In the Warm, Furnished Prison

It rain today. It rained a lot.

Yesteday, it was just cold. Mom and I went to the Renaissance Festival (where we ran into four rodeo buddies, one of my favorite students and one of my dad's good friend - who, as it turns out, now works at the HFD station 2 miles away from my apartment!). It was bitterly cold, but not rainy.

Today, I heard the distant thunder and saw the not-so-distant lightening. Today's mileage was supposed to be 11 miles. As I woke up and gathered my running gear, I had a feeling I'd be back in bed shortly. Yep - when I arrived at our starting point, the coaches were cancelling the run because of the lightening. So I drove home, went back to bed, and reemerged 3 hours later.

After I woke up, I sat at my dining room table, determined to finish grading. You see, I volunteered (with pay, of course) to be a grader for these district exams. I will never do it again because the pile of exams never got shorter! But today, I finished my last exam, bringing me up to around 2,000 exams. And they weren't scantron - they were 3 paragraphs per exam. So I read close to 6,000 paragraph answers. But I sat and finished it, occasionally taking a break to play scrabble, work out, chat on the phone.

At 3pm I finished. And I decided to grab some lunch and head to the gym. Unfortunately, my car decided to not cooperate. All of a sudden, as I was trying to pull my car into a parking lot, my car decided it didn't want to turn. It stopped turning mid-turn, causing me to almost run into a pole. I had to force the wheel over, feeling as though I was going to break something. AND my battery light came on. I somehow managed to make it home without getting killed (seriously, turning frightened me). I called up Stephen, who came over and diagnosed it as a belt problem. The very belt he's talking about is a new belt - it was just replaced in March before a trip to Baton Rouge. It turns out that the belt was not properly put in, because it had fallen. It wasn't broken, it was off of the thing it's supposed to be attached to. So I have to wait until Monday (because the shop is closed tomorrow). Monday I will call them (I have to walk to work now, in the cold), and Tuesday I will take it in. I'm hoping I don't have to take Tuesday off from work to get this taken care of, but I might have to. Argh!

So, until my car is fixed, I am trapped inside my apartment. And tomorrow, the cold rain is to continue, which means I'm really trapped inside my apartment.

Sigh.