day, October 6th, 2004

I had a long day at work.  From 3-5pm we had our quarterly town hall
meeting.  I was awarded a new IT shirt for having been voted: most likely to
say something inappropriate.  Years of work finally recognized.  I love our
award system in the IT department, it.s fun.  Everyone laughed, especially
me.   After this I had to take care of a situation with a frantic VP.   I
had missed Judo on Monday due to my work schedule and plan to snag
Caroline.s car that she was to loan me until Wednesday evening.  She was
nice enough to do this because I had been hauling lots of stuff to her new
cabin in Epworth.   I wanted to drop my car off on the weekend and was
getting tired of an EGR air tube leak that had been putting exhaust fumes in
my car cabin and making my motor run rich for 2-3 months.  I really needed
to get it done, so a compromise was proposed and ratified.  Today was the
day to drop it off after playing Judo and visiting Ben, my kimono guy.

It was a simple plan.  Play judo, look at antique kimono, drop her car off
and then take the train to work the next morning lugging my smelly judo bag.
After the end of my day today, I was ready to play and enjoy some exercise.
I had a great time at Judo.  The workout wasn.t too terrible as the fall is
White Sensei.s time to teach a lot of fundamentals and then let us work
freely at the end of class.  I was having fun and was learning some stuff,
beating up my friends, getting beat up by my friends, a grand old time.
Willard, one of our club.s mainstay members was teaching me some things
about grip fighting and how not to get too caught up in one thing so as to
forget another.  During his expert tutelage, I zigged when he zagged and I
regained consciousness on one foot and one knee with him holding me steady.

I asked for my eyes to be checked and my hearing to be checked.  Both were
fine.  There was a lot of blood.  I didn.t remember getting hit.  My head
hurt, my neck felt out of place, but some of that could have been Jay.s
fault as he didn.t take my earlier unceremonious dumping of his butt on the
ground.  He.s a type A personality lawyer, good guy.  So Willard made sure I
was steady as he walked me to the side of the mat.  Some paper towels were
procured so as to stop the bleeding.  He complained of having blood all over
his gi.  I held paper towels to the side of my head and pulled them off
every once in a while so someone could check to see how bad the skin was
split.  It was split, but everything was staying together, so stitches will
not be required.  We all circled up at the end of class and I did the best
bow I could and was ushered off the mat as someone noticed that I didn.t
look so good.  My stomach was starting to hurt and the room was getting
hazy.  I sat down for 30 minutes to recover and someone grabbed a first aid
kit from their car and gave me a wet nap with alcohol on it.  Willard felt
bad and cleaned out my ear.  He felt really bad about the whole affair.
Various people advised me on various things to put on my ear after a proper
post-judo cleaning of it.  So I said my goodbyes to the club and went across
the street to put gas in the car.

I put in $10 to replace the fuel I had used and then drove down the road to
the nearest drug store and got there 15 minutes before closing.  Seeing as I
looked pretty rough and out of it, the staff took pity on me and were very
helpful in getting me to the bacitracin and the Qtips.  I thanked them and
then headed South to Ben.s house to look at some Men.s Haori.  He chastised
my choice in sports which is ironic as he is a huge football fan who
religiously attends high school football games, one or two every Friday
without fail, even if he is doing a show in another part of the USA, for the
entire season.  It is good to know that he cares, so I took for the concern
that it was.  Once I finished my kimono education of the evening, I set out
for Caroline.s house and gave her a call to let her know I would be there in
30 minutes.  She eventually called me back when I was about 4 miles from her
house.  Her Mazda has a manual transmission in it and I stalled it out
coming to a stop as my cel phone rang.

Caroline asked me how I was and I was cursing my negligence in taking the
car out of gear and then cursing the car for not wanting to start again.  I
was stuck in a left turn lane at the top of the intersection of Glenwood and
Candler road.  Caroline was less than amused at this development as I was to
learn that she had had a bad day at work and a bad day dealing with
landscaping contractors.  As the debate began as to what happened and what
went wrong and how this and that and the other thing look suspicious as I
borrow her car, etc. I had to explain to Caroline the state my head from
recent judo masochism and the state of her car and my need to call AAA and
get the removal of the car form the intersection in motion before blame was
assigned and resolution to the current situation discussed.  She accepted
this and then I quickly hung up and called AAA.   Once the situation was
explained to AAA, they put me on priority dispatch, within the hour to get
her car to her house.  It was about 1030pm at this time.  I called back
Caroline and she demanded to know my towing plan.  I was going to have the
car towed to her house as I could then look at the car in the AM and
determine a course of action and either fix it or have it towed again to a
shop.  The alternative was to tow it to her long time mechanic in the middle
of nowhere and be totally stranded.  A bum offered me help in the middle of
our planning session and I declined his assistance.  Caroline accepted this
course of action and then we worked on what went wrong, what could be wrong,
and how we would work toward resolution.  This was about the time a Dekalb
County patrol car put on its lights and pulled up to talk to me.

I told Caroline I had to go.  The officer asked me what I was doing there
and I informed him of the stall, the dead battery, and my call to AAA to get
me out of there and the fact that they had awarded me priority status.
Readers, please note that I had played judo this evening so I was looking
greasy and had messed up hair and a bleeding ear.  I also had no proof of
insurance or registration for this car on my person.  Luckily, the officer.s
car was facing the opposite direction of Caroline.s car so he did not see
the caked on blood on my ear and the surrounding area of my head.  He told
me that we had to move the car now and I agreed and waited for him to
determine how.  He called in and stumbled on the make and model of the car,
so I gave it all to him in a lower voice as he called it in so that no time
would be wasted with the dispatcher.  He then informed me that the Miata
bumper was too low for him to push the car with his car.  He then got out
and told me to release the brake, help him push, and steer the car to the
nearest parking lot.  It was late and there were no cars so this worked
easily.  Once I got the car in the Buffalo China lot, next to Church.s
Chicken I got out to thank the nice officer and he was already gone.  This
was okay as my head hurt and I was tired and wanted to go home.  I called
back Caroline and explained that once the cause of the failure was
determined I would take care of all of it and she was insistent on taking
care of the parts as the car was old, unless a fault in my style of driving
was determined to be the cause.  I told her that it was my total
responsibility regardless and would take care of it, but lawyers cannot be
anything but lawyers and all angles of the situation, both technical and
responsible were discussed.  This was a good way to pass the time while
waiting for a tow truck.  I saw two tow trucks drive by and none stopped for
me.  We had talked the situation to death and decided to discuss it more in
the morning.  I called AAA to find out where there truck was and inform them
that I was no longer in the intersection.  I also noticed on my blackberry
that my boss had emailed me a thanks for handling the frantic VP situation.
I then sent an email to her letting her know that I was having car trouble
and would be in late the next morning. This was at about 11:15pm.

I sat there with foggy interior windows and listened to the sound of an
urban evening that was not too interesting or accented by ghetto theater.  I
was getting bored.  The car had not been cranked over in quite a while and
as lead and acid react, they build up a charge when there is nothing to
drain the battery.  So after 30 minutes, the car starts up and I got that
car back on the road and toward her house as expediently as I can.  I called
AAA on the way and told them it started and that if it died again in route,
I would call them back in a jiffy.  I got to about a mile from Caroline.s
house when the alternator light kicked on.  I got to her block by the time
the battery died and pushed the car the remaining 100 feet to a pile of dirt
that was in front of her house.  I rang the doorbell and she opened the door
and asked me where the car was.  I pointed and mentioned that it started and
the problem appeared to be the alternator or voltage regulator and I could
test them in the morning if I had jumper cables.  I also said that I had had
a very bad day and needed a hug.  I got a hug and made a lot of noise and
she put her head on my ear.  She was about to get mad again and I turned on
a light and showed her why I yelled.  This stopped her from getting angry as
she said it looked terrible.  I told her about my day and my plan to get
some jumper cables from my car.  She offered to drop me off at the mechanic
who was working on my car.  I would then go back to her house, do some
troubleshooting, and then either take it to a mechanic or fix it there.  I
then told her the sordid tale of my day and how it was awful.  Once I was
done, she mentioned that she had had a rough couple of days but wouldn.t
tell me about them now as she was tired.  I went to the kitchen to get a
glass of water, she followed to get an old towel to put on a pillow so I
wouldn.t stain it. By the time I got back, she was asleep and there was a
pillow for me with an old case and an old towel on top.  I took a shower and
cleaned out my ear as best I could.  I didn.t get to sleep until around 2am
as I was still out of sorts.

The next morning it was 830am when I woke up.  I was warned the night before
that due to her employer expecting her to be at work every day early, we
were to set out early.  This obviously didn.t happen.  This was not early so
I expected something amiss.  I got dressed and found Caroline getting ready
for work and wearing these really hot, vertically striped pants and a white
blouse.  My head still hurt and my neck was still out of place to temper me.
Caroline was still in a bad mood.  I asked her what was on her mind and I
learned the latest details about her contract agency messing with her raise
she had asked for and landscaping contractors having put a tree in the wrong
place.  I listened as she had listened to me the night before.  She had more
drama than I did, but I was soon to eclipse her.

She wanted me to look at the things the landscapers had messed up and I
stumbled after her in my 6.5 hour sleep state. I didn.t bleed a drop on her
towel or pillow and I was happy for this.  She was planning to redo her plan
for the front yard based on the improper placing of the tree and was
stressing out about it.  I told her to call the landscaper and make him put
the fucking tree where she wanted it in the first place.  She said she was
trying to be accommodating and I said that she had paid a lot of money to
have things done a certain way and that accommodating these people would not
make her happy at all.  I then told her the story of a co-worker and his .40
Kimber small frame 1911 clone and how all he had really wanted was the .45
and was very unhappy for settling for second best.  Real men shoot .44
magnums, but if they choose to use one of those new fangled semi automatic
pistols, they shoot .45s.  This analogy was lost on Caroline, as I had
expected, and she was in the middle of cursing out the landscaper so I
decided not to give any more analogies to anyone for the rest of the day.
It was a good analogy and I couldn.t let it pass.  The original front yard
plan was then explained to me and she asked me my opinion on the front yard.
I don.t like yard work and believe that nature should be left alone to do
its thing as it usually does a good job on its own.  Caroline knows this,
but she needed my support and I gave it with a headache and my neck out of
place and no breakfast.  I said that the tree needed to go where the old one
that was dying was at.  She then wanted real reasons above and beyond the
fact that she wanted it there in the first place.  I then showed her how the
trees were spaced in her front yard in relation to the house and how the
tree position of the new tree would block the view from her property line,
especially of her porch and new paint job that she had just had done on the
house.  I then showed her the spacing of the trees in relation to the house
itself and how they didn.t even remotely match, but that they were not
perfect before but still better.