LONG POST AHEAD WARNING

The end of a very different weekend. I was hoping it was because of good different things, but not really.

Before I explain what happened this weekend, I just have to post this odd thing that happened to me on Friday. I was home waiting for Rustin to come and have his last Kiddush in Stillwater (if he follows his plans to leave to Ohio by the end of the week). I was thinking of what to post on my blog and opened the Blogger webpage. However, I had no idea what to post, so I decided to hit a random blog from their list of "Fresh Blogs". This list is always cool because you always end up going to an active blog, not a completely random blog that would most probably give you an abandoned one. This time I ended up going to E-Scout and what was the first post I read about? Bedlam! The OSU vs. OU game that was going to take place on Saturday. I randomly hit a "fellow" Oklahoman blog! That was a very strange coincidence!

If you are interested how the game went, well, OU crushed OSU with a 52-9 win! The score says everything.

Anyway, after that Rustin came, a couple of kids knocked at the door to get candy, but I think I took too long to go to my bedroom to get it that they thought that there was nobody there and left. I took him out for dinner to thank him for all the hard work he did for the club and that was pretty much it.

And now came Saturday, the wonderful day. I woke up early in the morning (actually later than I was planning to) to take my roommate to the airport. He was going to meet his mother in New Orleans. Everything was going fine, we left kind of early and were on our way to Tulsa. Suddenly, when I accelerated after passing by the tollgate my car's belts started making noise. I am kind of used to it right now so I ignored it for some time (about 30 seconds) and then the noise suddenly disappeared. So far it was still kind of normal. But the not so normal thing was the battery and break lights in the panel turned on. I was worried but not THAT worried because the car was still moving. I was paying attention to all indicators in the panel when I saw the temperature indicator way in the red. I stopped the car immediately at the shoulder (English is a funny language sometimes) and opened the hood to check what was going on. The coolant was boiling and I couldn't see much more.

It was a pretty cold morning, very humid. I called AAA to have my car towed somewhere. In order to know where I was I had to run for about half a mile up the road to check by which mile I was. Of course you always stop your car far away from any signs! This done I went back to the car to figure out what was going on. That's when I saw that the belt that connected to the alternator was gone! And later I learned that this same belt connects to the water pump. With no water circulating to cool down the engine, no wonder why the temperature sky-rocketed.

I called Stacy to come and take him to the airport and I went with the AAA guy to look for an open mechanic. Pretty hard to find one of those on a SATURDAY in Sand Springs, but we got there. After changing the belt the mechanic (very nice guy) let the car run to see if he could prove his theory that the alternator (something I changed a couple of months ago) locked and destroyed the belt. Lots of belt debris were at the alternator to reinforce his theory. But he wasn't able to see it happening again so he sent me out for my luck to go back home and take my car to the shop that changed my alternator and ask them to put a new one.

I was tired and very nervous, so I went to Stacy's place and spent the day there (as originally planned). We watched the game, went to a VERY TERRIBLE discount fair that was advertising Dell notebooks for $399. They didn't say that they were VERY OLD notebooks. Anyway, I wasn't very hopeful anyway. If they had good ones they would have been gone in the first 5 minutes. My plan was to go back home at around 10 a.m. so that I would be able to go tutoring, watch a very interesting concert that was going to happen here with the New York Philharmonic Soloists, do laundry and then work a little. But, at 10 a.m., when I was getting ready to leave, my student's mother called saying that she was out of town and her son was at a friend's place, so my tutoring was cancelled.

The result is that I ended up not doing anything that I had planned. We watched National Lampoon's European Vacation. It was a funny old movie full of stereotypes. Not something I would let a child with no ability to say "This is not the way all French/English/German/Italian are" watch this movie, but it was entertaining.

After this I don't have anything else to report. Today is going to be a long day. I decided to take the car to fix only tomorrow (I had lots of things to do this morning, including a long homework and preparation for my meeting with my advisor; and I have to find the warranty for the alternator. I think it is with my roommate, but I want to make sure of that), so I'll have "fun" driving it to Tulsa and back tonight again. It seemed very good yesterday, but I'll be careful and have my cellphone with me.

I learned two things with this. The first one is that I'm glad I had the idea two years ago to get a cellphone. I was afraid that exactly something like that would happen. It is very easy to be in the middle of nowhere when you are driving around in Oklahoma. The second one is that sometimes some mistakes are worth it. I got an invitation to join some kind of car group that would give discounts for repairs, help in knowing the right price for parts and services, and towing. I didn't want to continue with the service, but I called 1 week late so I had to accept it. It wasn't very inexpensive but just the towing paid the price of it (I have only the basic plan for AAA, so they only cover up to 5 miles).