What a Weekend!

Best quotes from this weekend:

"Well, if the ants hadn't died..." -Johanna (coworker)
"What you need is a part-viking... Which I guess would be any Canadian." -Dre

This weekend was nuts. Let's start with Friday night. On my way home from work I smell this burning smell and think, "Hmm... Someone must have been riding their brakes down here." A few minutes later, I still smell it and think, "How could I possibly be burning my brakes? I'm taking these curves just like I always do." A little later, after eliminating use of my brakes for a bit, I STILL smell it. I figure I had better check it out, not that I know anything about the mechanics of my vehicle. When I stopped I saw something terrible that I had never seen before: smoke emerging from under the hood of my car! "Well, this is bad," I thought. By the way, I'm in a mountain canyon. My cell phone is dead. I'm obviously not driving anywhere. I went to take a look under the hood. There is some non-water liquid everywhere, and a hose attatched to nothing. The smell is horrible. It's still smoking. I'm a few hours walk from anything. I decided to hitchhike home. (Don't freak out!) After a rather frustrating call with the Subaru roadside assistance operator (No, there aren't any cross streets. No, I don't have any phone service at home. No, I don't have the VIN. Well, I'm not sure if I can make it to the vehicle to meet the towing company; it's a long walk.), I hitched back to the car to wait for the towing company, scheduled to arrive within an hour. I waited for two+, and didn't want to hitch back in TOTAL darkness, so I went back home again, leaving Zeus on the roadside.
Saturday morning, I called in to work to make sure they'd gotten my message last night saying that I had no way to get in to work and had to deal with my vehicle situation anyway. Debra contacted a friend to give me a ride into town. They were enjoying their Saturday morning and so didn't leave until a leisurely ten forty-five or so. They dropped me off at the Ford dealership, where everyone was really nice, the bosses understanding, and I only got scolded for hitching and I-told-you-so'ed about driving a foreign car. (It was made in Indiana.) They let me borrow a vehicle. I drove over to Subaru, where the service guy was very helpful and convinced the towing company to come to the dealership and let me lead them to my car.

So, I get back to Subaru; Zeus gets back to Subaru. I get a loaner vehicle from them. It's not as good a car, but it had a more powerful engine, which is fun.
As I was typing the above, I got a call from Subaru. They will need my car until some time next week! Apparently, the headgasket needs to be replaced. I know that there is a hose that needs to be reconnected and fluid that needs to be replaced as well because I saw that for myself. Oi!
Anyway, I went back to work after all that, early Saturday afternoon. It was cool because I'd missed five hours of work, which makes my workday reasonable (eight hours). Anyway, I closed my first deal by myself and generally had a good day. I don't know. That combined with the care that all my managers showed for me... Maybe this job isn't so bad. I was thinking this morning that the problem is that it doesn't engage my interest, and it's long hours of not engaging my interest. Judging from the research I've done online, there's not much interesting stuff out there. Oh, and the unlivable wages at other places aren't so appealing either. I don't know anymore.
After work, I went over to Reza's and he cooked fish for me (yum), while I watched the tape about his cross-country peace run. It was relaxing. The food was good and the tape was incredible. I came back into town on Sunday to bike with Reza, as planned. Yay! So much fun. Then he cooked Iranian food for me and it was so delicious that I wanted to eat everything, but I still didn't come close to being able to eat rice like he can. We had a really good time together.

Now it's time for another week of work.