Black black. 2005 hasn't been going too well. I shouldn't complain...since it can only get better. How? Well....it can't possibly only get worse.

Last week, mom landed in the ER with chest pains. No biggie, but being in that situation and environment simply ruffles my feathers. Hopefully, the cause is something simple like acid reflux and not angina.

Yesterday, while driving back from lunch, my transmission stopped working. I got into the parking lot and the shifter won't go into any gear! Luckily a buddy of mine was walking by and helped me push my car to a parking spot 30 feet away. Leaky clutch fluid? Mangled clutch? Lose linkage? I didn't know how to start fixing this thing....so I started with the simplest. Made a run down to pepboys for a bottle of clutch fluid and filled up the almost empty reservoir. It seemed to have done the job....so I started driving to work. About halfway there, the shifter started crapping out again, my car was stuck in neutral. I was lucky enough to have found an empty garage in the middle of nowhere to pull over. After playing around a little, I found out I can shift to any gear with the car engine off. But once I turn on the car...the shift knob was stuck in no man's land. So that's what I did, I started the car in 2nd gear and drove 5 miles to school, all in 2nd gear. When I got to school, I had to make a 3 point turn in which I turned, killed the engine, put the car in reverse, started the engine, moved, killed the engine, put the car in 2nd, started the engine, moved, killed the engine, put the car in reverse, PARKED.

Why didn't I go home to get the other car? Why did I go directly to school?? So dangerous. So stupid. I guess I was hurrying to get to the lab. Anyways....upon finishing up at school, I decided to drive home on the freeway, figuring if I can stay in one gear, I'll be fine. Be safer to drive on the locally, but more of a booch cuz of the stop lights. Ended up taking the freeway. The drive home was as smooth as rolling a new car off the lot! Amazing!!! See...the cup is half full sometimes.

Joycie had till today to send in an $80 rebate. Of course, she had all of the last two months to do it, but decided yesterday was the best day. She calls me last night and told me she took my last stamp. I vaguely remember I just bought a new book...what was she talking about, last stamp. Upon further investigation (ie digging through my piles and piles of junk mail), I see that she took my Statue of Liberty stamps...the ones they used when stamps went from $0.25 to $0.27!!!! The stamp doesn't have the number written on it cuz it was an intermittent stamp! And she took my last one, the one I kept all these years!!! Not only that....we run the chance of the mail man noticing it and NOT sending not sending in our rebate in time.

Black black.....