“we are finished waiting for you!”

well, it’s later. later like tomorrow, but you weren’t that impatient, were you? later as in time for the song of the week, like i said before.

the new wilco cd is awesome, you might already know. well, when i was trying to figure out whether it was awesome or not i downloaded pieces of it to test-drive, and ended up with this live track, which is probably/maybe better than the recorded version. i like it a lot. so the song of the week is wilco’s i’m the man who loves you.

other things i like: days off from work. sadly though, today’s was unexpected and unfortunate. see, i got up in the morning, showered and ate and got in the car and departed, as if today were going to be a real and normal work day. of course, that didn’t seem to convince my automobile, who after being in california and under my charge for less than three weeks, decided as i stopped at a red light on the way to work this morning to just, well, die. one minute, motor running. slow to a stop at a red, engine sound goes briefly and slightly up, then down, down, down. nothing. can’t restart. i gave my thumb a blister trying, actually, while i was in the left northbound lane of la brea avenue, but that didn’t help. neither did the fact that i discovered just then that the switch to turn on the hazard lights had at some point been, well, removed i guess by the car’s previous caretakers, apparently.

i eventually coasted backward down the incline into the turn lane to at least keep people from honking, at which point a nice lady stopped and offered me a jump (for the battery, that is). so then i got to coast downhill backwards and left across two more lanes into a side street to try this, which didn’t help. luckily she let me call on her mobile phone to my own phone, and once my machine picked up i was able to assert to anyone in the apartment (i.e. roommate with car) that they should pick up my phone, because i needed help. which worked, and got me a ride home to make the important phone calls to parents, towing company, repair shop, etc., despite having to dodge giving a fiesty, very round so-called jazz musician a ride “out of this place” in exchange for ten bucks (that’s a whole different story though).

so now 300 dollars later, hopefully my car will be working again tomorrow afternoon. damn you timing belt. i ended up not getting to work though, which brings me back to where i started, which is that even though i lost a day’s pay and the use of a car and had to deal with a whole bunch of crap out of nowhere, at least i got the afternoon off, which i like.

now i’m hungry.

[now hearing this: song of the week.]