as if screwing up in the privacy of your own home isn't bad enough...
i've gotten myself into some pretty ridiculous situations in the past month or so. i'm pretty well known for being an airhead, forgetting engagements and commitments, and pretty much acting like i'm about a quarter as smart as i really am. normally i do these things, chuckle, and shrug them off. but since i've been working with my mom and spend most of my time either around her or on some sort of predetermined schedule where i'm supposed to be doing things for her, i've just been making an ass out of myself over and over again.
for one thing, i've become a major klutz. since i've practically packed 75% of her house single handedly, i was bound to break a few things here and there. my first klutz moment came with her potted fake rose bush. i dropped it because i was trying to carry it around by the stem of the roses instead of the pot... cracked a piece right off of it. then came the big move day. i took responsibility for wrapping and placing my grandmother's antique cabinet with curved glass doors in the moving truck, taking extra care to wedge it in and wrap it in three blankets. thank god i did, or we would have had glass everywhere... of course one of the damn panes of glass broke in transit. then came the real winner... i was carrying something into my mom's old house and her front door has a habit of sticking. instead of putting down the package and pushing with my hands, or kicking the door, or god for bid walking around to the back door, i just leaned into it with my shoulder. unfortunately, the middle of the door is a big stained glass motif and i managed to put my shoulder right through it. after checking to make sure i wasn't cut, i wondered at how i had just had a cool movie moment (practically punching right through glass) and yet couldn't figure out how the hell i was going to explain this one... *sigh*
apart from that, i've forgotten to pick up items my mother has repeated told me to get (whoops). and then i have to call her back all the time right after i hang up the phone because i forget what she just told me. and then there was the day i locked her van keys in her car. luckily i was in the driveway and had already moved the box over that had her spares so she was able to open it up pretty easily. undaunted, i proceeded a week later to lock my own keys in my car while i was in her driveway. since i don't have a spare it proved to be a little more problematic. i'm telling you folks, the punches just keep coming...
anyway, i made it through thanksgiving week alive. i swear, huey came in town the friday before thanksgiving and stayed for 10 days, but it seemed a lot longer than that. and of course i mean in a good way. it almost felt like him and dylan lived here again. now that he's gone, i still just kind of feel like he's off on a trip somewhere. it helps that i'll see him this weekend (going to jacksonville via savannah to see the ACC championship game) and that i know he'll be back for 2 weeks in december. by the time january rolls around i'll have to get used to him being gone all over again... luckily i'll have another semester from hell starting up in time to distract me really well...
i swear, i think how smart i am is completely counteracted by my airheadedness and forgetfullness. i showed up to school last week to turn in a paper in the morning only to find out that it wasn't due until the following monday and it was my afternoon class that had the paper due. how the hell do i fuck this stuff up? i also went through and made myself a pretty well laid out study schedule for thanksgiving week since i had extra days off school. i've got six group projects to turn in during the next two weeks and i hadn't started any of them. thanks to the wii, my car acting like a fuckwith and general thanksgiving craziness i got absolutely none of it done. the consequence is that i've been busting my ass since sunday night, getting about 10 hours of sleep total since this past sunday. right now, i'm exhausted and feeling a little punchy. that's why this post will probably go on for forever...
so i did thanksgiving at my house again this year. my mom has two kitchens in her garage and none in either of her houses so we figured a different location would be desirable. unlike last year, i decided to grow a pair and make my own damn turkey this year. i watched alton brown's good eats on making a great turkey and decided that, him being the genius that he is, it was the way to go. i bought my turkey, let it defrost a coupla days, then made a crazy brine and basically pickled my turkey overnight. thanksgiving morning i didn't put it in until 10am. normally this would be a problem with that crazy slow-roasting for 20 hour normal method people use... luckily alton had my back. i cooked the bird for 30 minutes at 500 degrees to start off with, giving it a nice crunchy brown crust. unfortunately this is also pretty damn close to the temperature my oven cleans at, so it filled my house with smoke *blech* after 2.5 then at a normal temperature, i pulled out an absolutely perfect turkey, put it on my newly purchased ceramic turkey platter that will not fit in ANY of my cabinets, and handed huey our also newly purchased electric knife to carve with. i have to say... all the food i cooked was pretty good... but that turkey was AWESOME... i'm so proud of myself and will never fear a turkey again.
unfortunately, it seems for every good thing that happens, something equally crappy has to happen as well. the day before thanksgiving huey and i were out buying necessary items (like a 5 gallon bucket to brine our turkey in) and my car started making this awful metal scraping sound... it was very rythmic, obviously being caused by one of my wheels turning. it started out quiet and got louder pretty quickly. as well pulled into the home depot it was getting pretty nasty sounding. we looked at the wheels but they seemed in place so we decided to get our bucket and head for home to switch out cars. when we got back in the car to leave the parking lot, the back left wheel actually locked up. i tried to move forward and it just would not... i was actually dragging the tire along like a lame duck. luckily the damn thing would move backwards (kinda) so i backed it into a spot and called the brake company who had worked on my brakes a month ago...
after a lot of hassle, standing around and a tow to the nearest location, we find out that what happened is the actual caliper had come off the rotor and wedged itself between the rotor and the rim of my tire.... awesome. how does this happen you ask? most likely the bolts were not properly tightened the last time it was worked on, so over time one slowly loosened and then just fell off, leaving my caliper ready to just pop off whenever it felt like it. luckily i wasn't going 80 down the highway when it happened... something tells me it wouldn't have been pretty. and seeing as how it was this company (but not this exact location) that had touched it last, it seemed pretty obvious who's fault it was. luckily the mechanic took my view of things and paid for my tow and all the work to get it fixed... triumph!! i love chain stores!!
except that yesterday i was at my mom's house and i got in my car to leave and my car acted all funky again. it felt like i was driving with the parking brake on or something, even though it was fully released. my brother in law came over and took a look at it... he had me put the parking brake on and off, mess with the brakes, all that jazz... we jacked up the car, took off the wheel and threw it in neutral... the damn wheel just wouldn't spin at all. diagnosis? caliper locked up. we put it all back together and i went to move it out of the way and it felt a little better. we drive it down the street and back and everything seems to be going well! maybe it unstuck itself while we were poking around!! so i get in the car and head out of the neighborhood on my way home with my brother in law leaving right behind me...
only i get halfway through the neighborhood and realize my car is working twice as hard as usual to get up the hills, and if i take my foot off the gas on the downhills the car actually slows to a stop. and then i noticed the smell... that acrid smell of burning brake pad. dammit dammit dammit. i parked my car for the night and borrowed my mom's minivan (big pimpin) until i could call the mechanic back again this morning. damn franchises!! the guy tried to tell me that it could be my ebrake line freezing up and to drive it or have it towed to somewhere else to have it checked out (since i was now in powder springs, a long way from where he was). thinking he was getting off a little easy i google mapped the nearest location of this mechanic chain and called them up. at noon today they sent out another towtruck to pick up my car AGAIN and have the left rear calilper worked on AGAIN. luckily the guy called me at 4 and told me that they were just going to scrap the whole caliper and replace it for me, free of charge of course. strangely enough, they had found multiple problems with the caliper... seems that even though it had been jammed into my tire and knocked around and dragged about, the last place had seen fit to just stick it back on and call it a day....
*whew* man, what a week. and here it is practically midnite and i still have another paper to write tonite. i'm excited to get the hell out of this town for this weekend, but the amount of stress that will be waiting for me when i get back... ugh
the jury is still out on whether or not this is all worth it... all of this.
