So last night I was over at Dave Schrubbe‘s place, helping him to run some cat-5 into the various rooms where he wants it, and that wasn’t bad – it’s just uniquely challenging to undertake such a task when the building is as old as Dave’s house is, and you still want things to “look right” when you’re done. That is, the last time I ran cable in a house that old, it was 456 High Ave, and we didn’t really give a damn where the holes were, or how it would look after we were done. We just wanted the damn internet in all the bedrooms. Then when we did it at Joe’s townhouse, it was easier because the house was just newer, and running the cable was just a matter of pulling it along the same places as power and phone and things were already going.

But that is a minor digression.

Dave took me out for food after that to Fratello’s, and as I was on the way home (around 11), I was thinking I could really use a trip to Target for a gift or two I still have to pick up. I took the clothes I had dried out of the car and ran them upstairs, left the car running, and checked quickly on the web to find out if Target was still open, what with the holiday season, etc. They had closed at 11 o’clock, so, bummer, no trip to happen.

I went to bed around 12:30.

I was actually running “on time” this morning, and so the fact that I couldn’t find my goddamn car key at 7:30 sorta pissed me off. I scoured the apartment for six minutes or so, then thought good and hard about how I could’ve gotten home without having the key to the car.

Then I remembered that when I got home, I left it running, fully anticipating heading back out to shop. Balls, balls, balls, BALLS.

So I starting thinking about how, if the car was actually still there (after all, it was sitting in the parking lot with doors unlocked and key in ignition for 8 hours), it would most certainly have run out of gas (I had less than a quarter tank when I got home from Dave’s), and the battery would be dead. So good thing I’ve got this zippy “roadside assistance” thing built in to my purchase of a brand new Mazda.

I get downstairs and the car was STILL RUNNING. It was on *fumes*, but it was still running. Could. Not. Believe it. I was still about seven minutes late to work since I needed to stop for gas (my car has a 13-gallon tank—I put in 13.086 gallons this morning…), but all things considered, that wasn’t too bad.

How was your ride in to work?