An enduring theme of our conversations is weather and the power it wields over our temperaments. How hot or cold it feels is probably the first thing that comes to mind when you think of small talk. You say it’s going to rain soon? Why, you just uttered the mainstay of early evening, porch-front discourse. Ambient humidity, huh? Fascinating.
We spoke of Star Wars and the Force yesterday. Do you also remember The Matrix? Both flicks posit all-encompassing phenomena that bend reality and exert a power over its characters. I don’t know about you, but I have this very experience whenever I look out the window. What I see confers upon me more emotion than I’d care to admit, and weather may inform you in a similar manner. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t begin weeping or skipping as soon as I step out the door, it’s a subtler thing that infiltrates my day.
All that said, today was a sweet reprieve from the pre-winter doldrums. But it’s coming. It may even have arrived. The Chicago winter. Brutal and dismal. It’s pitch black already when I leave work, and soon it will be pitch black and bitterly cold, with the only solace derived from slipping on the ice and getting knocked unconscious. A wiser person would say, “You shouldn’t let all these externalities affect you! It’s the sunshine within that counts.” Try declaring this at a bus stop when the windchill hits negative thirty.
Last night, as I began clacking away at my keyboard, a sharp sense of nausea overcame me. I’m not precisely sure where vomiting fits in the broad continuum of writing–those college courses are blurry, though that may just be an early onset of glaucoma–but the implications are tentatively negative. Claiming this episode was psychosomatic is not a territory I wish to visit, yet there are questions that need airing. Is it time for us to take a break? Is it time to stop completely?
It’s been a shitty week, so I’ll attribute some of it to that. The weather’s been depressing. Work has been stressful, a fact intensified by the alarming amount of printer toner fumes I’ve been inhaling. This is not the type of problem helped by an office window that cannot open. Yes, there is an initial buzz, which I have reason to believe is really the gyrations of dying brain cells, but there is also concern that toner is not exactly the substance of happy hour.
There was also the dual misfortune of buying Revenge of the Sith and watching it. I ask for your forgiveness. I don’t know why I did it. Maybe it was a sense of duty, I can’t say. There were at least half a dozen times when I groaned inappropriately. It’s the dialogue, it really is. Epic space battle is not the best medium for horrifically crafted banter. Dramatic “love” sequences also shouldn’t be galactically cringeworthy, right? After the seventh strained exchange it’s like, “In the name of midi-chlorians, wrap your lips around a lightsaber and hit the button. Please.”
But it’s the very first point that bears repeating. Weather. Perhaps we’ll get around to discussing it tomorrow, if I don’t forget.
Dingatitis is a disease to which the AMA turns a blind eye, despite the untold suffering of millions and the unchecked prescriptions of tens of millions. For every buyer who frets over the newness of his automobile, curbs the desire to spend hours wiping the hood with an old shirt, there are ten acquaintances who would eagerly dispense remedies, medical degrees be damned. Park as you normally would. Park in the boonies. 87 octane is fine. Only 93 goes in that spout. Don’t break 55 mph for at least a month. Blow it out to 150 mph and you’ll never hear a rattle.
The ’06 9-3 Linear. Black like a warlock’s cuticles, enough buttons to souse a grandmother, hums with alien technology upon ignition–that’s the poison. The 150 mph tidbit was offered by the fellow who sold the car to me, so its veracity might be enhanced. Since Saturday I’ve suffered mild symptoms of dingatitis, which extend beyond the ailment’s etymological roots. Keeping the mats pristine. Looking out my apartment window to make sure the car’s still there. Checking for scratches. That kind of thing.
It’s all pretty stupid, really, and I believe the best advice came from my mum. Things are made to be used. She didn’t raise her kids to worry over possessions with a diaper. Really, in the end, it’s about that very first scratch. Heck, I have half a mind to bring a sledgehammer to the sedan and cause it violence, such would the entire process be accelerated.
Short and seamless, the dealership experience was markedly different from my trip to Carmax. Advice I had collected such as buying at the end of the month, negotiating in stages, and using the phone to good effect? They seemed to work. At one point I asked a staff member whether the wheels would detach as soon as I left the lot, and he chuckl– Actually, no, he looked horrified.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to figure out what to wear to the weekly Saab enthusiast dinner, where we will discuss our online forum postings and plan community outings. Ha! Made you look.