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2004-03-28 - 2:37 p.m.
situations will arise in our lives, but you gotta be smart about it
The Nine Greatest Songs of All Time (Right Now)
1. Norah Jones
"Sunrise"2. Twista and DJ Smurf
"Slow Jamz (Collipark remix)" 3. Luther Vandross
"A House Is Not A Home" 4. Portastatic
"Bobby Jean" 5. Comp
"Harder" 6. Rod Lee
"Mamakosa" 7. Hot Shit
"Two Step" 8. Eels
"Numbered Days" 9. The Beatles
"While My Guitar Gently Weeps" |
My car is 15 years old, and while it runs ok and I haven’t had to get anything serious fixed in over a year, it’s still basically a ticking time bomb. I’m always aware that eventually something’s going to give. And this week, something did. I went down to Mat’s in D.C. to record twice this week, on Monday and Thursday, and on the way home on Thursday night, I noticed that the engine temperature was up way higher than usual. I had an hour drive home, and I stupidly just hoped for the best and kept on my way up 95, thinking that maybe I’d be able to get home without incident. Finally, about 2/3rds of the way home, a couple miles after getting off 95 and onto the beltway inner loop, the engine started making some really worrying sounds, and I decided to get off at the next exit and stop for a while and let the engine cool down. But I ended up not even being able to get to the next exit, and had to pull over on the shoulder. I remained optimistic that all I needed was to stop for a while and let it cool down. But after a half hour of sitting in the car, listening to the radio and just thinking about all the possibilities of what to do, the engine was still smoking and too hot to touch. Since I don’t have a cell I decided to get out and walk to the nearest exit and find a payphone. More than anything, I was just thankful that it had happened on that night, one of the warmest of the year so far, when it had still felt like winter a couple days earlier. I could have been stuck out in some serious cold if it’d happened on Monday night. So as bad as it was, it could’ve been worse. It took me about 15 minutes to walk to the next exit and get to a 7-11, get change for a dollar from the cashier, and call Dad on the pay phone outside. And my dad, who rocks, came out to find me broken down on the side of the road at 11 o’clock at night. Since I was coming back from recording, I had a bunch of drums and recording gear in the car, and we went ahead and put it all in Dad’s car so that it wouldn’t be left in the car all night, and I went and spent the night at Dad’s house. In the morning, he got me up at 7am, and I called a tow truck and we went and met them on the shoulder and gave them the key, and let them know where to take the car, the place in Dad’s neighborhood that he always go to when he has car trouble. A couple hours later, I heard from the repair place, and I was really prepared to hear the worst. But it turns out the water pump broke, and not much else was wrong with it, they only had to wait for a part to come in and it would be done on Monday morning. Which was a major relief. I was already mentally preparing myself to get acquainted with the bus schedule to get to class next week. And the inconvenience of not having the car this weekend has been more or less negligible. I might have to take some money out of saving to cover repairs in addition to paying rent this week, but it’s all good. Or at least, it could’ve been worse. -al
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