I am without a vehicle today. Paco met me at work yesterday and we took my truck to the dealer to get the brake lights fixed. I have been without brake lights for about a year, on and off. This first started about a year ago and I took my truck in and they told me that a bad bulb was causing a short, which I didn’t believe, but went along with anyway. I paid some outrageous amount to have all of the bulbs replaced and it was supposed to work… and it did for a few months.

By the time it had gone out again, the dealer had closed. The only other dealer is SOUTH of Austin, and I live NORTH of Austin. It would be an enormous hassle to leave my car at this dealer. So I put it off and I kept changing the fuse every so often, until that stopped working as well. Then I was just screwed.

Worse yet, my inspection expired last month. So I had to take my vehicle in. I have ZERO faith in these people to make the CORRECT repair and to do it quickly. I fully expect that they will never call me, and I will have to call them every day, and it will take them two days to tell me that it’s a bulb issue again, and then I’ll lose my damn mind and have to scream at someone.

After dropping off my truck we went to a house so I could get the sign out of the yard and the lockbox off the door, then went to eat dinner. Paco has been wanting to go to this Chinese buffet place, China Harbor, for a while now. It is SO FAR SOUTH, that it’s practically across the street from the place where I took my truck.

I am not a fan of buffets, usually. The buffet at the Bellagio in Las Vegas and at the Beau Rivage in Biloxi are AWESOME, but those are some of the LIMITED exceptions. Chinese food buffets are usually pretty scary, and this one was no exception. We were there slightly before the dinner rush, so there weren’t too many scary people in there… YET.

The food was ok, nothing special, but then I’m still alive so it wasn’t so bad either. I was a little shocked at their Sesame Chicken. Usually, at most buffets, the Sesame Chicken looks less like chicken and more like turkey claws, just little hard dried of slivers of “meat”. Not at China Harbor! These were HUGE wrinkled up pieces of “chicken” that I found quite frightening. How does meat get wrinkled up like that? I still ate it.

As we were finishing up, the place started to get crowded. What is it with ghetto poor less fortunate people thinking a plain white t-shirt (under shirt!) is acceptable to wear at all times? I have never seen so many people in plain white undershirts in one place in all my life, and it wasn’t just men. It looked like a commercial for Hanes in there!

Children were running around un-supervised touching at the food on the buffet and getting their germ infected hands on everything. It amazes me how bad parenting skills have become. Children should never be unattended in public. NEVER. I saw a child, about 7 years old, just helping himself to dessert and building the HUGEST pile of sugary sweetness on his plate, and TOUCHING EVERYTHING WITH HIS GERMED HANDS. He wandered around for a good ten minutes and I never saw an parent or guardian.

After we got home, I had to help Paco with his resume. He’s so crazy. He sat down at the computer and opened Microsoft Word to a blank page and just sat there. After a while he asked me how to start it and I opened up a template for him. Then I realized he was never going to get anywhere and I might as well just sit down and do it for him. How was he going to write a resume in English by himself?

I went to bed at 9:30 because I was EXHAUSTED. I have not been sleeping so well, and I really needed the extra time in bed. I wanted to go to bed earlier, but I had to help Paco with his resume.

This morning he drove me to work. I’m not a fan of carpooling. I don’t like having to be on someone else’s time table. I also don’t like talking to people when I wake up. I like to make it from the bed to my office without having to say a word to anyone. Once I’m at work, it’s all good… just let me get there undisturbed.

My boss left me his car (Toyota Prius) to drive today while he’s at a convention. Woot woot. So at least I’m not stranded. Of course there’s a lot close by as well, so I don’t really need a vehicle. I walked to the convenience store a little while ago… which brings me to something else.

I don’t like bugs. I don’t care how small or what kind, I just don’t like them. I don’t want them near me or anywhere in my vicinity. So I was walking down the walkway of our building and walked right into a big spiderweb. As I walked into it, I turned and got more tangled and saw flying right at my face a big nasty spider. EUUWWW.

I don’t know what is more gross, having spider web all over your face or have a spider fly into your face? I think the web is worse. The spider would bounce off (hopefully), but you never really feel like you’ve gotten all of a web off of you.

A few nights back I was pumping gas really late at HEB and there were a million crickets all over the ground and flying around. It was like being in a horror movie. I just knew one of them was going to fly into me. I stood there pumping the gas and when it was done I hurried up into my car and just as I was about to close the door, a big nasty cricked flew right at my ear and bounced off. I didn’t scream, but I did make a loud UGH sound. I could not wait to get home and shower. That was the nastiest feeling. I couldn’t stop wiping me ear off because I felt like there were nasty cricket bits falling inside my ear.

I think the reason I hate bugs so much is that they just seem so unsanitary, as if they’d be carrying the plague or some other horrible disease.

Posted by Tomithey on Wednesday, September 19th, 2007 at 12:55 pm.