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F’d in the A

November 7, 2009 21 Comments read Everything is Terrible

For a lot of people I know, 2009 has been a less-than-stellar year. For amazoni, it’s been worse than most. Early in the summer, she fell down some stairs, fractured her leg, needed emergency surgery and some pins to put it all back together, was bedridden and missed her high school reunion and san diego comic con, has been unable to drive and has had to rely on others to get her where she needed to go. This week, she ACTUALLY got to drive her car, hit some road debris on an exit, the car rolled UP the embankment and she ended up next to a guardrail facing oncoming traffic; miraculously, she wasn’t injured, but the car was totaled.

I posted on her Facebook page that I was calling out whatever witches had placed a hex on her to knock it the fuck off, and suppose I have brought their wrath down onto myself.

It was amazoni‘s birthday today, and we planned on having one of our obnoxious lady get-togethers at Carolina Kitchen in Redmond at 6:30. I, deciding I was going to be clever and leave early for once to beat traffic, found myself driving through a torrential thunderstorm. I ended up deciding that since I was SO very early, I would stop and have a drink at Pegasus and maybe let the worst of the rain pass. It was at the precise moment that I turned into their parking lot that my power steering went out. You know how, when people get into accidents, they talk about how time slowed down and everything seemed so very clear? My mind doesn’t do that. I skip right over into the denial portion of the grieving process and then it’s only a hop, skip, and a jump straight to anger. My first thought was that my steering rack had gone out again, my second thought was “No, no, this right here is not happening” and my third thought was “Goddamnit, that was a thousand dollar repair!”

It was then, and only then, that I realized it was not just the power steering that had gone out. Oh, no. The engine had ALSO died. The lights and radio and fan were all merrily doing their thing, but it didn’t matter how desperately I pushed the gas pedal, hoping against hope to direct the car into a parking spot, it was just not advancing any further.

And as the rain pounded down all around me, I knew that I would have to shift the car into neutral, get out, and try to push it into a parking spot. I was immediately drenched the second I stepped out; lightning exploded around me with all the surprise of undesirable plumber ass peeking out of the top of a pair of pants–CRACK! It would have made for an excellently overdramatic movie scene: perhaps an overhead shot would have been appropriate, so you could truly witness all the rain pelting the ground as I fell to my knees and cried “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” whilst shaking my fist at the sky. I was able to push the car to the point where it was no longer directly blocking someone but after I struggled to turn the wheel and pushed to get it nearer a parking space, I couldn’t get the leverage I needed from the door frame and had to give up for the moment. I retreated into the bar, recruited someone’s help, and we were both soaked to the bone as we maneuvered the car into two parking spots. Hell, the car was dead and the nearby business was closed for the night, I wasn’t about to be overly picky about the push-and-shove parking job we just did.

We went back inside, Marija brought us towels to dry ourselves with and mugs of hot tea while I sent out the obligatory “oh hey, car is dead” text messages to the girls, asking if someone could drop by and pick me up on their way to Carolina Kitchen, and I’d just deal with the frigging car after dinner–it’s not like it was going anywhere, and if it did, it would take a pretty damn dedicated thief, and more power to them. Enjoy!

Emily came to pick me up, and the gentleman who’d helped me move my car had sneaked out at some point so I didn’t get a chance to thank him again for his assistance. Not to worry: my chance to pay it forward came more quickly than anticipated, when two miles down the road, there was a car with its flashers on stuck in the middle of an intersection, with a man getting in and out of it anxiously while traffic just drove around him. I know what you’re thinking, and no, this man did not steal my car. Emily exclaimed that she couldn’t believe no one was stopping to help him instead of just driving around him, and so I hopped out of the car, dashed across the intersection, and pushed his car while he steered it into a nearby gas station. Any drying off that I had done with towels in the bar was instantly negated.

When the waitress came by to get our drink order, I asked her for some water, or perhaps just an empty glass and I could wring my hair into it. Thus began one of the lesser-known stages of grieving: Wisecracking As A Means To Deal With Frustration To Keep From Outright Cursing A Blue Streak Or Perhaps Sobbing. I noted that it was ironic that the car that GM had kindly taken the time to send me a note informing me that one day it would explode into flames and was subsequently unsafe to park in or near buildings had instead died in a deluge of water. I noted my anger at losing the twenty bucks worth of gas that I had JUST PUMPED into it; thereby doubling or even trebling its value. I made a lot more jokes that my friends were kind enough to laugh at even if they weren’t particularly funny; I WAS ON FIRE.

Well, actually, I was freezing, seeing as how my clothes were soaked and I was sitting in an air-conditioned restaurant. In November, guys? Really?

We were there for over two and a half hours, talking and swapping stories and jokes; the waitress, as usual, found us to be both hilarious AND adorable, and sent me home with some of their amazingly delicious vinegar bbq sauce which I will hoard like Gollum since they’re shutting their doors permanently in a week or so.

After we got to Pegasus, I called Tristan, and he agreed to meet me and take a look at the car to see if he could suss out what was wrong. At night. In the pouring rain. This makes him a strong contender for The Best Person In The Universe Award. We spent a while hunched over the engine, he tapped things and attempted to wrench things and poked things while I held the flashlight and attempted to not be in the way if not directly helpful. After a while, he admitted to being stuck since it seemed like the engine SHOULD turn over, we were both soaked, and even my shoes had given up the battle, exclaiming “BITCH, we are WATER-RESISTANT, NOT WATERPROOF” so my socks had started to squish and my whole body had begun the pruning process, so we closed the hood and pushed it into a non-reserved spot to sit for the night and get a fresh look at it tomorrow.

I suppose I am extremely lucky in that if my car HAD to die somewhere 20+ miles from home, it was at my home away from home, a place where everyone knows my name and won’t tow me if I keep my car at the lot overnight, so I’m LESS screwed than if the car had pulled this act somewhere in downtown Seattle, or Cthulhu forbid, on the freeway. Also, I’m lucky in that now I live close enough to work to get there on foot AND I’m closer to public transportation, so if this car ends up needing more in repairs than it’s worth, I can hoof it until I figure out what I’m going to do. It will just be inconvenient and sucky in the meanwhile.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go roll in a pile of dessicant packets.

“‘Tis a fine barn, but sure ’tis no tidepool, English.” “D’oh-eth!”

March 4, 2009 18 Comments read California, Pacific, Travel, USA, West

On Saturday, my dad and I drove to the Cabrillo National Monument and visited the tidepools; the weather was perfect, and this is the only time of year you can visit, as in the summer, low tide occurs in the middle of the night. From this area, you can look across the bay and see San Diego and Coronado, and if it’s a clear day, you can also see Mexico (specifically, Tijuana). Also in the area is the old Point Loma lighthouse.

This statue marks the place where historians believe conquistador Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo anchored his ship on his ‘voyage of discovery’ and claimed the land for Spain. The area now has a huge military presence, and the military cemetary where my grandfather was interred is less than a mile from this spot.

The rules were pretty simple–if you see a tidepool animal, and you MUST touch it, use one finger and no more pressure than you would use to touch your own eyeball. Don’t pry anything off of the rocks, and just be respectful of the area and the ecosystem. Soooooo, I was pretty angry to watch people’s kids yanking stuff out of the water and stomping on it, with not a single move made by the parents to correct their behavior. There are times in my life where I wish, hope, and pray for a deep blue sea moment. Sadly, it was not to be. This seagull was also flagrantly breaking the rules and eating an octopus.

Mr. Simpson, stop! A barnacle is a living creature!

Anemone! After we hopped around on slick rocks for a couple of hours, the tide started to come back in, and going back the way we came would have been difficult without getting soaking wet. This was less of an issue for my dad, but I only brought one pair of shoes with me on my trip, so I was interested in staying as dry as possible. We ended up having to scramble up these rocks (I’m hesitant to say ‘cliff’ as it wasn’t quite high enough, but it damn well sure felt like one–my upper body is still weak as a baby kitten and needs much more work) to get back up near where we parked the car, which was the price we had to pay for being more adventurous in the hopes of seeing something truly awesome. We both escaped without cracking our heads, so I call this a win.

“Dad! You’re sinking!” “Naw, that’s OK. I’m pretty sure I can struggle my way out.”

March 3, 2009 41 Comments read Attractions, California, Pacific, Travel, USA, West

After lunch, my dad and I spent some time in the cesspool–that is, we went to the La Brea Tar Pits. All these years, I’d assumed that the rotten egg smell of Los Angeles was a mere byproduct of the rotten, narcissistic attitudes of the people living there, or fumes given off by the metric tons of plastic surgery performed daily, but as it turns out, it’s hydrogen sulfide bubbling to the surface with methane gas. Alongside the tar pits is the Page Museum, which displays a selection of the fossils they’ve uncovered and puts scientists safely behind glass, where they can be observed without danger. It’s only inhumane if you put the Amish in a terrarium. It was about this time that both my dad and I were struck by how overtired we were–my flight didn’t arrive in San Diego until fairly late the night before, and we got a very early start to miss traffic on our drive up to LA, and all of a sudden, everything was funny and we became Those People. It started when we went to watch the movie on how the tar pits trapped animals, and, as a dutifully accessible museum, it was subtitled for deaf viewers. All it took was one [horse neighs] and I was on the giggletrain to That Persontown. If you’ve never heard a neigh, does that word even have any meaning? How about [dramatic music]? You’d never see a porno subtitled with [vaginal fart]–hearing some things just doesn’t add to the experience. But I digress. The oldest fossil found in the pits has been dated at 40,000 years, which means, if you have any sense of Earth’s timeline whatsoever, that no dinosaurs have been found in the pits, as they fell off the face of the Earth 65.5 million years ago. They have, however, found a number of now-extinct large species, and their disappearance from the face of North America is a mystery–animals like giant camels. This fellow here is an Antique Bison. This is where we became Those People in earnest, nearly crying with laughter over jokes as stupid as seeing what we could get for it on Antiques Roadshow. One guy commented that he couldn’t in good conscience follow us around the museum as we were having far too much fun doing something that was supposed to be educational. Note the Shasta Ground Sloth. Shasta, if you are unaware, is also an off-brand soft-drink, and I, for one, would like to see a Ground Sloth flavored beverage on the shelves right next to the Tiki Punch. They call this creature a saber-tooth cat. I, personally, defer to the Yellow Ranger, and if she calls it a “Saba Tooth Tiga”, then I shall as well. The pits also nabbed a unicorn! Something about this skull in particular I find terrifyingly freakshowish, but I can’t pinpoint what exactly about it is so creepy. They’ve got an interactive display up where you can see what it would be like to be trapped in tar–it’s pretty safe to say that if I got a foot trapped inside, the only way I’d escape would be to gnaw off my own leg. I also find this skull to be freaky, so I suppose there’s something about elephants and mastodons that I find unsettling. Did you know that mastodon and elephant bones and teeth were portrayed by the church as belonging to antediluvian giants until science stepped in and ruined their fun? It’s true! Some religious scholars went so far as to attempt to prove that all of our ancestors were much, much taller, with Adam topping out at 330 feet tall, or 63.95 Mellzah units. In the noncanonical book of Enoch, angels were so taken with the beauty of human women that they took them as wives and together spawned the race of evil giants, the Nephilim, and it’s been further postulated that the great flood was to destroy the giants–that it was worth it to God to destroy everything he had made in order to wipe out what his angels had wrought. However, there are references to giants in books taking place after the flood–King Og, for one, and Goliath, for another, which would mean that God destroyed his creation yet failed at his objective. This spawned another debate as to whether Noah and the other ark survivors were giants, which would explain the post-flood giants in the bible. Also: Lutherans blamed Catholics for the disappearance of Nordic giants, saying that all of their toils and fasting prevented their descendants from attaining the heights of their ancestors. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, elephant and mastadon bones were being sold to kings and churches as the remains of their mightiest heroes. Forgive the digression, I just find this sort of thing to be fascinating. I like to imagine the middle skeletal bird as saying “WHAT UP, GUYS?” but that might just be me. Ka-KAW, betch! My dad pointed out that they tried to make the exhibit extra realistic. I think that’s how a lot of birds got trapped in the tar, frankly. They saw the larger animals playing elaborate games of chicken, triple-dog-daring one another to, come on, just stick ONE hoof in the tar, and after they were hopelessly stuck, they became like statues–and we all know how birds like to congregate around/crap on statues. Their bowel movement habits became their downfall. Clearly, I am a scientist. They have found a LOT of dire wolf skulls at Pit 91, more than any other creature. This display represents a very small percent of their total collection. Since they have so many, I, for one, was hoping that they’d sell off some of the extras in the gift shop. But nooooooo, science is apparently not for everyone. Here’s an ice age Jack Russell Terrier. When I look at this skull, I think it looks overwhelmingly smug. Here’s the bit where they started putting scientists on display for our amusement. The guy with the bright yellow hair was up closer to the glass earlier making some very animated hand gestures and I’m pretty sure he wasn’t talking about science. I, for one, was impressed at how no one in the fishbowl took any notice of the people gawking at them like slack-jawed yokels. This diagram was incomplete as it didn’t show the methane coming out the other side. Even 40,000 years ago, there were white trash neighbors putting pink flamingos out on the lawn. This camel’s thoughts: “What in the HELL is all this greenery? I am SO. FUCKING. LOST.” Soooooo remember earlier in this post when I said that it’s unknown what happened to all of these large land animals, because it’s not like you see extraordinarily large camels bopping around North America? I think I just figured out the mystery: The animals were likely delicious. 24,000 years ago was when the first schlubby dude invented the utilikilt. Only one set of human remains has ever been found in the tar pit. I’m guessing she was the village idiot, but the (pretty clearly) male artist who decided what she looked like felt like drawing an attractive, stacked chick, with long flowing hair that looks like silk many thousands of years before the invention of Pantene. Isn’t that amazing? After we pressed pennies, it was time to start driving south to meet up with my dad’s boyfriend for dinner in orange county. I was hoping it would not go anything like when I met my mom’s boyfriend, but it would have taken a LOT to go that poorly–she sprung it on me, she couldn’t stop talking about what a jackass he was (then WHY do you think I’d want to meet him, mom? “Hello, I hear you’re a jackass!”?) and then as soon as he got into the car he started asking me personal questions–it was foul. This was pretty much that encounter’s exact opposite. My dad and I had discussed it on the phone beforehand, he’s only ever had positive things to say about J., and J. was delightful. We were comfortable with one another right away, and I’m so, so happy that my dad has found someone so awesome.