Car Troubles in Dallas

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

5:36 PM

Well I’m patiently awaiting the return of the stressed out looking Discount Tires man who is gonna tell me why my tire is flat and whether or not I’ll be spending my whole month’s salary on a new pair of tires. Happy Birthday to me…….*begins to sob uncontrollably* Ugh. Cars. Can’t live with em. Can’t live without em. My boss’s daughter was the one that first alerted me to the problem. I wasn’t too surprised after I remembered how a light with an explanation point had been lighting up my dashboard for over a week now. Maybe my car had been trying to tell me something? All I know is I’m already missing my Les Schwab Tire Store with their friendly service and endless amounts of popcorn. This is the second time this week I’ve had the luxury of lounging in an auto mechanic shop and my big question is how the hell does someone get a People magazine around these sorts of places!?? I ran into the same problem yesterday at Kwik Kar but wasn’t about the address the problem because I knew I’d be wasting my breath with people who not only misspelled the word “Quick” but “Car” as well. Public schools these days……You know it’s bad when your best option for light reading is Seventeen Magazine, but I was getting desperate because it was either that or ESPN magazine *shudder*. The funniest thing about the whole experience was that one of the guys working on my car kept taking mini breaks by coming into the lobby to watch whatever football game was on TV. He must have felt we had some sort of common interest in the sports because he kept talking to me about the game and would make loud cheering noises and then look awkwardly at me and await my response to the latest touchdown. Did he really think a 25 year old man who was browsing the pages of Seventeen with Britney from Glee on the cover and lightly skimming through the article that went into vivid detail about how Lauren Conrad died her hair 3 different colors in a single week gave a flying rip?!?!? Apparently I’m REAL good feigning interest.

All this has to be God’s way of punishing me for waiting beyond the 30 day limit in which a new resident of Texas is allowed to register their vehicle. It’s something I’ve been dreading. Both for financial reasons and pure laziness. Also it’s a bit of a thrill to drive through the freeway tolls for free thanks to my Washington license plates. I’m sure going to miss those moments. I honestly probably would have put the whole thing off longer if my license wasn’t about to expire in less than two weeks, thus making it very necessary.  Especially if I have any desire to buy a celebratory drink on my  B-day. I’m not totally opposed to the idea of getting a new I.D. card. Especially since I’ve run into several situations where people looked at me like I’d handed them a fake drivers license. Sorry big bouncer man at the Hard Rock Casino in Biloxi, 2006 was a long time ago and people change.  But it will be nice to have a picture that is more to my likeness. The lame part is that I have to retake my driving tests all over again which I think is just ridiculous. Pretty sure my grandfather was driving late into his mid nineties with no questions asked by the local government, and here I come all young, quick minded, with a perfect driving record having to prove that I still remember how to turn on my blinker when changing lanes. Where’s the logic?? And don’t even get me started on how parallel parking is one of my many if not most utilized spiritual gifts. Don’t even go there girlfriend, mkaaaaay.

Uh oh. The girl sitting to my left just started crying. She also must have noticed the sorry excuse for a magazine rack….

Thursday, November 3, 2011

9:19 AM

I’ve only been awake for 2 hours and I’m so ready to go home, lock my bedroom door, crawl into bed and hibernate till say mid March.  It’s been another Red Letter day and in my attempt at being a just, upright, and outstanding citizen I bit the bullet this morning and headed to downtown Dallas to get my car registered.  I should have taken it as a bad omen when I realized that the Dallas County Tax Office is located several yards away from where Kennedy was assassinated, but I had other things on my mind. Street parking was hard to find but I eventually found a spot with a parking meter. After ravaging my car for change like a meth addict I luckily found a quarter that I had missed during last weeks search for laundry money which meant I had enough change to buy me 23 minutes of time. I knew I’d be cutting it close but it’s the best I could do. It was all rather frantic as I was throwing all the necessary paperwork into a folder and wiping away the spilt coffee off my jeans (I’d left my thermos at work so I had to make due with my Paris Starbucks mug….found out the hard way there are a few potholes in downtown that need IMMEDIATE attention). Anyways so frantic was I that I failed to realize at the time that I was parking in a tow away zone. I swear I’m dyslexic when it comes to tow away signs in that I usually see the opposite of what the sign says. It’s happened before and I’m sure it’ll happen again. So I run like a madman into the building before catching my death of pneumonia because we had our lowest temperature for the year this morning which was a staggering 44 degrees as of 8am, which after a 110 degree summer my body is not prepared for in the slightest.  The whole process of getting the plates went way more smoothly than expected and I left with a much smaller bank account but an optimistic outlook on the day. All that went down the crapper once I returned to my car to find six minutes remaining on my parking meter and a whopping parking ticket on the windshield. I debated screaming and throwing garbage cans into the street but remembered I could no longer afford a fine for appearing to be intoxicated in public.  But seriously Dallas, I just gave you an ungodly amount of money for 2 license plates that probably weren’t even American-made and I’m giving you a full year of my life that I’ll never get back. What more do you want from me and what kind of grace filled community am I living in!?!??!?! And on top of it all I totally could have saved that stupid quarter, either for next week’s laundry or for my state quarter collection, which by the way is nearing completion.

In retrospect of this mornings events I suppose I have more in common with JFK than I ever realized? We both rocked the Ray-Ban Wayfarer, both shared a love for classic movie stars and we both got screwed over by the city of Dallas in the month of November. Guess we should have looked into that whole public transportation thing...