bloodygranuaile

Hokay, so:

Lately in life I have watched a lot of stuff about King Arthur and the Borgias, played a lot of The Sims Medieval with Liz, read a book on whales, been a huge dork about Jane Austen, gotten a job offer as a proofreader in Boston for the next three months, given Holly Black another shot and totally not regretted it, and bought a car. Well, I am halfway through the process of purchasing the car.

Next up, I need to find housing in Boston starting ASAP because commuting from Worcester will eat my soul and also my lease runs out in eight weeks anyway. Also, I will give another shot at doing a newsprint manicure. Will post pics if I don't bork it up this time. Also, really need to get some friggin' writing done.

Game of Thrones in ONE WEEK. YAY.

So, some of you may remember that my junior year (two years ago), I got into a ridiculous car accident the day before Thanksgiving. You may also remember that last year, I got into a slightly less ridiculous car wreck the day after Thanksgiving, and had a parking ticket waiting for me in Worcester when I got back.

This year, Thanksgiving week is ALSO sucking hardcore re: cars.

I stayed at Anders' place Sunday night after the Blind Guardian concert (WHICH WAS AWESOME), and parked on the street because that is what I usually have to do in Worcester, despite the frequency with which cars on the streets get stolen and/or vandalized. Monday morning I went to my car to go to work and discovered that the passenger-side window had been smashed in, and my GPS had been stolen. (I tended to 'hide' it by putting it on the floor as under the seat or as far under the dashboard and I could fit it; it didn't fit in my glove compartment because the TomTom was taped to its bulky dashboard mount, because the suction didn't work properly, because nothing in my life ever works quite 100% correctly. And usually I deal and just duct tape shit together and am like WHATEVER, SEE, I AM A CHILL PERSON WHO IS NOT BENT OUT OF SHAPE BY DUMB LITTLE THINGS, and then something like this happens, and then every minor thing that goes wrong makes me go all OH NO SOMETHING TERRIBLE IS GOING TO HAPPEN I AM SO STRESSED I CANNOT DEAL and then I cry, for like MONTHS, until I just can't be that stressed anymore and go back to duct-taping stuff. But I digress.)

My first mistake in dealing with this was in calling AAA and having them tow it to the Chevy dealer down the street, on the basis that since I have a Chevy and they fix Chevies, they could fix my car. Turns out they do not do auto glass. They recommended me to a company who does do auto glass, but did not have my window and would not have had it in stock for at least another day, which was not good as I had to go to work. This company did not offer to collision-tape the window so I could use it in the meantime. Googled "auto glass massachusetts" and made twenty phone calls in one hour (I counted) and managed to find a JN Phillips in Worcester that had my window and could get it out to me that day and called my insurance to cancel the overnight order from the other company. They said they would have someone out to me by 2h00 or 2h30 at the latest.

JN Phillips dude showed up at 3h30 or 4 and informed me that he could not put in the windowpane because the window motor was broken. Talked to Diamond Chevy dude who said he could order the window motor and it would get here on Friday. I was not happy but need my window fixed, so I ordered it for what, according to the Internets, appears to be three to five times the parts' actual price. Also, the invoice that I have because I had to prepay because it was a "special order" says I bought a window regulator. I do not know what that means but the Internet tells me the motor and the regulator are different.

Anyway, JN Phillips dude told me he would call in another JN Phillips dude to collision-wrap the window so I could go to work the next day, and that that would take about an hour and he would call me as soon as it was done. Did not get phone call. When I called them back, they told me the collision wrap was done (yay) and had in fact been done a ten-fifteen that morning (uhh... what?). By this time, the Chevy dealer was closed, and the otherwise totally unprotected outdoor parking lot was blockaded off by large shiny Suburbans, which seem like a nice target for Worcester carjackers, and do nothing to protect the cars in the lot from anyone willing to do damage to the cars, but did prevent me from taking my car that I had not in fact had any work done on so I could get to work on TIME the next morning. So I was late.

Today, I went to the auto shop in Bedford for an oil change and to have the leak in my car looked at, which I was originally going to do Monday. Leak turned out to be a rotted fuel tank, so replacing that was expensive, but is now done. They also looked at the window, determined the problem was the power switch (which the Internet tells me is different from a window motor OR regulator), and replaced that for less than half the price of the motor-or-regulator that I bought. So there are two possible scenarios here:

1. JN Phillips will NOT be able to replace my glass on Monday because the switch AND the motor-or-regulator were fucked up, and I will have to pay to get the damn motor-or-regulator installed, and go at least another day with loud plastic sheeting where my window should be, OR
2. JN Phillips WILL be able to replace my glass on Monday, meaning only the switch was fucked up, and the expensive special order motor-or-regulator is THE WRONG PART, which will make me wonder if they even actually LOOKED at the window or just listened to what the GLASS technician said, and I will have to do my best to be assertive and demand a refund even though they don't do refunds for special orders (that sounds like a good reason to not ever keep anything in stock so EVERYTHING becomes a special order AND you don't have to pay for storage! that should be fucking illegal!) on the basis that the part was sold to be under false pretenses; ie, that it was the part I needed to fix my window, even though it was not.

I am having trouble deciding which one of these scenarios would piss me off more.

And if I cannot get the part refunded, it is looking like I'll probably be able to sell it online for like... a QUARTER of what I got it for. Fuck you, Diamond Chevrolet. I will not be going back to you ever again, unless every other car shop in Massachusetts simultaneously explodes.

So now I get to drive to NJ tomorrow with no window, risk the Black Friday sales to try and get a new GPS at a price I can afford after having spent more than I made this pay period on my crappy old car, drive back with no window, and try not to spend another unnecessary cent for at least the rest of 2010.

Also, I seem to be coming down with a cough, which is part of why I am up and ljing angrily at midnight when I have to get up at 6h45 tomorrow - I went to bed three hours ago and I kept waking myself up.

Anyway, back to bed to hope it goes away by morning. If I actually get sick tomorrow I am going to have to punch something.

Yeah, so car + bad have been figuring heavily in my dreams lately. Surprise surprise.

I had TWO nasty car dreams last night!

One, I was riding shotgun with elladarcy in her car. This is unsurprising, since her car is an Acura, as was mine, and is the only other Acura I have ever driven. Except that in the dream, it was a black Acura convertible. Or it was a convertible for part of the dream, at any rate (dream consistency being what it is). We were driving on a completely empty highway, over in one of the lefter lanes, and had to take a jughandle. She swerved all the way to the right and into the jughandle, and about halfway along it (it banked almost as steeply as a roller coaster) the car just flipped over, still in the middle of the road. We were both perfectly fine. And somehow didn't hit our heads, even though the car had no top. Actually, I think we landed sideways, because I think I remember Leah picking her head up and having bits of window glass stuck to her face.

The second dream, as far as I can tell, is anticipating conflict with my family about getting me behind the wheel again, and might have something to do with unresolved antagonism/rivalry between me and my brother? Not sure. At any rate, we were... uh... somewhere suburban, someone's house or something, and it was my dad and my brother and me, with my Dad's Ford Escape, which I have driven a few times but am not comfortable with, since I'm used to driving small cars and it has a sort of weird right drift that needs to be constantly corrected. Anyway, our destination was only a few minutes away, still in the suburbs. Dad was going to let Tim drive, but I asked if I could drive. Tim got really pissed off about this; he didn't want to get in a car with me driving. I specifically remember making the argument that since I didn't have a small car to learn to drive to Worcester in, and when I did Dad hadn't wanted to supervise me driving a small car to Worcester 'cos then he'd have to drive the small car all week, and that having him supervise me driving the Escape to Worcester when I couldn't' really drive it at all would be suicidal, then the only smart thing to do would be to teach me to drive the Ford *now* so he could teach me to drive to Worcester and then have his car during the week. (I think this probably wins for the longest coherent thread of logical thought I've ever had in a dream, although IRL, I think I should get another small car, and let Dad have it during the week so he can supervise me driving on the commute, and driving a small car around Worcester for three days won't kill him.) Dad agreed and gave me the keys, and Tim moved from the driver's seat to the middle seat (there is no actual middle seat in the front, but there was in the dream), except somehow he also managed to not get out of the driver's seat, so I couldn't actually get in the car. Then (even though I had the keys? dream-logic ftw) he drove the car forward a few feet and hit me with it. I was not happy, and then Tim got out of the car and we started beating each other up. (And we can tell this was a dream because we were evenly matched. :P) Sometime while we were grappling, Dad drove the Escape away. I bit Tim on the ear, roundhouse kicked him, ran after the Escape, and woke up.

So that was weird.

In other news: homework. Also vampires. Also, the HBI and AVEN message boards are the most education distractions from homework I've ever found. I feel like I've learned more about myself, feminism, sexuality, and 'normal people' in the past month sitting at my computer than I managed to figure out actually having a highly eventful and dramatic social life all of last year. (Also, xkcd wins at poking fun at NiceGuys: http://www.xkcd.com/513/.) I think that's about it for life right now.

Usually I'm not a fan of the whole Thanksgiving thing--and this year in particular, I was so stressed about homework I just wanted to give the whole thing a miss--but I've landed myself with something very big to be thankful for this year.

I am very, very thankful that me and Adam are alive. I am thankful that seatbelts are mandatory and our parents drilled it into our generation's heads to always, always wear them. And I am thankful that I had an Acura and that they are very sturdy cars. And you can probably guess where I'm going with this.

Yesterday I was giving Adam Kraus a ride back home to Jersey for Thanksgiving when I hit a rumble strip on I-84. I had picked up my Diet Coke so I was driving one-handed for all of ten seconds, and I glanced down for half a second to put it back in the cupholder, and hit the rumble strip. Everything that happened next happened really, really fast--I corrected one-handed and the car swerved way to the right, then I tried to straighten out with both hands and went off the road to the left. I remember a couple seconds of straddling the shoulder of the road and the median and being unable to straighten out or slow down, and then the car barrel-rolled into the grass. According to the towing company, we think we flipped six times. The car landed upside down.

I can't remember if I opened my door or just climbed out the window (the glass was completely gone, obviously), but I undid my seatbelt, grabbed my cellphone, got out of the car, and called 911. I'm very glad I found my cellphone, especially since it wasn't in my pocket at the time--it was next to me under the parking brake--and I ended up clinging to it for sanity almost as much as I ended up using it. A bunch of people stopped, and I asked one of the guys where we were so I could tell the police (Waterbury, CT, exit 17), and the rest of them got Adam out of the car. His head was bleeding and he seemed really confused. While we waited for the cops and the ambulance to show up I called my mother. Somebody got my purse out of the car so I could give the cops my license, &c, and then Adam and I got bundled into the ambulance and strapped down on stretchers and shipped to Waterbury Hospital. I was on the phone with my mom almost the whole time, while the cops and medics and whoever were asking me questions, which must have been really annoying. (Also, talking on a cell phone while strapped down with foam blocks taped to either side of your head is really uncomfortable.) Mom called Dad, who was actually also driving from Worcester to Jersey and was about an hour behind us, and called the insurance company, etc. etc. (Over the course of the day she called me back every half hour or so and I wound up having her e-mail my teachers to ask for an extension and other such stuff that probably could have waited.)

At the hospital a cop gave me an accident summary, the name of the towing company and the number of the state police to call and get the number of the towing company, a ticket ($103 for failing to stay in my lane or stay in control of the vehicle or somesuch, but not for speeding, which I was probably doing. Cop said from what he's seen you don't have to be speeding to get in an accident on a rumble strip; he's seen way too many people panic when they hit them doing barely 60. I think I might have been going a bit faster than that), Adam's wallet and whatever else was in his pocket in a plastic bag, and my license back. Got taken off the stretcher, was poked a bit and had a light shined in my eyes, then the doctor said I seemed perfectly fine except for a superficially chipped tooth, a slightly loosened one, and some bruising. They gave me some crackers and Tylenol and left me alone for twenty minutes to see if I started spasming, and when I didn't, I got a my discharge sheet and instructions to follow up with a dentist. During those twenty minutes the adrenaline started wearing off and I actually got really bored and started texting my brother, and thinking about that story I wrote earlier in the semester about the girl with the haunted car and thinking maybe I shouldn't write stories in which horrible things happen to characters that are too much like me.

Dad showed up about then and we went to see Adam, who had scrapes all over his hands and the side of his face and was hooked up to an IV, but was otherwise perfectly okay. The hospital had made no attempt to contact his family, so I lent him my cellphone. The hospital told us he'd be ready to be discharge in about ten minutes, so we sat around for about two and a half hours until that actually happened. Sometime during that time it occurred to me that my purse was completely spattered in his blood and I should ask the nurse for an alcohol wipe to clean it. Then the doctor put a couple of stitches in one of Adam's fingers and we actually got discharged.

Dad got in contact with Bobkat Towing, but they were out of Waterbury for the holiday by then so we'll have to have someone go up on Friday morning to get our stuff. The woman on the line told us they'd recovered Adam's laptop and his backpack, and that they hadn't been able to open the trunk to recover my suitcase. They said the car was completely totaled, and it was then that they said they think it flipped six times. I hadn't been counting but I'd only been guessing two or three. Dad seemed almost impressed that I had "beat" him--when he was in college, he'd been in an accident off I-84 where the car had flipped "only" four times, and walked away completely unhurt.

My laptop is probably also completely destroyed. Even if it might have survived six flips if I'd taken proper care of it, I'd been lazy that morning and had just closed it and thrown it in my suitcase, instead of turning it all the way off and putting in the laptop case. There wasn't much else in my suitcase except some clothes and toiletries, my Netflix movies, and all of my homework. Which was kind of a lot of homework, really. I really hope I can get my books and notebook back because even if I get an extension I *will* have to do it eventually and some of those French books are wicked hard to find.

The rest of the ride home was nice and uneventful, although I kept having mini panic attacks every time Dad got in the left lane, or changed lanes without signaling, or passed anybody, or took a sip of his coffee, or any of those other things that he is a good enough driver to get away with safely and I, apparently, am not. At one point his phone rang and he actually took *both* hands off the wheel for a second to pick it up and we drifted about two inches closer to the rumble strip, and I involuntarily started whining "Daaad!" until he put his hands back on the wheel.

Oh, and I'd spent a bunch of time at the hospital sorting through all the cards and shit at the bottom of my purse trying to find my health insurance card and thinking I'd lost it, but I found it on the ride home. It had slid into the wrapper of the giant bar of chocolate I keep in my purse "in case of dementors." Go figure.

At any rate, we got Adam home, and his parents seemed very glad to see us both alive and relatively unhurt, which just made me feel more guilty for having almost killed him because if I want to be an impatient driver and pass everybody and kill myself doing it that's my business, but my passengers are my responsibility. Then I went home and Mom fussed over me, and I got to take a good look in the mirror and discovered that the teeth situation feels a lot weirder than it looks, but that the entire left side of my face is bruised and swollen and I have some sort of minor abrasion on my cheek and eyebrow. I also have some interesting-looking bruises developing on the insides of my thighs where I hit the steering wheel turning upside-down. Overall I am in much better shape than I really have any right to be.

I got an email from Professor Tapply saying that he was glad I was okay, and that when he heard about me getting out of the hospital he was reminded about that haunted car story I wrote (ha!), and not to stress about what I can and can't get to him before the semester ends because it's a pass/fail course and he thinks I'm a very good writer and he hopes I'll submit some things to upcoming contests. So that made me feel a lot better. ^.^

Friday I have an appointment with the oral surgeon, an appointment with the eye doctor (me and Adam both lost our glasses), somebody has to go back up to Waterbury to get our stuff, and so far I am still planning to go see Twilight with Leah because I could really use some mindless sitting in a movie theater and giggling after this. But today I am going to take a really hot shower and read Harry Potter and just be happy that I'm all in one piece.

This year is not starting off *quite* the way I wanted it to.

So far, none of the problems are with my classes, aside from the heaviness of the workload. I'm in two 200-level literature seminars, one of which is in French (!). The workload for my fiction course is actually arbitrary--as long as I turn in a story every week, it doesn't matter how long they are--but considering my propensity for writing rather long stories, it's going to take up quite a bit of time.

It's not a totally unmanageable workload if I don't waste time socializing constantly. Having a single makes this slightly easier, as does not actually sharing a central social group with all my housemates. My lack of discipline in turning down social invitations is making it a little harder, especially considering all my graduated friends no longer have this "homework" business, and once they get out of work they just have free time every night. I need to get better at remembering when I don't actually have free time just because I'm not in class, rather than just getting resentful of my friends because they want to hang out, which is not nice of me.

Oh, and I'm on three e-boards. That will take up time, too.

Hopefully, it is not such an heavy workload that I will not be able to still have *some* social life when I start working again. There is the slight issue that I don't know when or where that will actually be... the issue of me doing a couple hours a week at Hanover is still up in the air, until someone over there feels like making a decision (I do not understand how it's such a successful company... the people there are not very organized. I spent half my summer getting paid to play KoL because nobody had stuff for me to do, or paid any attention to where I was or if I was doing anything). I'm still with EventTemps; I decided to not work up through this weekend, but then I'll start picking shifts up again. Provided they are not "must drive self" shifts, because I don't have my car; I'll get to that in a minute. I'm still sort of half-assedly looking for a bartending job, but this week or two have been more focused on readjusting to school, since school is here, and I don't have flexible enough transit to actually be able to get most places where I could be seeking employment (yes, I know you've probably heard me go over this a billion times. I'm just annoyed 'cos it was supposed to be fixed by now).

I... still have no car. I brought it up two or three weeks ago, and Dad decided to hang onto it for a bit and only let me drive it when he was there because I'm not used to city driving, don't know my way around Worcester all that well except for my immediate area, &c &c, other things that could be fixed by having me drive more (or use Google Maps. It exists for a reason). Then we discovered that he'd never put me on the car insurance, so it's illegal for me to drive the damn thing anyway. So now I just have to wait for Dad to talk to his agent, which will take... I don't know how long. So I get to sit around and fidget that there's nothing I can do even though I'm the one this is important to, for I don't know how long. Mom is so pissed she's considering buying me another car (one that works, she keeps saying), which would be awesome, except that that would take a couple weeks too, and the drama bomb that would go off between my parents as a result of this power play would probably have me taking said car and hiding out in the Midwest for a couple of centuries until it blows over. But it would so be worth it, because every time I have to wait for a bus, or face the notion of paying for a cab, or try to schedule my grocery shopping around someone else being able to give me a ride, remembering that this was supposed to be over by now and there's nothing I can do about it but wait for other people to decide it's important enough to fix makes me want to kill cute fuzzy animals.

I hate being dependent, and I hate *being kept* dependent unnecessarily.

I'm also kind of afraid Dad will decide that adding me to the insurance costs too much and will just get rid of the car, like there have been four or five possible reasons he might have to do anyway that he's thrown at me over the course of the past several months.

I just. Want. To work. And to eat. And to have a bit of autonomy, so that I can manage my limited time and money in the most effective ways possible, because I am rapidly becoming a very, very busy person.

That being said, I should wrap this up so I can get some French homework done before class, because I have two club meeting after class, and I need to clean the kitchen (it was supposed to be done yesterday but our water was off all day, what fun), and then I probably need to do more homework. And some homework after that.

Edit: Also, it's "Patriot Day." Which irks the hell out of me. It's SEPTEMBER 11TH, dammit, and September 11th scared the shit out of me when it happened, and I will never quite get used to having a billion club meetings and shit scheduled on it like it's just another day. And there are just *so* many things wrong with calling it "Patriot" day in particular that I don't think I will *ever* not be angry seeing it in a calendar. Also, considering what a *huge* deal it was when it happened, and what a *huge* deal everyone made of it after one year, it bothers me that the actual remembrance of a ton of people dying bit has fallen off into almost nothing, and only the political fallout is left.