~Monday~ I worked from home this morning, and at lunch time I headed over to Thompson Collision Repair to pick up my car. My first stop was at Enterprise to turn in my rental, and from where I received a ride to Thompson by a man who had a chauffeur look to him and was driving a big black car that had a limousine look to it.
A lady rode over with us, who had left her car at Thompson, but forgot to get her garage door remote out of it. I’m still not quite sure why she didn’t get the car she was presumably getting from Enterprise to use while hers was being repaired, and then drive it over to Thompson to get her remote.
At any rate, the driver didn’t say a word the entire way and he had the radio turned off, which created a silence awkward enough that at one point I noticed both me and the lady were softly humming.
It took me the ride back to my neighborhood to get re-acquainted with my car. At least twice I looked at the radio display to see the song and artist playing, but I have no such information on my radio.
I stopped by the Jiffy Lube on Western Boulevard to get my NC State inspection on my car as it had to be done before heading over to the DMV to renew my registration, which has to be done by Thursday. On the coffee table in the middle of the small lobby, I saw this picture of my two friends Garrison and Jason on the front page of the N&O Life section with an article entitled: New software helps users find local breweries:
The inspection didn’t take long, but unfortunately, in what came as a complete shock to me, it failed. “You have water in your left headlight,” the man said. “You have to take care of that, and then bring it back for re-inspection.”
I went home, and after not finding how to remove the plastic casing around that light in my owner’s manual, I Googled it without much luck there either, so I went outside to “just do it.”
I found something that was like a screw, and after turning it counter-clockwise for several minutes, but not finding it getting any looser, I got a bread knife from my house, slipped it under that thing and it just popped out. I drained the water out of a crack, and rode right back for a re-inspection, which it passed.
Before heading to the DMV later this afternoon, I wanted to find the license plate that I had before I got my current personalized plate. I knew it was in the envelope it originally came in, and I knew it was laying at the bottom of a box. I checked two potential boxes in my downstairs entrance hall closet, and then two boxes in my upstairs guest bedroom closet, all to no avail.
At the last minute, and on a whim, I said about a box sitting beside my guest bed that held only clothes, “Let me check that for the hell of it.” And there it was. Yay. One less new plate for a prisoner to have to make.
I attended a work meeting—which was excruciating for reasons I’ll not go into here—at 1:00 over in the Avent Ferry Technology Center, and I couldn’t have been happier when it ended a little early. Maybe there is a god.
After that, I ran to the DMV office in the South Hills Mall just off the Crossroads exit of the belt line. I got in a line that was much longer than I wanted it to be, and I was behind a Hispanic woman with a little boy who was an absolute terror. He screamed, and I mean screamed, way too long and often. Of course, he wasn’t once reprimanded for making such a scene, so how could you blame him?
When I finally got to the counter, I said to the clerk, “I need to renew my registration, but I want to turn in my personalized plate,” and while handing her my old one, “This is the plate I had before it; it wouldn’t be possible to get that one back, would it?”
She snatched that thing out of my hand faster than a vulture snatches innards; you’d’ve thought she’d found out that I’d stolen cars with it or something.
“No, you should have turned that in years ago when you got your personalized plate!” she barked. “You’ll get a new one here in a minute. Now, your personalized plate, you can keep that one if you want to hang it in your garage or something.”
I resisted saying that I didn’t have a garage, or that I had so many gun racks and deer head covering my garage walls that there really wasn’t room for a NEMATOME license plate anywhere.
She asked me to move aside while my paperwork finished printing, and the next guy in line handed her his plate for renewal. She said to him, “You keep that plate, we’ll just give you a new sticker to put on it.”
To which he replied, “There’s a cook kook on the road who’s got my number, so I sorta would just like to have a new one.”
I thought that sounded very suspicious, or weak at the very least, and I was surprised when she didn’t bat an eyelash or raise an eyebrow, but just gave him a new one. Even more work for the prisoners.
I got to the gym at about 5:50 and it was the busiest I’ve ever seen it. There was exactly one parking spot left in the huge parking lot, and I had to wait a few minutes for an elliptical machine, and there are a ton of machines in that place.
I did 300 ab crunches, and 30 minutes of cardio on the elliptical machine once I got on it.
I met Joe at 7:30 at Caribou Coffee at Olde Raleigh Village, where we stayed until it closed at 10:00.
The Bear who works behind the counter was there, as he usually is on Monday nights, as was The Tutor who’s often there, too. He had a name tag with his name on it, as well as the company, which sounded like his own business, but a quick Google search of both came up empty. Strange.
I dropped by Flex, where Nikki was hosting scareyoke. She’d announced on Facebook that she’d gotten her hair chopped off, and I wanted to see it. I was pleasantly reminded upon my first bourbon and diet order, that it was $2.25 well drinks on Monday nights. Bonus.
I stayed for two drinks, and left at about 11:30.