Lucky Juice

[No spoilers are sacrificed in this post.]

Harry Potter in the latest book learns about The Lucky Juice. You drink it and anything you try for the next 24 hours - you get lucky with. Yesterday I was planning on writing about my Lucky Juice. But as it turns out someone gave me a mixed drink instead.

As you've already heard, a week ago a coffee-addict ran into my car. Well, with some extraordinary stroke of luck, the woman is married to a car shop owner. NN, if you're going to be run into, then make sure it's someone married to a car shop owner, not just anybody off the street. This wasn't just any car shop, but Chrysler. So now you all understand why my Jeep loving husband was so eager to communicate directly with her husband. At this woman's request, rather than going through the insurance company, I just took my car to her husband's shop and he took care of everything (the rental car and the new bumper installation). Very nice man. I felt rather lucky to find this out. This was a much better experience than having to go through the process of getting an estimate, leaving my car to the Honda dealership, etc. This way everything was done quick and without too much of a hassle.

Slight problem I ran into, my rental car…on the hottest day of the year decides that I didn't really need air-conditioning or a radio in my car. I was p*ssed! I mean com'n, this is the hottest day of the year, and I can't listen to the damn news??? But I guess that's what I get for writing how much I love heat in my blog. I'm beginning to see a pattern here, because every time I plan on writing something in my blog, something happens to prove me wrong.

So yesterday I went to pick up my car from the shop. I spent two hours observing the fire truck across the street from the dealership dealing with a fuel leak on the road (fascinating!), and then spent some time making faces at my newly refurbished car which didn't look quite like what other Hondas look like. So I took the guy across his parking lot and showed him what a bumper should look like ("See, it's supposed to be flush with the body of the car, not jutting out by quarter of an inch on the side."). He kept trying to convince me there's nothing he can do, and I kept trying to convince him I'm not taking the car this way. So he took it back in, called the mechanic who worked on it, took the bumper off, showed me the clip-on mechanism and explained why it cannot go further in. I stood my ground. Now, typically, I'd give up, but when it comes to cars, I always think WWJD ("What would [my husband's name starts with a J] do?") . And since I know my husband very well, I knew he'd answer back with "it's up to you! Are you happy with this?" I answered myself back, "Heck, no!" …"Well, there you go!" After half an hour of tinkering around with the bumper, the guys figured it out, there's a two-click sound you have to aim for in order to embed the bumper firmly in the socket. Lo and behold it's nice and flush now! The owner of the shop was SO happy, he told me that he has this problem with every Honda and he's happy to have finally figured out why this is happening and how easily it's fixed. I told him he ought to pay me for the service of teaching him. "Check is in the mail."

Then I was off on my merry way to work at my main office (where we have a T1 cable and not a freaking dial-up) and where it's a bit easier to deal with a 26MB PDF file (those are a pain in the @ss!!! Why does the freaking thing have to open the internet each and every time to advertise the Adobe Acrobat. I got the message the first time, no need to keep on doing it for each file I open. But I guess you get what you pay for, especially if you haven't paid anything for it). Bunch of annoyances ensued, and I was about to hit the roof with my boss's comments on my final report. But fine, I'm not about to use the F word on him like I did a couple of days ago with another manager.

5pm came and I get a husband-check-up-call, "Ummm…are you coming home today?" I forgot to tell him I'd be late. So my penance was, "We're going out to dinner then." Alright, fine. Now, DH knew about the weather forecast because he's been home for a couple of hours, but he doesn't tell me about it and I had no reason to suspect with it being 104 degrees outside and sunny. This resulted in a $500+ dinner bill.

We got to the restaurant, started eating, when snow started falling outside. Oh wait, that wasn't snow, that's the flowers off the trees flying all over under the air pressure of tornado strength winds. My husband, of course, goes into his own M.O and says, "Ooooh, the dog isn't going to be happy with you!" And I look at him and say, "What are you talking about, it's just wind, nothing more." Sure enough, torrential downpour ensues, power goes out in the restaurant, and all the signs were there for us to leave the place and head back home. Risking getting soaked wet as we ran to the car, we made it. Driving through torrential downpour on a highway was quite amusing to say the least. Everyone was down to 20 mph. We got to the exit ramp towards our house, and I tell my husband, "Slow down!!! There's ALWAYS a fallen branch around the bend after this type of storm." My husband laughs, and I now insist that he slows down considerably. So he decides to amuse me and slows down to 2mph. When we get around the bend - sure enough, a huge tree was down covering the entire lane we were on. If we drove at the normal speed we typically drive around that bend, I'd be writing this from the hospital bed with several broken bones to write about. There's no way a car could have made it around that bend without going directly into the tree.

Lucky Juice felt really good at this point.

We got home (after doing another car shuffle), and sure enough power was out. I just wanna know, who the *#&@ spiked my juice? So what choice do I have? No blog last night. We went to bed. At midnight my dog is all upset and wanted to go out. I asked him where his dad was and no answer ("stupid dog!"). I took him out, he came back and stayed on that floor instead of coming back up or going down to the basement where his dad must have been (with no power, no air-condition, it's cooler to sleep down in the basement). I waited a few minutes upstairs, dog didn't show up but I heard him pacing mid-level. Stupid dog is afraid of the dark, I figured. So I take my flash light and show him the way to his dad. (Keep in mind, this is a Labrador retriever, not a poodle afraid of his shaddow, but apparently our dog doesn't know he's a lab dog and we have proof that he thinks he's a lap dog). I get downstairs and my husband says, "What's the matter?" So I explained to him his dog is afraid of the dark. My husband raises his voice and says, "I'm upset with him right now, he better not be around me!" I'm all in shock, "You're upset because he's afraid of the dark???" My husband turns on the emergency light and points to our sofa. New sofa. All torn to little tiny pieces. 8.5 year old dog, who still can't handle thunderstorms like an adult. I should have gotten that book on how to live with a Neurotic Dog instead of Harry Potter!

Lucky Juice loses its charm.

Cost of dinner $20, Cost of new sofa $480. Look on dog's face, priceless.