So the cable and dvr are up and running now and watching just about anything in HD is really awesome at the moment. New PJ is also up and running, but I still need to send back the old one.
Tommy finally got his new car, so he's in a better place now, although he still hasn't gotten his insurance check. Never use State Farm, I think is the moral of this story. His dad heads home today back to Hurricane land.
Lost pre-empted again tonight I believe by baseball. Have I mentioned how much I hate baseball?
I actually saw Doom this past weekend with Rian, and neither of us thought it was all that bad actually. But that may have been due to our incredibly low expectations going in. Still not good enough to actively recommend though.
Carrie flies in tomorrow. Woot!
Not a whole lot going on at the moment. Continuing to help Tommy settle in considering he does not yet have a replacement vehicle(although they are sending him the total'd check soon). His dad is coming out to go car shopping with him this weekend, so he should be set again by next week.
I finally ordered myself some cable and a dvr and such so I can actually watch/record most of the shows I follow rather than downloading them after the fact. That should be all set tomorrow.
The blue panel on my LCD projector is starting to go south. This causes a horrible blue haze sometimes in some sections of the screen. Still watchable, but I need to get this repaired sooner rather than later. Since I can't imagine going without my PJ for even one day though, I'll probably be buying a new model at some point and then once I have the new one up and running I'll send the old one in for repair(and then maybe ebay or something?).
I dropped my car off to be repaired today before work. The mechanic called me a few moments ago to say, "have you ever had your radiator flushed? like ever?" Hehe, yeah, so there ya go. They are replacing my thermostat and flushing it. Also, there was a nail in my tire which was causing a slow leak. So hopefully good to go after this for another long period.
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I saw Corpse Bride this weekend. It was pretty good. The voice work was excellent as expected. But it just wasn't as good as Nightmare. Unlike Nightmare, I don't think I'll ever necessarily want to watch it again.
A few new genre shows started airing this season, Threshold, Invasion, and Surface. I've pretty much given up on the first two, but Surface continues to interest me and may pan out as a good show.
I've also finally gotten around to watching some Scrubs. Up to season 2 now. Really funny show.
Denver has now officially gotten its first snowfall for the season this morning. Not a whole lot sticking to the ground, just enough to be annoying. :)
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The Death Cab for Cutie concert was absolutely fantastic. The venue was really really packed too, which kind of surprised me. I guess they have become fairly popular now. My brother took some horrible horrible videos with my cell phone camera which I may get around to posting at some point.
We saw MirrorMask this weekend. I really enjoyed it, but I can't safely recommend it to most as its definitely outside of what the mainstream would probably enjoy. A bit too artsy.
We also saw Serenity again, but unfortunately it looks like not many other did. So despite great word of mouth, and repeated viewings by cool folks such as myself, it still only pulled in another 5 mil this weekend. Over a 50% drop.
Warning, this will be long and is rated R for extreme language and prejudice! :)
*Thursday was relatively uneventful, I arrived in Florida, helped Tommy pack some stuff into the car, and then slept.
*Friday we started out at 6am. We were actually making some pretty good time and at about 10:30am were only a few miles south of the Georgia border.
Then the car began to shake violently and bits of rubber started flying behind the car. Tommy pulls the car over to the side of the road. The right rear tire treads have torn completely free of the tire and beat the shit out of the car around it. The car also doesn't start now and so we are sitting in florida heat on the side of the road and can only stand outside of the car for a bit of a breeze if we want to be attacked by hordes of "lovebugs" and dragonflys.
As it turns out, the car has an auto shut-off for the fuel line if it detects a big jolt like that of a crash and apparently the blown tire was enough to simulate that. So after we figured that out we could at least sit in the air conditioned car again.
Tommy called AAA and had a hard time getting his point across as their computers were down and apparently they don't have modern technology like maps and notepads. But, eventually, they said there would be a tow truck in route within an hour.
(A side note at this point is he did in fact have a donut tire spare in his trunk, and we could have switched to that and driven 20 miles to the nearest shop. However, the problem was that the trunk was packed to the gills with his stuff and we would have had to empty it all out onto the highway to even get to it.)
After an hour with no tow truck in sight, he called again. Mid call he lost connection with them. I should point out here that he has given them the cell phone number he is calling from(mine), but that despite the lost call, AAA does not call him back to finish things out. He calls them again after a few minutes for the third time now, and again gives them all the same information. This third time he is actually talking to the same woman he talked to the first time he called.
At this point, not trusting AAA for jack or shit, I call my own cell phone provided road side assistance for yet another tow truck. Mid call I lose connection with them, and they call me back. Wow. Cingular - 1, AAA - 0. Anyhow, the race is now on for which tow truck will get to us first. The winner, if you can call them that considering the initial call was 3 hours before, is AAA. They got there at about 1:30pm(only 3 hours on the side of the road, hurray!). However, the true winner was my own roadside assistance which arrived a mere minute after AAA's.
We were towed back to the last small town we passed and to the local Tire Kingdom where after a couple more hours, the tire was replaced and we were back on our way. 5 hours lost. We drove on until just prior to Nashville around midnight and called it a night.
*Saturday we started out at about 8am and began our treck anew. At about noon we were passing through the small town/village/shack part of Southern Illinois. Just past a town called Vienna(which the locals pronounce VIE - enna) fate decided to play its next cruel card.
We were driving on a fairly normal highway, two lanes, giant weed filled median and then two more lanes headed the other way. We were in the fast lane travelling about 65mph. About 100 yards in front of us a car in the right hand lane slams on its breaks and comes to a complete stop. The car behind it swerves into our lane to avoid an accident. We slow a tad but continue on our way.
Suddenly, the stopped car in the right lane starts easing into our lane at about 2mph. Not as if he wants to be in our lane mind you, but as if he is turning left in front of us to go into the median(he was trying to make an illegal u-turn into an authorized vehicle only thing, from the RIGHT lane). Tommy swerved to the left to avoid him, but the slow march of the hillbilly redneck continued inexorably on and we collided. Our front right collided with his front left. We ricochet'd across the median and came to a stop finally moments before plowing into oncoming traffic on the other side.
We got out of the car and went over to check on the assholes that did this. 18 year old redneck who has probably never left his small town and his 70+ year old grand dad who looks exactly the same, only older. They are both fine, and the 18 year old is appologizing profusely. "Its all my fault, I'm sorry". Well no fucking shit.
I am of course, the only one here with a cell phone, so I get to call 911 and explain the situation. A cop arrives in short order, takes our statements, gives them a ticket and calls us a tow truck. (Because, just like drunk drivers walking away from wrecks where they kill multiple people, the redneck mobile survived relatively unscathed and they are able to drive away from the accident.)
Our tow truck driver Victor Jennings(nice helpful guy) informs us that there are no repair shops open anywhere near hickland until Monday, and the place he is towing our car until then has no businesses(no hotels, no food, etc). He is going to drop us off in Vienna instead where they have 1 hotel, the LIMITED inn(boy is that the truth), a mcdonalds, a dairy queen, and a strange drive thru subway. This is the entirety of the towns business district.
Once we check into the most overpriced shitty hotel in existance, Tommy proceeds to call the insurance company. For the record, his insurance is State Farm. Initially, they proceeded to give him some of the worst service I could imagine possible and provide him with tons of unnecessary run around. Its like our dealings with AAA from the previous day. But after some external assistance from friends/family he is able to at least make a bit of headway and get the ball rolling. Bottom line however becomes that he is going nowhere for the forseeable future, and is stuck in podunkville until at least Monday and possibly for WEEKS after that. I can't even imagine what crack his insurance agents were smoking.
Next up I got to try and explore my options for leaving the area. As it turns out, there are no rental car places open on Saturdays or Sundays in that area or anywhere within 150+ miles(St. Louis airport). Once Monday rolls around it looks like there will be an option in Marion, a town about 20 miles away. This town is actually big enough to contain amenities like running water, so we decide that our goal for Sunday will be to get there.
*Sunday I called a cab to come pick us up from Marion. We took the cab over to Tommy's car and loaded up a few useful items(like his xbox) and then into Marion. We ended up staying at the Drury Inn, which was essentially the same price as the smalltown bullshit LIMITED Inn, however it actually rocks in every way imaginable. So that was something at least.
This town actually had a mall if you can believe it. And we got to go see Serenity at the local theater. The rest of the day was pretty much spent playing on the Xbox in the hotel room when not on the phone trying to make things happen with the insurance or others. Overall Sunday was actually a nice day considering the circumstances, as we no longer felt like we were in a land that time forgot.
*Monday morning Tommy's car got towed to the local dealership for repairs. They told him it was very likely it was actually going to be totaled at this point, but that it would have to wait for his insurance company to have the final word. We attempt to pick up a car at the local enterprise, thinking they will provide one way rentals since they are, after all, a "business" class rental agency. However, as it turns out, Enterprise sucks as much cock as AAA and State Farm. They will with persuasion and a 50 dollar drop fee, let us take a vehicle to the St. Louis Airport 100+ miles away.
So, we rent an SUV and drive it over to the dealership. We load it up with all of Tommy's stuff from the Taurus and then head out. We finally get into St. Louis after all of this at about 3pm. I go into Budget to rent another vehicle. After waiting in line for 30+ minutes(Because their computers are down, its an epidemic apparently) I am told when I get to the counter that I first need to make a phone reservation before they can help me. Riiiiight. The Budget folks went to the same customer service school as most of these other companies.
So I step out of line, call the number and make my reservation in like 2 minutes. And then I have to stand back in the much longer now line and wait again!!! After another hour I finally have the vehicle rented and out in the parking lot, where we proceed to move all of Tommy's stuff out of the Enterprise and into the Budget. Finally we are on our way now out of St. Louis at like 6pm.
The rest of the drive was relatively uneventful other than the super high winds across Kansas, and we got into Denver at like 7am where I then proceeded to go to work.
*Morals of the story:
Fuck small town incompetence.
Fuck rednecks and hicks.
Fuck corporations with lousy customer service and/or policies(AAA, Enterprise, State Farm and Budget, you all suck!)
But honoroable mentions for Victor from Jennings Tire and Auto Repair, Cingular's roadside assistance, Tire Kingdom and Drury Inn which are all pretty rockin.
Huge update to make about my recent bullshit travel adventure, and that will come in the next day or two. But for now just wanted to post a quick heads up that the new movie Serenity is absolutely fantastic. If you have any love at all for good sci fi then you really need to make it a priority to catch this movie at least once while its in the theater, regardless if you ever watched the series or even knew one existed, you'll really enjoy it! :) Go see it!