(no subject)

[phthalombrage]

I didn't even know Randall was there until I heard Chrisamaphone talking about him. I felt odd and let down.
When I saw Drew, she told my my hair "actually looks good now" or something. Since I hadn't showered since the prior morning, I was suspicious. Also, when I cut my bangs a couple months ago, I fucked it up a bit and they came out short and non-standard. Maybe she'd just never seen me with bangs and was used to the looming forehead?
(I believe I was about to leave the Park... This shitty week got in my way; it sucked. Anyway, I forgot to mention that Chrisamaphone suggested to use climb gwillen's hair up to a window to get in dbrewer's house before we knew he was home. I thought that was funny.)
Anyway, I called Stefan to ask about kites. He automatically thought of the bird, as I knew he would. We ended up being on the phone for the next hour or so (roughly?). It felt strange, because we walked to an Indian restaurant and I was still on the phone and the Indian guy was staring at me and I wasn't saying anything into the mouthpiece because I had run out of things to say but hate excusing myself from telephone conversations. But it was cool because at some point in the call, this interchange occurred:
Stefan: Are you still there?
Nicole: Yuh.
Stefan: Can you hear me eating apples?
Nicole: No...
*hilarious*
Anyway, eventually he had to do something, so it ended.
I don't know what I was eating. It was supposed to be vegetable-cheese balls in some kind of sauce, with rice and naan... Twas good, though. rstrickl had a huge ass-burrito-like thing.
In the meantime, someone else was really delighted to see a textbook "stack" of plates for the first time ev4r.
Kat and Jesse, friends of Chrismaphone, were with us, but jcreed was elsewhere dining with Normal-looking friends.
After dinner, it was asked whether this would be the last bathroom stop before we again hit the road. It was. I mentioned that I had left some "items" in the car and needed them.
Ivan: Are you lactose intolerant?
Nicole: Sure.
Brewer: *face* She's a girl...
Ivan: Oh...
It was kind of like Kelsey's not getting the God/Civil Engineer joke.
Rstrickl's ankle hurt, so we took the T again to get from Davis to Alewife. There was a quote engraved in the bricks, and somebody badly wanted to know what the last name of the author was, but it turned out that after hefting the trash can to the side, all the letters that had been exposed were the only four letters in the man's last name.
At the T station, Ivan went up the down escalator again and I followed, tripping on the way up JUST a few steps from the top. It had already flattened out, and I slid backwards a few seconds on the flat part before returning to my feet. I got a blood blister.
The items I needed weren't in EITHER subway restroom. Grrar. So we had to stop at a rest stop...
Driving went all right until it started to sound like we were on a rumble strip. Jcreed worried. gwillen pulled over. Our right back tire was missing. Missing? It was badly slashed and folded under the rim. Here's where the guitar pick paid off: it was a front-wheel drive vehicle, and a back tire blew. Chris worried as trucks passed, so we pulled further off the road. It was cold as a witch's teat and all. Ivan said we were steaming up the windows.
Gwillen called Enterprise, who said we'd be getting a hotel room and a different rental car to take the 300 miles back. Then, no response. We started cleaning up a bit in case we'd get a new rental car. Brewer didn't find the stuff sack with his inhaler in it that he had needed earlier. Ivan wondered how one gets Pringles out of a Pringles can. "You reach in with your hand?" His got stuck at the knuckles. Eventually, we got a tow truck to come "within 90 minutes" and were told to drive home on the spare. Then we had the great Quest for the Spare Tire, which turned out to be impossibly hidden pretty much between the front wheels. "Just don't go faster than 50 mph and call us if something goes wrong." When they finally arrived, the tow truck guys agreed that the Enterprise people were assholes. Two men, a woman and a child pulled out of the tiny cab, and their cigarettes almost masked the odor of alcohol on their breath. The fumes from the to truck swirled around as they tried to jack up the van. The other tires were starting to have the same problem as the first... which was unsettling, in the least, and we were again on our way after enterprise confirmed who was paying. Evidently they had also put the wrong model year number...
A little further down the road, we stop at another rest stop due to my personal reasons, where Brewer discovered that not only was he short of breath again, but he also couldn't walk. We dialed 911. An ambulance came (hell of a lot faster than the tow truck.) We drove to the hospital to meet up with him. I was thinking of pros an cons of being male/female. Pros: boobs. Cons: boobs. Pros: female reproductive system. Cons: female reproductive system. Guys really do have a lot of things easier...
Luckily, it was a nice hospital. Chris and jcreed and I stayed in the van for a while before going in. My cramps had subsided mostly, but it was really cold and we were tired and disoriented...
After we made our way through the maze of corridors into the waiting room, we were told Brewer was doing all right. Not long thereafter, he was released. When we got back to the van, he couldn't find his prescription and a second pass didn't turn it up, so we were on our slow way.
Driving. Jcreed thought a sign that read "Dress Barn" said "Dress Bacon", and Chris had earlier said "receive bacon" at the Alewife parking garage. Bacon is funny shit. Cars were angry at us when it was one lane and we were doing only 45. My physics test elapsed far away.
We stopped at Burger King in Altoona, and to gwillen's delight (maybe it wasn't "delight") they were serving lunch already. I got ciniminis and hash browns, but most people got lunch food. Chris stayed in the van. It was hot; I felt bad. Ivan and rstrickl got paper crowns. Gwillen was entertained by the coup d'etat rule. Ivan's crown fell off when he tried to get into the van because it made him even taller.
We can trust that the folks with the sign hand-lettered in tape WILL give us the best deal in town.
Ivan was out. We saw a train on a hill next to a road with only negligible means of keeping cars from tumbling down the cliff to their doom. Rstrickl made creepy "choo choo" noises. Then he slept instead of working on his presentation. Jcreed had a map on which we looked for strange town names like "Chest Springs" and many others I have now forgotten. Then he went up to navigate and everyone else was asleep, so I drifted off as well.
I was afraid the van would explode just before we got back to CMU, but we made it around noon. We cleared out our crap, and I went back to Donner to shower.
The only class I made was Interp and Argument (also the only one where attendance is taken), and I apparently looked really beat as I crossed and recrossed the border between sleep and wakefulness.
It was a fun and horrible weekend, at once. More thoughts will follow on this when I get my shit together for MaTH.
Thank you, and good night.