[no] pictures here [yet]!

According to an old episode of Law and Order (or CSI? I forget) if you hit somebody with a car and they die within year of the injuries sustained, then you get charged with murder. Or maybe manslaughter. Manslaughter seems more fair. Also, I'm not sure I spelled that correctly because it looks like "man's laughter" instead of "man-slaughter". Shows where my head's at, I guess.

In parallel to the possibly fake "death within a year equals murder" law, I believe any money you put into a car within a year of buying it should be conceptually added to the purchase price of that car. For instance, if this morning I spent $1000 on getting some weirdo obscure part of my car fixed and I bought that car two months ago, then it shouldn't be thought of as "dear god my car is falling apart and it's taking my life with it; it's like an automotive version of the Tom Hanks/Shelley Long movie The Money Pit, only with considerably less Alexander Gudonov;" rather, I like to think of it as "well I bought the car for $2000; another $1000 is sort of like I paid $3000 for the car."

Oh, and I already put $2000 into it for some other weirdo obscure parts last month, so that's $5000 total ... which still isn't so bad. (Yes it is.) And I have to put in another $1000 sometime next month, bringing the total to $6000(which isn't so bad)(yes it is), though the service manager says that will bring my car to "100%."

(Dear god my car is falling apart and it's taking my life with it; it's like an automotive version of the Tom Hanks/Shelley Long movie The Money Pit, only with considerably less Alexander Gudonov.)

I still made it to work by 2pm, just in time to show my face and get everybody thinking I took a half-day instead of an entire personal day. Honestly, I'm not sure anyone's keeping track.

As soon as my officemate left (around 3:30) I went to my car and brought back the foamcore posterboard and paint I bought earlier. On Wednesday the editor-in-chief told me it was my job to do the Christmas tree because I'm the design department. Last year they used a ladder for a tree. Clever and thrifty! Considering the amount of paper in our office, I thought it'd be convenient to use balled-up pieces of paper as ornaments of some kind. I don't know how I eventually got the idea of building a tree out of foamcore but somehow I did, which explains why I was making a mess late on a Friday.

It came out not as well as I'd hoped, but it should be better than everyone else had expected because they weren't expecting anything.

That's another thing I need to take pictures of. Egad. I'd also take a picture of my apartment as a challenge to my stalkers, but I'm a little embarrassed that last night was the first time since I've been living here that my dirty dishes have become so numerous that I've had to start pre-soaking them in the bathtub.

Living alone, the question isn't whether I'll put dishes in the bathtub, but how soon. It took two years in Saskatoon. It's taken two-and-a-half months in South Orange. I'm really getting efficient at slovenliness. Did I say I was embarrassed by the dishes in the bathtub? I think I meant proud.