Where’s Dann?

I’d forgotten how bad dial-up can truly be.

Dial-up?  Why would I be on dial-up?  Well, it’s been a long week.

I’m currently in Westminster, Maryland, staying with my mother and grandparents.  If this nearly uplanned trip started anywhere, I guess it really started last Friday.

Ahh, Fridays – every office worker loves their Fridays.  It’s sad but true; even after only a couple of years of the regular grind I sometimes envy people their “Is it Friday yet?” coffee mugs.  I can actually understand where they’re coming from.  Coming into work that morning I had the rest of the day nicely planned out – go to work, finish a project up, work on another couple of small things. Then on the drive home, pick up some BBQ from the shack in the abandoned lot, take it home, and eat the shit out of it.  Take a nice nap for an hour or two, wake up, clean up the apartment a bit and start drinking.  Perhaps go downstairs to see what Calvin was up to, maybe get him into the idea of playing Plunk, since it had been such a long time.  See some people at New College, come home and pass out for 10 hours.  All in all nothing very special, but put together it was a day I was really anticipating.

 Then the rain came down.  And down. Those of you who have lived in Florida in the summer understand just how bad Florida rain can get – when a big storm comes through in the winter it can be even worse.  I think I read that Tampa got about 12 inches of rain that day.  12 fucking inches of rain – for those of you in the North, if that had been snow it would have been 120 inches of snow.  That shit’s taller than me – it’s like me with a midget standing on the top of my head. 

 One of the ways I manage to keep myself sane at work is by leaving at lunch.  Until I had picked up the death sickness a couple of months ago, my general lunchtime routine was to head over to the gym, work out, and come back to the building.  Since I haven’t been able to get there recently, I’ve been either going to some foodery or running some errands during my lunch break.  Since I hadn’t been in a while, and because funds had been coming in nicely, I went to the liquor store.

When I left the building, the road had some water in it.  Nothing special, I just got into the 2nd lane of 3 and ignored it.  No big deal, it rains in Florida all the time. 

The liquor store was lovely, as it usually is (2 6-packs of Sierra Nevada bigfoot ale and a 1.75L of Tanqueray 10 gin, an expensive but delicious haul).  The way back was a nightmare, however.

By the time I was about a quarter of a mile from the Verizon building, all of the cars were running in the 3rd lane, trying to avoid the water as best they can.  That’s great for most cars that are built in a sane manner; unfortunately, the Escort’s air intake valve is in the bottom of the front grill.  Water into the air intake = one dead fucking car.

I got some friends to help me push it into the parking lot and let it sit there, hoping that it would dry out.  I tried to start it again when I left around 7PM – no dice.  Kate picked me up about 2 miles or so from the building – I walked away from it because the road on which I worked was so packed with cars and so full of water the police were directing people away from it. 

Coming back on Saturday, I opened up the air intake chamber and water poured out of it.  Just so you know, if this happens to your car it’s a rather bad sign.  I decided to give it a try anyway after changing the air filter – still nothing.. the poor girl was turning over, but just wouldn’t start. Fuck it – I’ll get the bitch towed on Monday to a mechanic’s and see what they can tell me.

Sunday Kate takes me to rent a car in Tampa.  No big deal – I’ll rent the thing and drive around for a couple of days until I see what’s going on.  I go back to Kate’s, pick her up, and as I’m leaving her street I manage to run over a curb and blow a tire.  In a rental car.  Fucking sweet.  Still don’t know what that fucker’s going to cost me.  I can only imagine how much they’re going to bend me over for that one.

Monday I get the car towed, Tuesday I find out it’s going to cost me at least 2 grand to fix it, and probably more than that, so fuck it, the car’s dead.  Luckily my grandfather’s crazy and owns too many cars.  He offers me one, I gratefully accept. I buy a ticket to fly to Maryland, get a junkyard to pay me 100$ for my ruin of a car and drink myself to sleep Tuesday night.  Wednesday I work for 6 hours, get on a plane and all of a sudden I’m in Maryland.  I’m now the proud owner of a Ford Focus ZX3 SES (the fancy one) and my balls are freezing off.

 Fucking rain.  It’s been a long week.