A lovely chest from my parents' house.

I trashed my favorte "fat" jeans tonight by dumping candle wax down the leg. I didn't realize this until I was getting ready to go to bed. Given that these jeans were going to be my attire tomorrow, I was screwed. Off to Wal-Mart. I bought a pair each in black and blue. In a size 20W. Yes folks, I'm right up around 200 lbs. and hovering around the "women's" department borders again.

It was after 11 so the dressing rooms were closed. No trying on. I got home with them around midnight and put on the first pair only to have them slide right down over my hips, still buttoned. Yay for 20W being too big. Boo for pants that I cannot wear. Back to Wal-Mart. Of course, customer service was closed also, so no returns. I went and got the pants in 18W and headed for the cashier. But first I asked for the manager to see if he'd just let me swap the pants out. He did. Yay for nice manager guy.

Home I get with the jeans, and immediately I try on a pair. And I can just barely button and zip them. What the fuuck? So I've been sitting here for a couple of hours in my new jeans, trying to decide if they are wear-able. They are actually getting less comfortable instead of more, so I think these are going to have to go back as well. And I will have to wear my one pair of jeans, blue, which fit, but which I hate hate hate because the hem rolls up and fuck no, I'm not going to iron them.

I'll decide in the morning. I'll be up early and off to work, where I'll get down to the final push on this big bri3f with my coworker in Atlanta, who's just coming back to work from a week off for the Jewish holidays. Happy New Year, Jews! We should just have a few tweaks, and then a long course of maddening corrections to make all the abbreviations the same between her parts and mine, tedious things like that. I told her if she so much as thinks about touching the headings in the document, I will come over there and throttle her. I spent way, way too long wrangling those headings into just the right format to generate a table of contents. How exciting is this?

No matter how well or not well that whole process goes, it will be over by 3:30 my time, because it has to go into the outgoing Atlanta mail by 4:30 their time. Then I'll be free to head over to Atlanta. I'm driving the Porsche to work, then on to Atlanta and straight north up to Braselton, home of Road Atlanta, and site of the Petit Le Mans. If all goes well, I'll spend a little time with my friend, known here only as The Voice of Denver, whom I've not seen in about ten years.

Wow. I remember writing about him online and posting photos. I have apparently been doing this online journal thing for ten years at the least. Yow.

Anyway.

I'll crash somewhere Thursday night, perhaps at my mom's (depending on gas availability) and then go back Friday to see if I can get into the Porscheplatz and the whole parade lap thing that happens around 1:30. The Voice has a free pass for me and I'm a little fuzzy on exactly how I'll get it from him, but we'll work it out. Then Saturday, I have a tentative appointment with my new driving coach. We had a long chat last night about what I hope to accomplish, and I think it'll be well worth it to do this for a few sessions. There is so, so much to learn. Hell, if I learn how to decipher the cones on an autocross course, I'll be doing well. Right now, when I look at an autocross course, all I see is confusion!



Sunday will be an exciting day of mortgage application fun. I've got to get this done and get prequalified for a loan so that we can get serious about finding a place in Birmingham. Nobody has been to see our house since that first person. I think I'm just repeatng crap here that I've posted in previous entries aren't I? Open house the weekend we go to Dauphin Island, etc etc bla bla bla.

The big delivery route around Atlanta went OK, though the gas situation was a nightmare. Mostly it was extremely sad to dismantle my parents' home, our family headquarters, to divide up all the familiar things and take them to other places. I'm glad to have a few of them here. I got some old kitchen things that are special to me and I like having them here. But still, just...sad. I still can't believe my father is dead. I told somebody last week that while I didn't have much contact with him day to day, I definitely felt a huge loss, as if a big solid wall on one side of my existence had just gone POOF leaving a big wide-open gaping empty space. Nothing there to bump up against. No more resistance. That was a theme of my relationship with my father, and I continue to be amazed at the ways in which that solid presence worked in my life. Of course, it's still there. But he's not.

I'm secretly looking forward to my mother's move, hoping it means a new phone number. And a new voicemail greeting. It is so jarring to call and hear my father's voice, same as always. "Thank you for calling......" in his British-tinged Arabic accent.

OK off to bed for me. Long day tomorrow. Gorgeous day for driving!

Oh. Did I mention the speeding ticket? I got one about a mile from home one day last week. 60 in a 45. Well, he did that thing where he said I was going 67 but he'd do me a favor and make it 60 so I would only have to pay $146. For which I was supposed to thank him. I am going to go back to using the magic words. I didn't use them this time, and wish I had. I can't tell you now what they are or they will lose their power. But I'm sure I wrote about it when it happened, the day I was stopped twice for speeding - an hour apart, in very small towns known for speed-traps, by small-town cops. I said the same thing to each of them and they let me go. If I were up for sainthood, that right there would count for two of my proven miracles.

Today I settled up that ticket and oh, how I hated handing that money over. I want you to know, I was not in the Porsche when I got it, either. I was in the Honda. But I still blame the Porsche!