"I have been but little in," said Ninian hastily...

I finally bit the bullet yesterday and ordered a new mattress. Even if I'm only here for another six or seven months, I'm tired of being almost as tired and achy when I get up in the morning as when I went to bed.

( The rest of the story... )

So I stayed late at work, then met The Teacher at a party she was attending with lots of her Teacher friends down in bohemian low-rent NW :-). We were telling someone as we left about our travel woes and joking about things that could go wrong with our trip to Ohio tomorrow. Being silly (I think) she was saying "Please let the car be OK, please let the car be OK," as we walked back to where I had parked.

Well, Hermes has a funny sense of humour. We got int he car, drove about a block, and I said, "I don't like that noise." She said, "I don't either." I pulled over in front of a shuttered church, and we got out to inspect. One tire was flatter than a gyrene's haircut. So, since it was the kerb-side tire, and the street didn't look to dodgy, I got out my undersized spare and changed it, the first time I've changed a tire in dunamany years. A DC policeman stopped by and chatted with us, and then another stopped by to see why the first guy had stopped, and The Teacher made small talk with them while I got the nuts tightened down on the spare. We waved goodbye to the nice cops and drove home.

*sigh* So tomorrow will start off with a trip to the tire store. Assuming they're open the Saturday before a holiday...

Well, well, well. No sooner did the final (and unexpected) escrow check from the house sale finally arrive (now to figure out how to get redactrice her share...) than I spent a good part of my share!

I was hoping to spend the afternoon having coffee with a new acquaintance and possibly winning a new convert to "Fjords", but instead I found myself driving around Takoma Park on a cold, rainy day trying to find an open auto mechanic. Eventually I would up at the defrocked Shell station on 193 and Carroll, which proved willing to take a look at my car and try to figure out what was making the truly horrific grinding noise at the front left wheel (and making the brakes feel a bit dodgy).

Turns out something (I suspect the HUGE pothole on the 123-to-495 offramp) snapped by left front axle and either that or driving on it completed the ruin of my front left wheel bearing and hub (which I think had been bad for some time). Three hours and $400 later... :-(

Text messaging (which I'd discovered, thanks to ban_leodhasach my phone is unexpectedly able to do), allowed me to warn my prospective gaming partner that we would have to postpone our meeting to another day. And I had two books with me (good thing, since I finished one!) But a great deal less fun (and more cold!) than how I had hoped to spend the day!