Gifts And Curses

Yes­ter­day cer­tainly had a lot of ups and downs. It’s kinda ironic that the night before, I was talk­ing to Peggy about how I used to be a very bit­ter per­son, and then even­tu­ally learned to let things go and move on and that con­spir­a­cies ARE crazy.

Ironic, I say, because yes­ter­day, I woke up at 5 to get ready for fly­er­ing. Did the usual morn­ing rou­tine, and called up Clint to make sure he was up and tell him I was on my way to pick him up and take him to cam­pus. Walk out­side and over to my car. Even in the pre-​dawn dark­ness, it looked kinda funny. I couldn’t put my fin­ger on it at first, and then as I got closer, I real­ized it was lower than usual. How curi­ous. So when I actu­ally get up to the car, I noticed I had a flat tire. No wait… four flat tires. Curi­ouser and curi­ouser. Yeah, they had been slashed. And it was just my car, the other cars around were still fine. Quickly sup­pressed an urge to kill. Called up Clint, asked him to pick me up instead. I would go fly­er­ing any­way, since there wasn’t any­thing I could do for my car that early in the morning.

Fly­ered our hearts out on the “last push” of Alice C’s baby. That didn’t sound wrong at all. After­wards, applied for a job at TAPS like I had planned since I was on cam­pus, and also turned in a form to apply for sum­mer school, since you have to be enrolled in Spring 2005 to auto­mat­i­cally be eli­gi­ble. Went to CoHo after that and sat around. Joe M told me about the sec­ond half of his early birth­day present for me — he paid for my reg­is­tra­tion for Sec­tion 1 Sec­tion­als! (The first half being a t-​shirt that declares, “Robots R Ur Friends.”) Thanks, man! Then he took Eddie C and me home. Called the non-​emergency line and filed a police report about my car. Then called up Bran­don to ask for his AAA assis­tance, since I would need to tow the car to get it fixed. He was about to go to class, though, so I just waited at home. Looked around town for deals on tires.

Bran­don came by after his class. We called up AAA and got them to get a tow truck for us. While wait­ing for it, we played ghetto hold’em in the park­ing lot and cleaned out my car. The tow truck dri­ver hecka scared me by try­ing to drive my car on all flats to line it up with the truck. And while we were mov­ing it, the Trooper bounced more on the flatbed than I’ve ever seen before. Too k it to Big O, and they gave me a nice deal on some generic tires (Comanches). It’s OK… the bet­ter tires in my size would have cost another $200.

While they worked on it, Bran­don and I went to Manna to try it. I hadn’t been back since that one MNR long, long ago. Sup­pos­edly in the mean­time, they changed own­er­ship and the food got bet­ter. While it was bet­ter — it was decent, and not down­right bad, like before — it was noth­ing com­pared to the stuff that Sophia and Esther feed me. Then we went back to Brandon’s and he worked on a new duct tape wal­let as I played Budokai 3. Wow, that game is really fun!

My par­ents rolled into town to pay for the tires, and give me a bit of a lec­ture. I felt really bad for mak­ing them go through all that trou­ble. And I get the feel­ing they didn’t believe me when I said I had no idea who did this to me. (They dont’ really under­stand that APhiO is not like the typ­i­cal movie frats.) But really… I don’t think any­one hates me right now. Why DID this hap­pen? Am I just liv­ing obliv­i­ously in my own lit­tle happy world while peo­ple are lung­ing at my back with daggers?

So after I got the new wheels, went to the 76 on Cov­ell to fill up for pledge retreat today. Took me $50! Ouch! Oh, and their lit­tle pay kiosk is the quote of the day. (Clint had men­tioned it to me that morn­ing, because he filled up there, too.)

“Wel­come to 76!”- Kiosk dis­play.
“Come inside for hot”- Kiosk dis­play, refresh­ing.
“Meal, cof­fee, and ATM.”- Kiosk dis­play, refresh­ing again.

What a tease! While there, I also scraped off all the bugs from my wind­shield. They are get­ting pretty crazy. Espe­cially on the causeways.

Went home and talked for a bit, try­ing to gauge inter­est in Spaghetti Feed. No one wanted to go with me, though, so I went by myself. It was pretty fun. I sat at the IC table between OZ and KS. The IC dis­cus­sion is always inter­est­ing, because they aren’t privy to the usual IPhi gossip.

After the feed, I was gonna go home and get ready for Pledge Retreat today. But then food coma set in and I went to sleep incred­i­bly early. That’s why I woke up at 6:30 today.

OK, this will be my last post before retreat, so see you all when I get back! As one last note before I go, I just wanted to say, “A friend in need is a friend indeed.” Thanks again to every­one who helped me out yes­ter­day, espe­cially Bran­don!

Tags: Alice C, Brandon T, Eddie C, Food, fresh, Friends, Joe M, Quote of the Day, Work