commas and ampersands

I brought my car in to get an oil change this morning, knowing that there was a leak in the transmission gasket, and it would need more than just the oil change. Fine.

They told me that the oil change would take about 2 hours, so I walked over to Target (about 10 minutes away) to get an eye exam and pick up a few necessities. They called after the 2 hours, just as I was finishing my lunch, saying that the oil was done, but it would be another 2 hours for the transmission. Okay, that's fine. I hadn't done my shopping yet, and I figured I could kill that much time in Target. It's about a 30-minute walk home from there, so I could have walked home, been there for an hour or so, and then walked back, or I could just sit around Target.

After about an hour and a half, I walked back to the shop, noticed that my car was still inside, and kept going to the Wendy's, where I sat down with a book and a Frosty for about half an hour.

It's now been about 3 1/4 hours since the second 2-hour estimate, and I'm sitting in the shop's waiting area. Fortunately, it's right next door to a Staples, which has a wireless hotspot, and I had the presence of mind to bring my laptop with me, so I'm doing some homework, and I think I can manage to kill whatever time is left.

Good morning. 'Tis early. Of course, it was even earlier at 4:00 this morning when the cat woke me up. Urgh. And that was after I'd woken up at 2 and not fallen asleep until 12. Oh well--at least I got to talk to samirant last night, and I haven't talked to her in ages (and she is someone that one of these days, I must meet)!

Yesterday turned out to be wonderfully relaxing. Actually, both Sunday and yesterday were nice that way.

Sunday, we went to church in the morning, then the choir sang at a wedding in the afternoon, then we helped my dad do some work on my car before we sell it to Esther and Justin (well, Colin helped; I sat there and looked pretty), and then we watched a couple of movies--Mozart and the Whale, which was a cute, The Other Sister-type movie, and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which means that I'm now (finally) caught up enough to go see the latest movie. I'm still not ready to read book 7, but I'm getting there.

Yesterday, I slept in until 10:30 (and Colin slept in until 12:30, I think), and then we eventually made our way down to Prince's Island Park for the afternoon. There were some Heritage Day events going on, but we didn't really do anything specific; we just had a picnic and played cards with Colin's friend Carl, his wife Kelsey, and his sister Rachel. Devin and Lori were there for a while, but we literally passed them crossing the bridge into the park as they were on their way out, so we didn't overlap with them at all.

"As You Like It" was playing at Shakespeare in the Park last night, so we hung around the park in the evening and watched that, and then went back to my house (or, at least, the house where I'm housesitting) and watched one more episode of Battlestar. I seriously wonder if we'll even finish the first season in time to give it back to Scott and Heather before we leave.

Yeah, it's nice to have a long weekend that actually kind of felt like a long weekend. Yesterday felt like a holiday, believe it or not, and we so needed that.

Today, we've got an appointment at the bank to discuss a car loan and see what kind of financing we can get from the bank, as opposed to the dealership, and then we should be able to make the final decisions and finish up with that today or tomorrow. Exciting! And then, once we get the car, we'll sell mine to Esther and Justin, and I'll drive Colin's until we leave. I get the new car without sharing it for the next however-many months, so he can have it for the next few weeks. That, and if he's driving it, it's not going to be on my parents' awful gravel roads every day.