Innovative Car Repairs

I don't know why it is people keep hitting my car when they are backing out of parking spaces. Is my car invisible? Because it looks silver to me. If I have been driving around with an invisible car, I would hope that someone would have told me by now. The idea that I have had an invisible car this entire time and not taken advantage of it is upsetting to me. I wish Impark personnel couldn't see my car the way these people that keep driving into me don't.

What makes me the most angry is knowing a simple glance in the rear view mirror or side view mirror would quickly indicate to them that yes, there IS indeed a car behind them and maybe, just maybe, they should attempt to avoid hitting it. Who ARE these people that slam on the gas pedal and think "Look out, I'm coming back, if you get hit, it's your fault!" Perhaps they are the same people that ride their bikes into parked cars. By the same logic, would you walk backwards without looking? No...so why would you operate a huge device made of steel worth thousands of dollars with you in it without watching where you are going? WHY!?

The inspiration for this rant came from a recent incident in the Best Buy parking lot. Here I was, driving very slowly, making my way over to an empty parking stall. I see a car backing out to my left. I see the car isn't stopping. I'm too far along to brake and avoid a collision, and cannot accelerate fast enough to get out of the way. So I slam on my horn and hold it down. The car still comes. I look around me trying to think of what other possible signal I can give to indicate "HEY YOU ARE ABOUT TO DRIVE RIGHT INTO ME YOU MORON". After a good three seconds of horn blasting, the car backs into me anyway, crunching my driver's side door. The wonderfully ironic part of the story is that the weather conditions were atrocious as it was the second day of our April blizzard. So one would think that car accidents would be more likely to happen. But this accident had nothing to do with the weather! She didn't slide...she didn't even try to brake. It had to do with stupidity instead.

She gets out of her car all distraught and apologizing. I say it's ok, these things happen, once I take a few deep breaths to calm myself down. After all, it could be a lot worse. After going inside her van to get a pen, and me hearing her teenage son in the passenger side say "I TOLD you to stop!" and her replying with a polite screaming "SHUTUP!!!" she advises me she wants to pay for it herself instead of going through insurance. I'm fine with this. But upon consultation of my witness, he says I might be able to just take an ordinary hardware store plunger and pull the dent right out. Apparently this is a secret weapon to many a body shop repair man. The paint isn't scratched at all, and I figure if I can do this, I can save both of us some trouble.


There is no way you can plunger your car without having someone take pictures of it. (Thanks goes out to Nikki. Ma homegirl slice. Word.)





First, I had to try to sterilize the plunger a bit. My car is dirty enough without feces on it. This is me soaping it up and doing my best to avoid touching it. Gross.

This is me doing my very best to get the best suction against the car door as possible.



This is me losing my plunging mojo. As you probably would have guessed, it didn't work.

So...anyone know a good auto body shop in Edmonton?

Spring In Edmonton

This is a cell phone picture I took from my bus on the way to work on this lovely late-April morning. That is, after I walked to the bus stop, slipped and fell on my hands and knees, froze at the bus stop for 45 minutes waiting for a bus that was, coincidentally, 45 minutes late, and froze at my transfer bus stop for another 20 minutes. Oh, I also had the priveledge of listening to someone's crappy music while snuggled tight against strangers in the bus shelter. What is with those crappy ear phones that come with ipods that make it so that not only the listener but everyone around them has to deal with their poor taste in music? That is, unless my ipod is on. Because we all know how wonderful my taste in music is. *Lorraine hopes anyone who knows that she has a song from the movie Cinderella in her itunes is not reading this.*

Let's all try and ignore the fact that it was 24 degrees out a week and a half ago. Which just happened to be on my birthday. Being as it snowed the next day, logically, the only way to make sense of what happened is to deduct that it was a birthday miracle. And Edmonton weather is spawned by the devil.

Sympathy

Nikki:  "Yeah, I still have a fever and the chills. I feel awful."

Lorraine: "That sucks. The missionaries staying with us this weekend are playing really horrible worship music really loud."

Nikki: "Ohhhhh MAN!! I feel SO bad for you!!!!!"

Hospital Humour

Yesterday Nikki and I had the pleasant experience of spending essentially the whole day at the hospital. It wouldn't have been so bad if she hadn't of been doubling over in pain and I wasn't weathered down with what I had just discovered was strep throat, a nasty sinus infection, and a nose bleed that was on the verge of needing to be cauterized. (Dry Alberta weather + sinus infection = Lorraine thinking she must be hemorrhaging from the brain.) But no, we could not be free to enjoy the multitudes of sick (and strange) people, rude receptionists and doctors, and the maze that is finding radiology. Something was wrong with Nikki, and we had to find out what.

After being guided from hallway to hallway, wrong room to wrong room, we finally found where we were supposed to be only to be told to go to the front of the hospital and go through patient registration. Back through the maze we went and got in line.

There was a sign posted at the front of reception:

MATERNITY VISITING HOURS

Friends and extended family: 4 - 8

Siblings and grandparents: 11 - 9

Father: Anytime

Nikki made a seemingly logical observation: "What about the mother?"

Lorraine: "Well...it's 'maternity' visiting hours, so...I'm pretty sure she'd already be there."

Nikki: "Oh yeah. Ha. I'm an idiot."

No Nikki, you are not. You do, however, have blonde hair...

Text of the Day

After texting Nikki for awhile while I am on the bus on my way to work, she writes:

"You're sitting on the bus beside a creep while you have a bloody nose...and I'm falling into holes. No wonder we're friends."

For Sale

One (1) soul.

-rarely used
-excellent condition
-would make lovely shelf display
-can be twisted into a cute balloon animal
-bulletproof
-comes in many different colours; most notably blue, grey, and black.
-free shipping
-no warranty available

Seller would like to sell as soon as possible. $3/obo.

Recap

SO. Last post on this blog = August 2007 eh. Interesting. I wonder if I had any loyal readers who didn't know me and wondered what happened to me. What interesting explanations would they have come up with? Ran away to join the circus? Went to clown college? Went to clown college THEN ran away to join the circus? (Logically, that would make more sense, no?)

Alas, I am alive and well. However, in the last seven months, I have....*deep breath...*

Packed up my little neon, moved across the country to Edmonton Alberta which was a lovely little adventure in and of itself involving beautiful scenery across Ontario, flat scenery across the prairies, exquisite accommodations such as The Beaver Motel, visited long lost friends along the way, kept track of gas prices across the country and how they sky rocketed the further north in Ontario you go, had a truck driver request me to take a picture of him, saw huge statues of a goose and a sasquatch, and had my GPS tell me to turn into fields once I got into Edmonton.

Since I have been in Edmonton I have....*deep breath*

Spent a month puttering around and annoying the family I rent the basement from 'til I ran out of money and had to get a job which I still hold downtown in the oil industry and quite enjoy, met my awesome best friend Nikki (also my new music guru) and her awesome sister who are my partners in crime both at work and on weekends and essentially let me live at their apartment every weekend, started dating a boy, debated nominating our relationship for the "most miscommunication and worst timing of a relationship of the year" award (which we SO would have won), tried skiing for the first time in years and only fell when trying to get on the ski lift and then at the end of our very last run when I almost collided with the rental shop, tried snowboarding for the first time in Fernie BC and fell a whole lot more, experienced the coldest temperature I have in my life, had my car towed because I never felt like paying for parking, (I HATE YOU IMPARK!), got over my fear of public transit, started writing songs and poetry and playing guitar again, gotten hooked on "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia" and "Extras", mocked the Calgary Tower for being a miniature CN Tower, become an Oiler's fan, got a free ticket to an Avril Lavigne concert BUT also saw Alexisonfire, went to Yuk Yuk's by myself to see Greg Proops whose autograph is now on my wall AND......found $20 on the bar floor!!!! Meeting someone famous or finding that $20...I really can't decide which is better.

I know you are all now jealous that you don't live in Edmonton too. Unless you do. In which case...you are probably sans said jealousy.

Right now I am going to...*deep breath*

...go to bed.

BUT watch for more updates! The blog wheels are a turnin' in my head! The next post will either be about healing alarm clocks or cheap pregnancy tests! I haven't quite decided yet. But BOY if that isn't incentive to check back, I don't know what is!