(no subject)

This has been a really stress-filled week for me. But I'm finally feeling pretty relaxed this evening, so maybe I can write about it a bit.

My car hasn't been running since Tuesday morning. I've realized that sometimes when it gets really wet outside, it won't start. Tuesday had a lot of rain, so I wasn't surprised. Fortunately, danaeris' car was here and had a convenient way to get to school.

By Thursday, I'd been dithering on whether to go to Chicago over the weekend to see my girlfriends and work on school stuff there, or whether it would be better to stay in Kenosha, not have to worry about driving, and get stuff done here. But by Wednesday afternoon my car was still not starting. With some help from my brother, I found that when the engine turned over, sparks were jumping from under the boots from terminal to terminal across the face of the distributor cap. So my decision was made for me; I'd need to stay in Kenosha and get my car taken care of.

I went to the store to buy some wires and plugs thinking that might help. I'd managed to bend one of the connectors while investigating, so I figured I'd need some anyway and it had been a long time since I changed them. They had to order the wires for Thursday, so I'd be there at least that long.

After school on Thursday, I drove out to the store to get the wires and to buy some dielectric grease to put on the terminal ends. But I realized I'd left my wallet at home in the nice pants I took off to change into working-on-the-car pants, so I had to go home and get it. I returned home again and found that I was missing the right spark plug socket, so I went back to the store again. I got home just in time for rain to start. Car work was going to have to wait until Friday.

Today I got up early and went to the university to hear Joe Biden speak. I'd never seen anyone involved in a national campaign in person before and I thought it would be worthwhile. It took a lot longer than I expected and I might not have gone if I'd known (I was expecting to be back home at two or three), but in all it was cool. I got home around 5, changed, and started on the car. I shortly realized that the no-name spark plug socket I'd bought was thoroughly worthless. I should have brought it back, but I threw it out without thinking about it and wasn't going to dig through the garbage for a $1.29 socket.

I drove to Sears to get a good socket and managed to get wires and plugs installed without too much further trouble. And, with a jump from Danae's car, mine was finally running again. It's running slightly rough, like there's an occasional misfire, and I'm not sure what's up with that. But tomorrow I'm going to go get an oil change, 'cause it's due. Maybe that plus the new plugs and things will get my gas mileage back up to the mid 40s where it's supposed to be.

Tonight, I'm going to shower, relax, and work on my history paper. I've finally decided that I'm going to write about the way motion pictures affected culture in the '20s and '30s, around the golden age of movie palaces. I think I have some good sources. I'm anxious about this paper because the last paper is going to need to be longer and will need to state and defend a claim, rather than just be general information. And ideally it will be linked to what I've written in this paper.

But I think I can get a lot done on that this weekend, so things are going fairly smoothly. I just miss seeing Danae and Lisa.

(no subject)

The vast array of academic writing out there is so cool. But no matter how neat the subject matter is, its taking me a while to get my brain around reading a lot of it in succession. It's a very different kind of writing from most other places. But tell me this doesn't sound fascinating (if you're a theatre and architecture geek): Consuming Illusion, Illusions of Consumability: American Movie Palaces of the 1920.