In which I kill my car and ruin my weekend...

Well, this weekend was supposed to be jam-packed with things Omaha and I wanted to do. Instead, it ended up merely a jam. It started out with us going to Kouryou-chan's school where we worked to pull out all of the blackberries that had collected on the back wall and were starting to creep into the primary playground. I got cut and snagged and thorned. I kept feeling this odd itch or tickle in my glove, and it wasn't until the third inspection that I found an inch-long beetle, harmless but disgusting, hanging out on the back of my hand. There were only a few other volunteers so all the yummy sandwiches Omaha made were mostly leftover by the time we were done.

After four and a half hours of cutting, pulling, trimming, digging, shoveling and weeding, we went home to clean up. I drove Omaha to a political event for Karen Keiser, and then took Kouryou-chan over to a birthday party for a friend of hers. I tried hard to apply the principles of How to Win Friends and Influence People, since I've been reading that, but they don't seem to be as effective as they once were. Maybe everyone's read it by now and is waiting for the other person to react. Kouryou-chan had a great time in the bouncy castle, we ate lots of cake and ice cream.

I headed out to get Omaha from her political party, and when we got back into the car, it didn't start. The battery was dead. I got a jump, and now I can never say a politician never did anything for me because the jump came from state represententative Shay Schual-Berke's car. We picked up Kouryou-chan and I dropped them off at home, then headed out to get the battery tested and replaced.

Sure enough, it was dead. Wouldn't hold a charge. Then, to my real dismay, the battery they gave me didn't fit, and when I put the contact on something in the car when SNAP! Great.

We figured out what was wrong with the battery, and then I struggled to replace the blown fuses, and when it was all said and done the car came to life, but the alternator charge light stayed on. Great.

After much griping and recrimination and a change of clothess, we decide to wait until tomorrow. shastaw, bless her heart, takes Kouryou-chan away for the evening while Omaha and I walk over to a restaurant for dinner. I won't mention which restaurant just because I don't want the next sentence to come back to haunt me: it was in this particular that I had the idea for the Church of Jehanne and the entire futanari story arc, which leads to wonder every time a waitress walks by, ( socially unacceptable comment )

We got home and decided to relax by playing Quake. We can't even do that: there's an upgrade for 1.3 on my desktop already installed, but the 1.3 upgrade for Macs isn't out yet and our computers have stopped talking to one another. Fabulous. We just played other games instead, then went to bed.

This morning, we drove over to Firestone and they confirmed that I had fried the alternator. I may have also damaged the battery by draining it so low by driving on it, even though I put less than ten miles on it, but the technician thinks it'll survive. Omaha and I walk up the street to the Denny's, where a glass of milk costs as much as a half-gallon at the supermarket and three servings of fat and carbohydrates costs six dollars. I ate barely a third of what they gave me.

So, instead of a nice weekend of going to the hot tubs, a quiet dinner, and maybe the Wetspot or something, we end up stressed out, frustrated, and four hundred dollars poorer.