I love my repair shop!!!

I tried all weekend with varying degrees of success to NOT worry about the car and if it was okay or if the electrical system was fried and we’d be looking at a $1000 repair bill or if we’d just have to buy a whole new car and we can’t afford that but we sure can’t drive the Outback everywhere because it gets like 23 miles a gallon which I for one do not consider good gas mileage and what if they aren’t honest like D swears they are and they spot us for the mechanical morons that we are who can very easily be ripped off by telling us we need a $1000 repair as they put a  $5 fuse in and pocket the $995 difference while howling with laughter and what will we dooooooooooooo…..

So when my cell rang yesterday, my heart pretty much stopped.

And….my car is fixed. For less than it costs for a tank of gas. $34!! And I was counting on at least $100 as that’s what the Car Talk guys said a fuse generally costs.

So, I’m really really really happy. And I’m never taking my car anywhere else again. And I’m telling everyone I know, GO TO STEVE’S.

I’m oddly alone in the office right now. It’s kind of nice, but would be nicer if the phone would stop ringing. D’s at lunch, Drama Queen went to a Staff Appreciation Thing for the free hamburgers and hot dogs and t-shirts, and Aggravation Receptionist has gone home sick. FINALLY. Now she has pleurisy. She came in yesterday looking like death (oh what a surprise) saying she couldn’t breath and she felt horrible and she sat in everyone’s office in turn filling us in on her condition until she finally left to go to the doctor and then she came back and spent the rest of the day sitting in everyone’s office in turn filling us in on her condition and how horrible she felt and she couldn’t breath and was in pain throughout her entire upper body. When she got the pleurisy diagnosis, I told her that K, my old office mate, had that once and stayed home for like a week. And K NEVER took sick days. This was a hint on my part that she needed to GO HOME. And stay there till she felt better. We can certainly get by without her – she just got back from a week’s vacation in Florida on Friday.

So this morning she comes in looking like death and says  she’s no better and D asks if the pain pills they gave her helped and she  said yes they did but she still feels no better, which doesn’t seem quite possible to ME but I’ve never had pleurisy. I do know that it’s horribly painful, from K having it, and she nearly never got over it. (I also thought previously it was an 1800s kind of disease that nobody gets anymore, but apparently not.) So I am sorry for her, but honestly, if there’s one thing I know about her by now it’s that when she calls in sick, she’s not sick, because if she IS sick she’s going to come dragging in so that she can tell us all about it in great detail and mope around in our offices all day long whining.

Anyhow, she vanished for at least half an hour this morning without telling anyone where she was going, so the Ass’t Dean finally went looking for her after the phone kept ringing and students kept coming in. (She is always vanishing so nobody really feared she’d dropped dead or anything – we knew she was upstairs in someone else’s office.) And since she was up there crying, Ass’t Dean sent her home.

I am trying to be less annoyed with her, especially when she really is sick. But when she has a perfectly valid excuse to STAY THE HELL HOME, and doesn’t,  it’s hard to muster up much sympathy.

I didn’t mean to go on and on about Aggravation Receptionist, because I actually have something MUCH more interesting than her to go on and on about –

Bill Clinton is coming to campus this afternoon! And I’m going to go see him!!

We just found out yesterday. It’s kind of a big deep dark secret apparently since our Student Government Association arranged it and the campus can’t be seen as endorsing any candidate. So there’s no mention at all on the front page. It’s mostly been word of mouth, really. So I’m looking forward to seeing Bill in person. Even though at the moment I’m intending to vote for Barack.

Amusingly, I’m thinking my weird Lou Reed dream from the last entry may perhaps have been a premonition. Because since the minute I heard I’ve been obsessing over how I can take pictures. Because you know nothing really exists for me if I don’t have pictures of it! I’m hoping they allow photography – nothing I’ve seen says they don’t, but then again I’ve only seen a teeny blurb on the SGA page and a little article online from our local paper. So I’ve packed the EOS in my messenger bag. I figure SURELY they let you take bags in, since this is a university and all the students will have their bags and backpacks with them. At worst I can sneak a cell picture, perhaps.

Anyhow, it’s kind of exciting. I’ve never seen a real live president, or ex-president. Baker B saw the first George Bush at the airport in Kingsport. Or Knoxville, now I forget. He also made eye contact with Grant Hill while walking across campus at Chapel Hill when we lived in Durham. And saw the guy who played Grady on Sanford and Son just walking down the street when he was in NY. But I’ve had no brushes with fame. Other than my hero TR Pearson.

And now I need to go get my car….!!!!