excitement tuesday

yesterday i had the chance to spend the afternoon with my friend sarah who is going to grad school in england! things would have been more exciting if i'd flown over there on a whim, but it turned out she was in the area for school break. we had sushi and walked around berkeley. she bought a hat. the excitement continued after we parted ways and i returned to the car to discover a $30 parking ticket! woo! on the way home i didn't even get stuck in rush-hour traffic, though it would have been all right because george just installed...a new stereo in the car! that's right, if you keep turning the volume up you can almost drown out the shaking and rattling noises the car makes, it's very exciting.

but the excitment doesn't stop there: about a mile and a half from our house, just past a heavily traveled intersection where two lanes merge - the rabbit broke down! she just turned off and left me in the middle of the road. luckily there were some guys waiting for the bus across the street and pushed me out of the road and into a 20 minute parking spot. i tried calling george - no answer. i tired calling andy - no answer. i called george something like four more times - no answer. i assumed they were in a meeting but walked up to the office anyway. it turns out he hadn't turned the ringer on his phone back on after we went out for chinese food the night before.

we went back to the car and george tinkered on it for a while and concluded that it's probably something to do with the fuel injector pump. just before we called AAA he tried starting it again and it did! we only made it about a quarter of a mile before the rabbit broke down again. this time we pushed it off onto a side street and called for a tow truck. the first time i called AAA told me that my card had been cancelled and that they'd transfer me so i could sign up again, i told her i didn't really have time for that at the moment, but thanks anyway. then i called back and talked to someone else without any problems.

the guy in the tow truck turned out to be a nice guy not much older than us. he had the car up and ready to be towed in a short bit and then when we got to the house he managed to back it into the driveway and even into a parking spot - which, considering our driveway, is quite a feat. sometimes we can't even back the car into a spot.

we're glad it didn't happen far from home and that it was nothing catastrophic, but i'd prefer it didn't happen at all, or if it could have happened on, say, monday. this is the one weekend we actually had planned to go somewhere in the car. so now we're hoping it'll be either an easy fix, the buses run with some frequency on the weekend, and/or that we're up for riding our bikes in and out of the city. or that our friend liz wants to leave her car with us sooner than she'd anticipated. =)

george and i are both relieved that we don't have to drive to work. and now we're leaving for work.