the underbody it’s not a real stretch to pull the plug out and let it drain, but still, it’s extra effort and materials, and it’s an industry not known for throwing in lots of freebies. i thought it was very sweet.

i’m going to go back to the car talk web site, where i found them, and write up a review on their complete awesomeness. seriously, i can just punt my old dealer mechanic off a cliff now, ‘cos Sal took good care of my baby for me. and she rides so much nicer now with clean brakes! i was never particularly bothered by the vibration of the brakes before the service, but now that it’s fixed, it’s just smooth and really a noticeable improvement. i’m extremely happy with my official new mechanic.

the week in review

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i declare the week over. today is a new week, because i used the old week up (and now i’m going to throw it away).

let’s just recap everything that has happened since sunday:
1. $(very close friend) announced that she is moving to the west coast. in like two weeks. i don’t even know when i’ll find time in my schedule to buy her a drink of congratulations for the awesome new job, much less say goodbye.
2. as it turns out, contrary to popular belief, being a manager involves work, and angst, and woe, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth. MUCH time down the drain figuring things out. sadly, existing workload including non-work classes and work not totally eliminated as a result of increased work load. feel like poster child for “thinking is hard.”
3. spent many hours working on a new budget, as it had been a while since the old one was reviewed and revised. this resulted in “wow, i just don’t have *any* money, do i. maybe i’ll take a vacation *next* year…”
4. and then as if to underscore the point, checking account balance (on still main original chase account) drops to actually less than $100 for the first time in a long time. wow, i’d forgotten how exciting it is to live life on the edge!
5. …especially when you get suddenly zinged with $1200 in car repairs.
6. …and you can’t even do anything fun (with the car) this weekend because you have to work a lot.
7. …and then your dream car you have wanted since you were three years old, which you are currently spending a lot of time and making yourself sleep-deprived in order to take classes to learn how to repair, burns to flame-broiled hunks of steel due to being hit by lightning, thanks to this crappy weather lately.

so you can see why i declare the week over. i am through with that week! that week is DONE! i am wadding it up and throwing it in the trash where it can get coffee grounds in its eye. it’s petty revenge, but satisfying.

but all is not doom and gloom. there are some decent things to keep in mind.

1. just think of all the money i won’t have to spend on parts and tools for the car!! (i hate that particular bright side. FYI.)
2. after spending tons of time working through something and starting to read up on management theory, have come up with a game plan for something that’s been plaguing me for literally four to five weeks (and before that it had been merely bothering me). so apparently research works after all. who knew? (SHUT UP, RESEARCH PROFESSIONALS.)
3. had a good laugh after i realized that — on the bright side of my dad’s garage burning flat — some personal documents i’d left in the garage for them to throw in with a fire next time they burned brush are now all burned up just like i wanted. oh, fate, you are a whimsical mistress, aren’t you?

(please stop fucking with my head for a little while, ok? thanks, i appreciate it.)

4. i totally got my taxes done last weekend. procrastination, you are not the boss of me! i win!
5. some jackass ran into me wednesday night when i was catching the red line home after class — the train had pulled into the station and he and i had been waiting to board in the section of the platform where the second-to-front car pulled in, and then he abruptly decided he didn’t want to be on that car and ran for the next car down, running into me in the process and causing me to drop about a dozen stitches on my current sock-in-progress off the needle by yanking on my yarn as he passed, some of which immediately ran as many as four or five rows down, leaving me with a really big mess to clean up. i got it all under control before the train made it to fullerton, and even got a couple more rows done before i got home, which means i am a badass transit sock knitter for whom no dropped stitch holds fear, even grey yarn on #1 needles in a dim el car. (Indecisive Man is still an idiot, though.)