Not my week

In terms of things happening, this just have to go down as one of the worst ever for me. Hardly anything went right. Most things went wrong, though in some cases they could've been much worse.

Let's start off with my fender bender. I'm not all sure what combination of events led me to hitting that truck, but before I knew it I was slamming my brakes and swerving just enough so my headlights didn't get smashed by the mammoth truck right in front of me. It was trying to turn into Los Betos, and it hadn't dawned on me that it wasn't moving. So, yeah, I hit it. I admit it. Maybe I was just astonished that somebody would actually want to eat at Los Betos. I can't say for all certainty.

I got off lucky. The guy didn't want to call the cops. I was already well decelerating by the time I got to him, so my guess is I was going 10, 15 max. But that's just my guess. So nobody got hurt. My airbag didn't even deploy. (I hadn't even thought about that non-event until we had contacted the insurance company.) The guy's truck was really high up, and with my pretty low car, I wound up just sliding underneath him. Don't think I scraped any paint off his. I know for certain I beat up one of his exhaust pipes, but only because it did a worse number on my hood. I can't see any damage from sitting in the driver's seat, so from that standpoint it's pretty localized. Still not a pretty sight, and I'm just more traumatized than anything, but I'm guessing my repairs, maybe if we find a good place, maybe 400 tops? I have no serious rush to fix it, oddly. Besides the fact that I have little money, it kinda feels like a scar that you can tell people about. Granted, the story is pretty lame, but it gets people talking.

Hopefully the other guy's repairs won't be too much, and hopefully my mom's insurance won't go skyrocketing. It's a wait and see thing. Sure, I could've not been singing to one of my original works, that might have made me underly focused on driving. Plus I was just a hop and skip from school, so all my worries of driving down Oracle had passed. I let my guard down. And something bad happened. But I can't be a person who always stays guarded. It wears you down too much. Sometimes the chips have to land where they land.

Speaking of letting my guard down, I locked myself out of my house for almost two hours on Thursday. I had gone to the garage to get a soda from the fridge in there, and, what do you know, the door locked itself behind me. I was like a rat caught in a trip and Pepsi was my cheese. I had left my keys in the kitchen, and my phone was in the living room next to the remote control because I was ready to watch a block of Discovery Channel. So I had no way to get back inside or let anybody know what had happened. I could have gone to the neighbors, but that just felt too awkward for me. One, it was past their bedtime at 8PM. (I do live, unfortunately, in Oro Valley) Two. What am I supposed to say? Hi, I live across the street. I locked myself out of my house and need to call my overbearing mother. Can I borrow a cell phone or make a call inside? No, of course not. So, instead of trying to overfret about the whole ordeal, I just sat on some boxes we had out there and waited.

I got to think about stuff. Do I need to be more guarded of myself? Am I an idiot? What the hell am I gonna do for grad school? I got a confirmation that one of my supervisors from Berkeley will write me a letter. He just needs a CV and my application essays for the schools I'm applying to. Um, sure, Brent showed me how to write a CV, but I kinda feel ashamed that I'm gonna be giving him this list of not-totally stellar grad schools. I know I very well shouldn't. These are my choices that I want to make. I don't want to go to MIT. I don't want to go to Berkeley. I don't want to go to Stanford. Every waking moment I was at Berkeley and MIT during my visits there, I never felt comfortable. There I always had my guard up, but I felt like it got me nowhere. Here, at least I am in some semblance of comfortable. I can let my guard down. Maybe I can do the same in Merced or Albuquerque. You know, I did fail my Xanga ultimatum. At least I think it was my Xanga. I should leave and wait for someone to find me. Maybe that person will be myself.

Plus my cell phone was down for Tuesday and part of Wednesday, including when I had my fender bender. So I had to postpone my emotions until I got out of school. I had missed my first class because of what happened, and didn't feel particularly strong the rest of the day. I felt like crap. I mean, this was my first car, so it almost felt like breaking a bone. Of course, I've never broken a bone, so I don't know what it actually feels like, but I have broken my nose. Does that mean it's still broken?

I have two killers presentations next week. One is for my Mechanical AME lab. Each member makes a 7 minute presentation answering one question they took as part of the lab (I took the correlation between friction and Reynolds number in a flow), and then 3 minutes of grilling by the professor. I do this 3 times in the semester, and those 3 account for 80% of my grade. The second one is a group presentation for my Senior Capstone group. We just have a 10, 11 minute talk (combined) about our project, what we will need to design for, and what we know and think the customer needs/wants. Not too bad. We grouped our slides and made a dry run-through today at school. It took us 3 hours, though. Ouch. BTW, if you want to find a hip place to study, I recommend the 8th floor of the Optics building. Sweet stuff.

Life will have to wait until this year is over. Not sure what classes I will take in the Spring. But I have a little time for that.

Oh, and this week was career fair. I went on the first day. Had an interview on Thursday for an Internship at Citgo in Texas. Think it went pretty well. If I get it, that would be cool. If not, the search process is still young. I need to find something to do before I start grad school. That is, if I ever find the time to actually apply for them.