An Involuntary Vacation Day

So, I'm on my way to work with the new kid this morning-- the actual "Quit whining because people with real jobs get up this early every day without complaint" morning-- who lives in a ginormous (Livejournal's Suggested Spellings: enormous, genomes, generous, venomous, genome's, norms, Gino's, gnomes, norm's, Giacomo's, grooms, Norma's, Normy's, gnome's, gizmo's, groom's) house just beyond the north side of town. It's a two-lane rural road to get there, and I hit a railroad track at about 45, slowed down a good 10 mph from the posted speed limit.

And, in doing so, managed to kill my car's will to live.

First, the stereo went out. So I figured that I had just jostled the faceplate loose. I fiddled with that, and it didn't come back on. Odd. Then I pressed down on the accelerator, and nothing happened. I tried to steer, and the steering wheel locked in place. This? Was not fun.

I then manage to coast onto the road the kid actually lives on, then put on my emergency blinkers, which, at this point, are the only thing on the car that's working. Because I deal with all faulty machinery in exactly the same way, I turn the car off, wait 30 seconds, then turn it back on. And it seems we're good to go, so I give the car some gas... and get about another tenth of a mile before everything goes dead again.

So, I coast into the parking lot of a church and call AAA. And it takes them about 45 minutes to contact a tow truck and get said tow truck on its way out of town. I call and cancel my three appointments for the day. Fantastic. Tow truck guy arrives. We look under the hood, to see what's wrong. And it turns out that hitting the railroad tracks managed to tear the rather thick cable that connects the battery to... whatever it is that the battery connects to. Luckily, he had the right size of wrench in his truck, so he was able to reconnect the cable securely enough for me to get the car to my uncle (not the drag queen uncle, for those of you wondering), who then found a new part to connect the wire to the battery.

A quick, easy fix, as car troubles go. Which was great news, considering that I just shelled out over $800 to have a whole bunch of other, unrelated things fixed on the car. Good times.

Later, I get to go to Frankfort to speak at a free seminar from the Sensory Learning Center, since my kid in Frankfort has done exceptionally well since returning from his two weeks in their program. Still, I don't think their "Science!" explanation for the basis of their program makes a damn bit of sense-- why, for instance, making a child watch a series of differently colored lights while he's strapped to a rotating table for two hours a day for two weeks would suddenly lead to a marked increase in that child's expressive language. It's the kind of thing that, were certain aggressively heterosexual bastions of stable personality constructs to get wind of it, could get a whole lot of negative press. But, if I can't vouch for the science behind it, I can say definitively that it's made a huge, entirely positive difference for one of the kids I work with. And, basically, that's what I get to say to a group of parents at a seminar. Super.

The nominees for the Emmy Awards, the pop culture awards show to which I pay the least attention, were announced yesterday. The PR gnomes at Kenyon are likely waxing apoplectic because, after she turned into a straight-up bitch in her acceptance speech last year, Allison Janney, '83 wasn't nominated for Best Actress in a Drama Series for Self-Important Blowhards Never Sit the Hell Down. Or The West Wing. And if the Oscars had the good sense not to nominate another self-important blowhard last year, there was no real reason for the Emmys to break form from rightfully ignoring Scrubs for years. But Arrested Development was nominated for Best Comedy Series, and it picked up three acting nominations and took three of the five nominations for Best Writing for a Comedy Series. You take the good, you take the bad, and all...

Current Viewing: Being Bobby Brown. Since it's Bravo's first real hit show in a while, it's on all the time! "Mr. Lama" is getting so much airtime these days.

Current Listening: Howl Howl Gaff Gaff, Shout Out Louds. Because I don't care what the people with more indie-cred than me say, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah make my ears bleed. Shout Out Louds, however, do the large band doing super happy lo-fi pop thing incredibly well. Even Letterman was impressed, and he usually just likes Foo Fighters and Concrete Blonde.