I don't deserve to own a car.

Every car I have ever had always needs work done to it. My most recent one is no exception. Cars in my ownership have a higher breakage rate than others I guess. Driving home Friday night from work, my temperature gage showed the needle climbing toward hot. I pulled over into a nearby parking lot as soon as I could get to it. Difficult as it was, I managed to check my overflow container. In the past it would be dry, I'd add a little water (which I keep in the trunk for that purpose), and I would be fine. But not this time. No sir. The reservoir was filled to max. My brother and sister in law were going out so they came to meet me and follow me home, as it seemed as long as I was moving, and the cool air was hitting the engine, I was ok, but it was the stoplights where it was tempted to rise. Lucky for me, I was nearly home by the time I had noticed it and had pulled off the road in the first place. And that my brother and his wife were driving by our area. So we take the car to the repair shop as we were originally going to have them jam the back window up. As this was more important to the car's ability to run, and the security guard at work hooked me up with a fab job of taping a bag to the window, I had them look at the engine heating first. The verdict? A radiator leak. The damage? $600. The only good news is that they managed to fix the heat for $35 instead of $300...how, I have no idea. Being as we don't have $600, we are going to have to put it off. Good thing Chas has a car now. But the thing is, we are trying to save up money to go to LA next month, and buy the tickets and such, and we have found good ticket prices that we really need to snatch up as soon as we can, before they're gone. I don't know how we are going to handle this.

In other good news, while the car was being looked at, Chas and I headed over to the Central Winds Park in Winter Springs for the Highland Games for a few hours. We had yummy, artery-clogging fried foods, watched pointless games, ran into some friends (including maggie226), bought some imported candy and goodies, and wandered the trails into the woods behind the festival for a little naughtiness. ;) I'll see what I can do about loading some pics later.

Once we were well tired from all the walking, we left the festival to go pick up my car. It held up ok getting home. Good thing it is a short distance home, and I managed to get a lot of green lights. Hooray! We were supposed to see our friend Doug's art thing at Babaghanoush, but if we had left as soon as we got home, we'd have only made it for the last half hour, and as I had a headache building, I crashed on the couch a little bit. An hour or so later, Chas took me up to the Fascist Fashion Square Mall to meet up with glittergrrl69 to do a little shopping. She was looking for business clothes for counseling sessions in her practicum class this semester and new cookware for her kitchen, and she wanted my help with both. But the silly girl left her wallet at home! :) So we looked around, and we tried on clothes, and looked at cookware. We spent many hours together and we had lotsa fun together. We hopped over to a nearby plaza with a Linens and Things but I was disappointed in the lack of cookware at this location. Don't get me wrong, they had some, but not as good a variety as the Altamonte location. There were some clothes at the nearby Old Navy that were just screaming my name, but I was good and put it ALL back. Like a good poor girl. Sniff.

( What I really liked but put back like a good girl. )

Chas picked me up from the Old Navy and we headed back toward home, but make a stop at the Peacock Room to see our friend's band, The Delusionaires, play. I love it when Aaron picks up my hand and kisses it. He does it for all the lovely ladies, but still...yeah, there is something so nice about it. We hung around for a while before they began to play, but let's just say the alcohol we ingested made things heat up, so we left after a few songs in their "mellow" set. Oh how I love amaretto. I am NOT a big drinker, but I will have an amaretto and pineapple or amaretto sour every now and then. Everyone teases me how nurse drinks, but I don't care. I like it for the taste. I don't drink to get intoxicated. I have seen far too many people make asses of themselves when they're drunk, and quite frankly, I don't want to be that person.

Anyhow, outside of learning about my car and the headache that came with that, I had a really great day yesterday with Chas and Heidi. Today should be quieter, and then back to work tomorrow. Oh boy.