A crazy day

I can't believe that it's already November. Wasn't Andrew driving out with me to Provo only a few weeks ago? Sheesh. Anyway, yesterday, November 1, was a day worthy of its own blog entry, courtesy of my car. Now, a car is a lovely thing to have, but when it acts up, it's really annoying. I apologize if this entry is a little snarky; I'm still kind of annoyed at the whole thing.


I left my house in the early afternoon to go mail a package to Andrew before I went up to campus for my office hours. I got to the UPS store near my house, only to be informed that if I went to the other UPS store, about a mile away, I could get free same-day delivery to the MTC. Now, being the nice cheapskate that I am, I took them up on the offer. The package was delivered, and I stopped at the gas station down the road to fill up my almost empty tank. I had to be at school in twenty minutes to meet with a student, so I thought I had plenty of time. However, as I went to restart my car, I found the key would not turn. Now, this occurence has happened before, two or three times; apparently, it's a really common problem in the Ford Focus. Realizing what was going on, I called a locksmithing company to come fix it and was informed that the locksmith would call me in 10 to 15 minutes. Of course, no one I knew was home or near a computer, so I called the psychology department and left a message asking them to tell my meeting I wasn't going to make it. I later found out that it didn't work, but that's another issue.

Anyway, 20 minutes passed, so I called the company back. They again promised I would hear from the locksmith in 10-15 minutes and that they were sending him a "call the customer ASAP" message. I waited 10 minutes, then realized that I had to get up to campus to teach my evening class at 4. My roommate was fortunately available and kind enough to come get me and drop me off at school, and I managed to do a credible job of teaching my class. Did I mention that my car stalled at the gas pump? Yep, no pressure whatsoever for leaving it unattended for a few hours. Eek.

After class, I called another friend who dropped me back off at the gas station. By now, it was about six-thirty, and I still hadn't heard from the locksmith. Thinking it was a lost cause, I started calling other companies in the phone book. After one "I don't have anything here that could fix that" and a "so what is it that you want me to do," I called the original company AGAIN because they at least knew how to fix this car thing. I'm kind of still annoyed at the other companies; I mean, honestly, I knew what the problem was and explained it several times. Do I sound like a ditzy teenage girl who just locked her keys in the car? I have done that before, but it was not the problem this time around. Grr. Anyway, so I called the company, only to find that they had no information on me at all. I was nicely assertive and quickly gave my information again. They promised to call (do you detect a theme here?), and I then called my mom to give her an update (read: rant like crazy!).

Fortunately, the locksmith called within 10 minutes and I gave my information again, including my location. Now, I think I spoke to 4 or 5 people and gave my location every single beeping time, but all the locksmith had was that I was somewhere on University Avenue. Given that University Avenue runs through the entire city, yeah, that's really specific information for the company to pass on. He told me he would be about an hour, so I got to spend a whole lot of time in my car introspecting. I had come from class, so all I had was a copy of the Daily Universe (school newspaper) and my psychology textbook. I was sick of the book after teaching from it that evening, and I finished the paper in about 5 minutes. It was really, really, really boring, and the irony was that before I left home, I had a prompting to bring a book that I ignored. That'll teach me to ignore promptings, won't it? :-)

Anyway, after an hour and a half, the locksmith finally arrived and started to look at the problem. After a few minutes of pushing and pulling, his reaction was, "wow, this is really stuck." Hmm, you think? Anyway, he finally managed to get the stupid thing out, only to find out that it was damaged and worn enough to need a complete replacement. But, it got fixed, and I'm happy to say that my car is running again. I'm also really glad that it didn't happen on Saturday; I have to go up to Salt Lake and take a big psychology exam for future graduate school. I just hope that they don't choose mostly neuroscience questions; there's a reason I chose a developmental emphasis!