Friday afternoon, my car had been fixed. Turned out that two of my spark plug wires were arcing, and all of the plugs themselves were shot. So Merchants replaced the wire array and gave my car a tune-up, and when K.T. dropped me off it ran like a dream all the way down to her house. I was pleased, despite the shitty traffic. (An R.V. had overturned in Newport News and backed the traffic up for approximately thirty miles, according to the radio, which told me about the traffic snarl just after I'd gotten stuck in it.)

So by the time K.T. and I got to her place we were pretty hungry. We went to Darryl's for dinner, which was great. They had a spinach, avacado, and cheese dip that I thought would be nasty (since I don't like avacado and I'm not the greatest fan of spinach) but turned out to be fantastic. They ran out of baked potatoes for our dinners (apparently a party of twenty had come in about five minutes before us) but we were so full by the time we'd eaten our steaks, we didn't want them anyway. Then we went shopping at Pier One for a while, until they threw us out.

"Excuse me ladies. You've got about fifteen seconds to finish your shopping because we closed at nine."

Well, we didn't know what time it was!

Then we went back to her place and sat around and talked until Kevin came home, and a bit later, and then I got into my good-as-new car and went home. (I'd only had three drinks all night with an eye to being able to go home instead of sleeping on K.T.'s sofa. I'd brought a change of clothes just in case, but I don't like sleeping on sofas. I never sleep very well, and then I feel off-kilter for the whole next day.)

Saturday afternoon, I was having K.T., Greg, Carl, and Richard over to work on characters for the AD&D game I'm going to start. I hadn't finished my handouts yet, though, and I'd left my Zip disk at the office, so when I woke up Saturday morning I decided to drive up to the office and get it, along with a few other errands. There was a fair amount of condensation on the windshield, so I turned on the defroster and headed up to the office. After a mile or so, the condensation had pretty well evaporated, so I switched from defroster to vent, and went to turn the temperature down. The lever that controls the temperature in my car stuck about halfway down the scale. I wiggled it a bit, then felt and heard a quiet pop! behind the panel. The lever all the way over to cold, but it was canted at a peculiar angle and the tension was all wrong. I tried to slide it back up to hot. It went halfway and stuck. I wiggled and pushed. No luck. And despite the fact that the lever was stuck on the cold half of the scale, the air coming out of the vents was definitely hot.

I cursed. I muttered. I pleaded. I grumbled. I tried all the settings on my controls, but all of them continued to blow hot air at me. (Even turning off my environmental controls altogether resulted in a leak of hot air around my calves.) Certain that Merchants had rigged it to break (I don't know much about cars, so I'm certain that mechanics make work for themselves because we can't catch them at it) I took it to a shop that I passed on the way to the bank. They didn't do that sort of work. I asked for recommendations. The dealership? I don't take cars to the dealership for work unless they're under warranty. Well, then, the only other place in Williamsburg he could think of that might be open on Saturday would be Merchants. I sighed. I took my car to Merchants.

To be fair, the guy I talked to at Merchants looked at my car immediately as soon as I told him I'd just been there the day before - he was willing to concede that they might have damaged something while replacing my spark plug wires and that they'd fix it right away for free.

Unfortunately, the problem is behind my dashboard, nowhere near the spark plug wires, which are in the engine. So much for that hope. He tells me that their mechanic who is good behind the dashboard doesn't work weekends, and makes an appointment for my car for Monday (today).

So, I go home and try not to get too irritable about the car by working very hard on my game. Eventually, after Greg and Carl get off work, everyone comes over, and we have a very fun evening creating characters and telling stories and talking. About 9:30, Matt came home, and that made the evening even better. He'd brought me several presents, including an apron that reads, "Don't make me POISON your food!" I laughed a lot.

Sunday, we went over to my parents' house for Father's Day. We took them out to dinner at the Country Grill - which was almost a disaster. Not only was it Father's Day, but several local schools had just had graduation. We managed to show up during the lull between lunch and dinner, and only had to wait about five minutes. Then, after we'd ordered, the waiter came to tell us that they only had two racks of ribs left in the entire restaurant, and since our table had ordered three racks altogether, someone would have to change their order. Matt changed his order, and we all told each other how that it was like Outback running out of steak, or a Chinese restaurant running out of rice. After dinner, we went to see Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace again. We'd all seen it before, but we all wanted to see it again. It was just as fun the second time around, which made me happy.

It was a good evening. Matt and I decided we weren't going to work today - Matt has lots of leftover hours from travelling all day Saturday, and as far as I know, I still don't have a project anyway, so I'd rather spend the day with him.

Besides, we haven't done the laundry yet.