These Life and Times

For those of you who aren't in the know, I'm moving to San Marcos next month, so lately I've been looking at my surroundings in a different light. Y'know, just getting the "my town" kinda feel to area. I went to Hastings to establish a movie rental account, I've scoped out the electric company b/c I'll need to go there and fill out the apps to get my electricity set up in San Marcos, I went to a bar by myself on Saturday night and got my car towed, y'know…all the usual shit.

This whole thing started w/the TEXAS Grant. About 900 students are waiting to use that money to pay their bill, and I have to manually make that happen. When I say "manually" I mean that I've got to type in each student ID number, then type in
"B 80206 1 2585"
"B 80208 2 2585"
This action, performed 900 times will effectively award the TEXAS Grant. Since I no longer have a boss, I've been trying to work w/our systems analyst to make a few changes in order to streamline the process. (I'm trying to get her to write programs that will do my shit for me.), but understand that our awarding system is old. I mean like Atari old, and if you can only imagine trying to make an Atari system perform the functions of an I-Phone, you know what I'm up against. Our first attempt posted in Friday night, which meant that I had to go into work Saturday to see if it "took"; the timing is important b/c it has to be in by Saturday night in order for these students to be able to use their money. (The way our sytem works and interacts w/the systems in other offices is more complicated than the way Mormons set up their heaven).

Now…there is definitely a maverick element to my personality, and lately this element has had full reign over most of my actions, especially at work. That is how I enabled myself to not only forgo a test run, whilst slowly chipping away at the list last week, I also neglected to enlist the help of others, knowing full well that if this didn't work, I'd be in our office on Saturday doing ALL that shit myself. So I was in the office bright and shiny Saturday morning to make sure I had time to get it all done, just in case something went wrong. Oh wait….that was the Aimee that used to give a fuck about the job, y'know, before I shafted by the director. That's right, what I did was wake up around noon, wash some clothes, watch some TV, rent my storage shed, go on a wild goose chase for a moving company that apparently doesn't exist, and help my grandma get those funky worms whose nests look some kind of cotton candy for Lucifer himself, out of her trees. I set off for San Marcos around 4:30, returned a rented movie for my dollar credit at the aforementioned Hastings in San Marcos, then promptly pulled in at the local movie theatre where I watched the 5:15 showing of The Simpsons movie. (Good flick, by the way; I'll be seeing it again.)

I saunter into my office around 7pm and discover that the program was moderately successful in that it posted in the second part, which is a place holder for spring, but the actual money, the only thing that matters right now, didn't work. Sighhhhh. Three hours and a decent start to carpal tunnel syndrome later, they were all awarded. I got all that shit done myself, but can anyone really blame me for wanting to, no EARNING the right to nurse a tall Guinness at my favorite bar? (A tall Guinness, 7 tall Guinnesses…whatever) And when, after circling the block 3 times and losing FOUR FUCKING SPOTS due to lousy timing, I decided to park near the bar in a completely empty Kinkos parking lot, I didn't really think much of it. At the time…obviously I'm still thinking about that decision now.

Closed the bar down, talked to some folks I knew, and met a lot of cool people I didn't previously know. I make one last trip to the loo, walk outside to where I parked my car and find nothing. I search in vain for any sign of where my car may have been towed. There are no numbers to call, no trace of where my car could be. So I, looking at my nearly dead cell phone, call 411, who connects me to the police station (really want to talk to THOSE guys after I've had several drinks), who then give me a number for the most likely culprit: Saucedo's towing. Oh, how loathsome to be undone by one of my own kind!

Soooo…I know WHO has my car, but that doesn't tell me WHERE my car is being held hostage. She gave me directions, but anyone who knows me at all knows that the part of my brain that handles proximal relationships between the four cardinal directions was long ago supplanted by all thing falling under the category of "useless trivia". And normally thats OK, I love maps for a reason, but the gestational period of an elephant (22 months) wasn't coming in handy during this particular moment in my life. What next? I start walking, of course! The lady says "go to Taco Bell and walk left", and in the process of doing that, I caught a break; some of the girls I had been talking with in the bar were driving past and started calling my name. I told them my car was towed and asked if they knew where the place was; two of the girls had been towed before by the same people, and they drove me there, which, by the way, was at least a mile away AND set so far back that I really don't know how I would have found it otherwise. If it hadn't been for that bit of serendipity, my night could have easily turned into something more than an amusing story. (THANK YOU PAPO!)

The kid who towed me was nice enough, and I wasn't really angry w/anyone but myself. When he pulled up to let me in the yard the first thing I said was "Can't I just fuck my way out of this?" to which he replied "Honey, I would if I could". Se la vie. Fifteen minutes and one hundred bucks later, I was back in my car and on my way to Seguin. And San Marcos sends it's "WELCOME HOME" my way.