Chatter: How not to change a tire, new year's resolutions, yes, I'm working on the chapter already.
Obviously, this is a general post. I've got a countdown up for the chapter, and I need about 10 images, two of which need photomanipulation. Woot - go me. Next chapter is slowly, but surely, being written. I've got two scenes, and this time I really do think that I won't need too many things. Besides more casual teen male clothes - anybody know of something non-photoskinned? *Crosses fingers and spits on them.*
The chapter might actually have been up tomorrow, if not for my roommate's car, and Birdie, my lovely former-almost-roommate, who dropped in for a surprise visit on Saturday. (Yes, it's my fault that people call her Birdie.)
What happened was this:
1) My roommate blew out a tire on the way to the grocery store, and rode said blown tire back to the school lot.
2) My roommate asked me if I knew of a guy who would change her tire. I said "I know how to change a tire." Now, I've never done it without my dad's supervision, but I know the basics and her car is small enough that I was certain I could actually work the jack.
3) We decided not to do it on Saturday night, because it was hella cold and sleeting. During the night that turned into a nice shell of ice.
4) Saturday afternoon, when we arrived at the roommate's car, it was encased in a 1/4 inch shell of ice. We popped the doors and started weilding th crowbars ce scrapers. Roommate left her purse on the driver's side seat so she could scrape with two hands, and the doors were shut.
5) The purse, containing my roommate's keys and necessaries, was locked in her car.
It was at this point that we knew something was up. Fortunately, a mutual friend, known to the internet only as Chick in the Purple Hat, had brought her tool set along in case we needed it.
6) Lacking a coat hanger, we spent the next 1/2 hour trying to pick the lock with a hairpin, a phillip's head screwdriver, and a pair of allen wrenches. This didn't work for two reasons: one, car keys are double sided, and two, her car is new enough that the keys contain a chip in them, and will not unlock for an avid detective-novel reader armed with wires.
Lesson learned: anybody who manages to jack Roommate's car at any point is much better at this than us.
7) My knees froze to the 1/4 inch layer of ice on the asphalt.
8) After unsticking my knees, we all called our respective fathers for advice.
"No, Dad, we don't have a coat hanger. We thought we were going to be changing a tire, not jacking Roommate's car."
A pause.
"No, Dad. D yo have a hairpin?"
9) We retreated into Chick in the Purple Hat's car before we get frostbite.
10) My dad showed up with a coathanger.
11) My dad failed to pick the lock or preform the coat hanger trick, due to two things: one, the car does not have the buttons that stick up above the lock on the inside of the window, two, the window is too long and too well sealed to get sufficient leverage on the lock buttons that do exist, towards the front of the vehicle.
Lesson learned: My dad may have driven long before he reached legal age, but he doesn't have any carjacking in his past.
12) We returned to school. Roomate decided she didn't have money to pay a locksmith or a towing company, so she had her dad mail her the spare key. I advised her to tape it to the bottom of her sock drawer.
13) We returned three hours ago, and after much ice-chipping, kicking, swearing, and five minutes spent staring stupidly at the hubcap, have applied one spare tire to her car.
14) Roommate's engine failed to turn over.
15) I went home and washed my gloves and coat.
We're all highly amused (except for roommate) by the outcome of this little adventure. On a related (but not) note, the day to change a tire i no the day after an ice storm. The tire-changing would have been 100% easier if we didn't have to use the socket wrench to chip the tire off the pavement while sliding around on the remaining ice cover. My ankle was fairly unhappy with me, though it's surprisingly fine now (we'll know tomorrow morning whether or not it objects,) possibly because of my New Year's resolution which I never told you guys about. I'm learning Yoga to strengthen my ankles, and I started tonight. (I guess it doesn't much count as a new year's resolution if I didn't know I had it until last week. So sue me, it's still January, and I'm a late starter.)
Conclusion: I need to do more Yoga, I wobbled everywhere and fell on my face. Sitting stretches are okay, standing ones aren't. Though, I spend enough time as a college student sitting on floors in various positions, some of them have to be yoga stretches. Plus, I like to do homework on the floor. It gives me more space to do stuff like swear repeatedly at my cryptography homework. We've moved on from basic ciphers, and I'm relying on an ad-hoc collection of statistics and deductive reasoning to try and crack this week's Nomenclator. However, I've only got e and t for sure, which hasn't helped a lot, since one of the words that was replaced by it's own symbol was "the." I guess I'm going to have to keep testing combinations of a, i, o, and n for the next four letters until I stop getting text strings that look like hooked on phonics.
aaieoa... ioe... aeo...
Oh, also, it turns out I'm the only language student in that class: everyone else is computer sci or math. So people come to pester me when we have to identify languages. I like my class partner too - we make a good team because he's math brained and I'm middle brained.
TLDR: I like my class, I will help you change your tire, yoga is hard, chapter coming soon.
So, fill me in - who's still working on their resolutions and who is just ready to give up on 2013 already?
The chapter might actually have been up tomorrow, if not for my roommate's car, and Birdie, my lovely former-almost-roommate, who dropped in for a surprise visit on Saturday. (Yes, it's my fault that people call her Birdie.)
What happened was this:
1) My roommate blew out a tire on the way to the grocery store, and rode said blown tire back to the school lot.
2) My roommate asked me if I knew of a guy who would change her tire. I said "I know how to change a tire." Now, I've never done it without my dad's supervision, but I know the basics and her car is small enough that I was certain I could actually work the jack.
3) We decided not to do it on Saturday night, because it was hella cold and sleeting. During the night that turned into a nice shell of ice.
4) Saturday afternoon, when we arrived at the roommate's car, it was encased in a 1/4 inch shell of ice. We popped the doors and started weilding th crowbars ce scrapers. Roommate left her purse on the driver's side seat so she could scrape with two hands, and the doors were shut.
5) The purse, containing my roommate's keys and necessaries, was locked in her car.
It was at this point that we knew something was up. Fortunately, a mutual friend, known to the internet only as Chick in the Purple Hat, had brought her tool set along in case we needed it.
6) Lacking a coat hanger, we spent the next 1/2 hour trying to pick the lock with a hairpin, a phillip's head screwdriver, and a pair of allen wrenches. This didn't work for two reasons: one, car keys are double sided, and two, her car is new enough that the keys contain a chip in them, and will not unlock for an avid detective-novel reader armed with wires.
Lesson learned: anybody who manages to jack Roommate's car at any point is much better at this than us.
7) My knees froze to the 1/4 inch layer of ice on the asphalt.
8) After unsticking my knees, we all called our respective fathers for advice.
"No, Dad, we don't have a coat hanger. We thought we were going to be changing a tire, not jacking Roommate's car."
A pause.
"No, Dad. D yo have a hairpin?"
9) We retreated into Chick in the Purple Hat's car before we get frostbite.
10) My dad showed up with a coathanger.
11) My dad failed to pick the lock or preform the coat hanger trick, due to two things: one, the car does not have the buttons that stick up above the lock on the inside of the window, two, the window is too long and too well sealed to get sufficient leverage on the lock buttons that do exist, towards the front of the vehicle.
Lesson learned: My dad may have driven long before he reached legal age, but he doesn't have any carjacking in his past.
12) We returned to school. Roomate decided she didn't have money to pay a locksmith or a towing company, so she had her dad mail her the spare key. I advised her to tape it to the bottom of her sock drawer.
13) We returned three hours ago, and after much ice-chipping, kicking, swearing, and five minutes spent staring stupidly at the hubcap, have applied one spare tire to her car.
14) Roommate's engine failed to turn over.
15) I went home and washed my gloves and coat.
We're all highly amused (except for roommate) by the outcome of this little adventure. On a related (but not) note, the day to change a tire i no the day after an ice storm. The tire-changing would have been 100% easier if we didn't have to use the socket wrench to chip the tire off the pavement while sliding around on the remaining ice cover. My ankle was fairly unhappy with me, though it's surprisingly fine now (we'll know tomorrow morning whether or not it objects,) possibly because of my New Year's resolution which I never told you guys about. I'm learning Yoga to strengthen my ankles, and I started tonight. (I guess it doesn't much count as a new year's resolution if I didn't know I had it until last week. So sue me, it's still January, and I'm a late starter.)
Conclusion: I need to do more Yoga, I wobbled everywhere and fell on my face. Sitting stretches are okay, standing ones aren't. Though, I spend enough time as a college student sitting on floors in various positions, some of them have to be yoga stretches. Plus, I like to do homework on the floor. It gives me more space to do stuff like swear repeatedly at my cryptography homework. We've moved on from basic ciphers, and I'm relying on an ad-hoc collection of statistics and deductive reasoning to try and crack this week's Nomenclator. However, I've only got e and t for sure, which hasn't helped a lot, since one of the words that was replaced by it's own symbol was "the." I guess I'm going to have to keep testing combinations of a, i, o, and n for the next four letters until I stop getting text strings that look like hooked on phonics.
aaieoa... ioe... aeo...
Oh, also, it turns out I'm the only language student in that class: everyone else is computer sci or math. So people come to pester me when we have to identify languages. I like my class partner too - we make a good team because he's math brained and I'm middle brained.
TLDR: I like my class, I will help you change your tire, yoga is hard, chapter coming soon.
So, fill me in - who's still working on their resolutions and who is just ready to give up on 2013 already?