Wow, this has been quite the great start to a week for me. How should I begin? Well, Monday (yesterday), I went to class, and I brought my camera (Nikon D40) into class with me. All well and good, but when I left, the camera didn’t. So I’m driving back, and I stop in Hartselle to get some gas, and I see something I wanted to take a picture of. That’s when I realize I don’t have my camera with me, and that I’d left it in the classroom! So I frantically look for my syllabus, and try to call either of my teachers who use that classroom, but everyone at the school has already left for the day. Great.
So I head over to Jennifer’s, and borrow her computer to send emails to both of my teachers telling them, and asking them to call me if they find it. Tuesday morning I wake up, check GMail, and get a response from one instructor (at 7:30 AM, so there had been no classes yet), telling me that he couldn’t find it anywhere. So now, while I’m preparing for a brief bout with a friend called Nervous Breakdown, and thinking about having to make payments on something that I don’t actually own any more, I get a call from my other teacher around 11:30, letting me know that she’d found it and put it in her office.
¤ Crisis Averted ¤
So with that problem solved, I pack up my stuff, and get ready to head down to Huntsville and pick it up. I also needed to drop off a job application, and do some research for my History paper while I was down there, so it wouldn’t be a wasted trip.
Well, about halfway down the interstate to Huntsville, going 80 MPH, my transmissions decides to just quit. So now my holding down the gas is doing nothing, and I’m quickly losing speed, so I pull over to the side of the road and park it. I shut it off, cranked it back, tried to put it into gear—nothing. So I shift it into reverse—again, nothing. So I make a few calls and, turns out my mom is up in Decatur not 10 miles from my location, so she agrees to pick me up, and heads on the way.
She gets there, and we look it over, and decide there’s not much we can do. So we make a call to a wrecker (actually our insurance company—fortunately they pay for towing charges) and ask them for an ETA. They tell us 60 minutes. Okay, fine, we can wait that long I suppose. Oh wait, did I mention there are three small children in the back seat? Nope, probably didn’t, but that’s an important part to remember. So for the next hour I got to listen to them, and then we decided we’d call the wrecker back to see how close they were to getting there. Their response?
Oh, it’ll be around 2 or 3 hours before we can get there. We tried calling, but we got your voicemail.
Okay, here’s where I get on my pedestal and enlighten you about the wonders of voicemail. What it does is, when someone cannot answer their phone, allows you to record a voice message to tell people important information so that they can hear it once they are able to answer their phone. Important information such as, I don’t know, a two to three hour wait while we’re stranded on the interstate?
So we use the wonders of technology and search Google for local wreckers from our cellphones, to see if we can find another one to pick us up instead. We find one fairly close by who tell us they can definitely be there within the hour.
*sigh*
Okay, that’ll do. An hour goes by, and sure enough, they show up to tow my car (That gave us just enough time to search around and find somewhere to take it to get it repaired.) So we decide on taking it to Mr. Transmission, since we’re pretty sure the transmission is shot—remind me never to buy a Taurus/Sable again, these guys just don’t last— and my Dad had also just gotten off of work up in Huntsville, and met us down there on his way back. That was the one highlight: I got to ride home without listening to the three very loud children in the back seat (Total time spent in vehicle with three small children: 2 hours, 45 minutes).
So now that I’m stressed out about my car, and have accomplished zero of the things that I needed to do today, I decide to head out over to Chris’ house and play some Metroid Prime 3 (awesome game, just in case you’re interested) and Guitar Hero. So I hang around there for a while, then we head out to go bowling.
I managed to win the first game 121-106, and then proceeded to get slaughtered the rest of the games. After that, we dropped off a few overdue (sorry, Jen!) movies at Blockbuster, and then headed to OfficeMax so I could check my schedule. I probably should mention that I’m wearing my glasses at this time. Well I head in, find out I’m scheduled just on Saturday for this week, and I got my next week’s schedule too, so I’m all set, and after chatting for a while, I head out back to the car. As a final stop, we head to McDonalds to grab something to drink. For whatever reason, I had taken off my glasses at this time, and put them back on after going through the drive-thru.
Something isn’t right.
I realize that something isn’t right about my glasses, and it becomes more evident once I realize I can touch my eye through the frames (that generally means there’s a lens missing.) So apparently my frames had come apart again (this happens very frequently with my frames), and I was missing my left lens. So I proceed to perform a quick, frantic search of the car to no avail, so we start to backtrack. We went back to OfficeMax, and Sam assured me that I had both lenses intact when I left the store, so we search the parking lot, the store, and basically anywhere that I went, and no luck at all.
So we just head back home, I kick some butt in Guitar Hero again, and I drive home half-blind. All in a days work.
So in summary:
New Camera: $600
- New Transmission: $1,400 (Not sure on the problem, but hopefully less)
- New Lens: $60
Yeah, just not my day. Well, if you actually stayed to read all that, I hope your week goes better than mine is starting out!
Later!
Kevin Coppock
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