Time to Change the Station

It's almost the end of the year, and at this point it couldn't go fast enough for me. After months of what felt like a largely idyllic existence, I seem to have suddenly fallen victim to some horrible voodoo curse related to all things mechanical in my life. My stereo receiver died. This was actually a good thing, considered in a certain light, as the receiver in question was the original "heading off to college" edition, and I had been eager for it to give me a reason to replace it. When it croaked at last, I spent months discovering that all stereo receivers are ugly. And then I finally found my fabulous Harmon Kardon receiver (pictured above, except it's way cooler in person), with free shipping, no less, from J and R.

Two weeks after the Harmon Kardon arrived, my CD player died, rendering the receiver mostly moot. My DVD player had already succumbed. One of the overhead lights in the kitchen is on its last legs. The lights in there take these circular flourescent bulbs that take two adults and a fifth of rum to replace. And I don't drink.

Once we'd all recovered from the cold from hell, T's car limped home and died in our driveway. As the granddaughter of a chauffeur, I expertly diagnosed the problem based on the symptoms she reported, called out the AAA battery truck, and had the car up and running in no time. Since we'd been concerned about how rough the engine was running, I decided to drop the car off at the shop anyway. just to be on the safe side. Turned out the car was running on three cylinders. The mechanic took hundreds of our greenbacks and replaced a fuel injector. Two days later the car died again on the day before Christmas as my partner was running around doing her by-now-traditional last minute shopping. The initial issue had been with the alternator, not the battery, and the new battery had masked the problem. We signed over another paycheck and hoped we were out of the woods.

Two days later we piled into the other car for a trip to my sister's in MD. At the gas station on the way out of town some total stranger accosted us. What did this guy want? When we rolled down our windows and concentrated, it seemed that he was concerned about the non-round shape of our right rear passenger-side tire. Yep. Flat city. We loaded it up with enough air to get it to the garage (I think we're funding our mechanic's next vacation), transferred all our luggage and presents, and left it with instructions to please deal with the flat. Yesterday the aforementioned mechanic called to say that he couldn't find the key for undoing the wheel locks.

[insert whimpering noises here]

SO. These events have driven me round the bend. I have easily earned the "crazy" to qualify for membership in the "Crazy Hip Blog Mama" ring. And while I generally believe that anyone who claims to be hip immediately voids any claim on the title by saying it out loud, I will gently refer any skeptics to my sidebar, which includes not only a Flickr badge but also an Upcoming badge. I even know what a favicon is.... and I have one, too. Not to mention the fact that I hosted the Running Fool earlier this month. I mean, c'mon! (I realize that all of these pieces of evidence may actually be tallied in the "geek" column, but I do have a trump card: I'm a gay American. Totally hip, right? Or at least trendy.)

The "blog mama" part of my qualification is abundantly clear to anyone who's ever read this blog (hi, Dad!). We can simply stipulate and move on, n'cest pas?

All of this means that I can also drool over such bloggity items as a new site design by the fabulous folks at Ciao My Bella.

Hope I win. I need to change the station.