Pimp my Pride

Ahhh Fridays. Certainly no Wednesday. Today was a weird one too to keep things interesting. I woke up from a weird ass series of dreams to find out I had the van for the day, which always makes it much easier to drag myself through the motions of going to school and sitting through lectures.
Then I stumbled outside still in a half asleep daze to throw something in the garbage before the truck came by, and was greeted by sunshine and already 12 degree air. A high of 17 on the 4th of November is certainly welcomed by me, even though it made me feel mildly guilty for not biking in and taking full advantage.

A couple hours of mindless lectures later, and a school newspaper throughly perused, I got myself out of there ready to celebrate the weekend by stopping to get a cable I needed to attempt to save the harddrive that crashed a couple weeks ago. Yea, I know how to keep it exciting.

I pull into the driveway with the window down to enjoy what I'm sure will be the last nice day of 2005, and notice a familliar ticking coming from the engine of the van, reminding me that at 11 years of age, she's burned off a bit of her oil again and needs to be topped up.

On pulling the hood release to throw some oil in, the handle comes a full two inches further than its supposed to, and I cringe as I know there's another issue to be fixed (the full list is far to depressing, expensive, and in the end pointless to lay down here). I give closing the hood a couple tries, and no dice, at which point I know I won't even be able to drive out to grab whatever part I need to fix it.

With the hood release mechanism being right above the radiator, and myself being prone to needless cuts, scrapes, and burns I decided to give it some time to cool down before poking and prodding around too much more, so I come inside to throw on some grubs that have enough other stains on them that a few more grease and oil spots would just add some more character, or something like that.

I check my e-mail quick and find out the University has graciously decided to give me a bunch of money in a scholarship for this term, which after balancing my accounts this morning, is more than just a convenient occurence.

After a little bit I decide to get at the hood latch again. I'm glad its a relatively old vehicle at this point, because I have seen under the hoods of some of the new cars out there, and everything seems so awkward and inconveniently placed that I doubt I would have been able to get at anything under there. As it was, it took me a full twenty minutes to confirm my suspicion that some spring had broken.

Another ten minutes and I'd manage to bend the end of the remaining spring into shape and force it into place on the latch, and thus repair, if only temporarily, the hood latch. Amazingly, all of which done with no blood or burnt flesh, and at zero cost but my time.

Now I am left with just my harddrive to attempt to save. One of my personalities is saying that since I'm having a great day, it might actually work, while the archpersonality drives home that only so much can go right in a day. I guess we'll have to see what happens.