long time no see.

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4 october 1997

6:44 p.m.

Dear diary, My car's throwing another tantrum. I love my tank. I really do. But it's almost as temperamental as I am. My car is either chugging along, trusty as ever, or every single nut and bolt comes loose at precisely the same moment. The battery, close to death, keeps corroding over -- half the time the car won't even start until I scrape the green stuff off the terminal. That's gotta be safe. On top of that, the muffler's hanging out; it whacks the ground when I go over bumps. The flickering little light behind the speedometer went out for good last week, too... When I'm driving at night, I keep thinking my headlights are off, so I try to turn them on -- turning them off instead. At least one problem's been fixed. Sort of. The passenger window kept sticking. It would roll down fine, but it absolutely refused to come up. Usually when it was open, and usually when it was raining. When Sean stopped by while I was at Derek's, I whined and they took a look at it. The ingenious solution, which was carried out covertly when I went to get some drinks, was to rip the seal out of the door. I returned to see a happily closed window and two triumphant men standing over a mangled coil of rubber and plastic. The window opens and closes all the way just fine now. Anywhere in between, though, and it rattles. This latest snit comes at a bad time. A friend of my aunt is trying to sell my mom a lemon, which she'd usually be smart enough to turn down but is actually considering because the guy said it would be perfect for a "college girl" like myself. The other day mom asked what I could get if I had to sell my current car. She thought I was kidding when I said $600. I bumped into Walt at Kahala over the weekend. I literally hadn't seen the man for months, and barely recognized him. It wasn't because he looked any different -- frankly it's impossible to not recognize the frizzy, often comical mop perched atop his head. Rather it was because of the awkwardly tall Korean girl he was walking with. We didn't get to talk much. His mysterious, un-introduced companion clearly wanted to be somewhere else (pictures of which, I imagine, were buried at the bottom of her plastic pink purse, in which she rummaged madly the entire time Walt and I chatted). At least the first question I would've asked -- "What's up with you and Kellie, the woman of your dreams" -- was indirectly answered. He was still working at the hospital, still avoiding most of the politics (primarily by not getting invited to lunch), still waiting for someone with a better job to quit so he could take their place... True to the nature of office gossip, Walt also said the circumstances and execution of my sudden departure was approaching legendary proportions. Since he never came down to my ward much in the first place, he couldn't tell me which of the old timers were still there. Talking about it brought me back for a fleeting moment, though; the fingernails-on-a-chalkboard screech of the door to the "garden," the ever-present smell of smoke from endless cigarette breaks. He asked what I was up to. "Oh, I'm going full-time again at school..." I said, almost expecting (as he undoubtedly did) a long list of the other exciting, interesting things filling my days. "Yeah?" he asked. "Yeah," I said. "That's about it, actually." "Slacker," he said. We laughed and went our separate ways. Perspective is a funny thing. Though being a student is much less stressful than trying to get a pen from a delusional Samoan, I still feel just as busy, just as run down at the end of a day of classes as I did when I was working two part-time jobs and taking seven credits. At least then I could afford CDs. Now, though they're just as tempting (oh, so, so tempting), they fall quite clearly in the "luxuries that must be done without" category. I also ran into Jen. I couldn't talk to her much either, though. She was working. All this time I thought she was at home, knitting pajamas or something. Instead she's still at Tower, five months along now, selling Bone Thugs 'N' Harmony to adolescents with backward hats. I hadn't heard from her since July. I guess things have settled down considerably since. She and Ryan aren't running off to Oregon (or Florida, thank god), and she's working so he can have one more semester at UH. She invited me to go crib shopping on Sunday. She said she wants my advice. She obviously hadn't heard what happened to the first and only parakeet I had as a kid.