the Dalaverse

::bursts into tears:: Worst drive back EVER. Let's go through the problems and near-accidents one by one, shall we?

1. Having volunteered my car as a shuttle service for fellow students, I was supposed to pick up this random girl named Emily at a Metro station a couple of miles off the Beltway. I'd never been there, but I got directions and found it easily enough. I arrived at 8:00. She'd said she would be there at about 8:15. 8:20 -- no Emily. 8:30 -- I call home and whine to my mother, who tells me what an idiot I am for not having a contact number and tells me to stay close to the guard station. 8:45 -- I give two people change to use the payphones. 9:05 -- still no Emily. I get a call from Dad, who tells me to get my ass out of there, yells at me for having parked in the big empty garage, and makes me check the backseat before I get in the car.

I waited in a strange Metro station in a part of town I didn't know, in the cold, standing up, for over an hour.

Emily sucks.

2. Since I was already on Route 4, I took it back to school instead of my preferred Route 5. I've been superstitious about 4 ever since I got pulled over for speeding last spring. Basically, whenever I have to drive it, I turn into a paranoid freak. Every non-SUV is a potential cop car and of course they're lurking at every street corner. So it took me twice as long to get back.

3. Somehow, when crossing the commercial, always busy 235, I managed to put myself on the left side of the road. With a concrete median between me and the proper American right lanes. Thankfully there was nobody coming and I got over in three seconds, but I could pretty much have been dead otherwise.

4. Driving back down dark, deserted 5, I almost hit a possum. I've never killed anything with my car and I don't intend to start now. I swerved to avoid it and didn't come anywhere close to going off the road, but I scared the hell out of myself nonetheless and whimpered for ten minutes straight.

5. Instead of pulling up just outside the quad and making a couple of short trips with all my stuff like I usually do, I went all the way back to the lot. This was because there was a Public Safety car pulled into the little quad not-lot and I was still a paranoid freak. So I had to lug freshly laundered clothes twice the distance, and I have to go back out tomorrow because I left a bunch of stuff in the car.

And I'm not unfolding my laundry. It's just going to have to be wrinkly. And I didn't revise my paper, and I didn't finish All Quiet, and I didn't start and finish the fucking Wagner, and I don't care. I am going to bed, and I am going to have pleasant dreams involving Jack Davenport, Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, and/or Heath Ledger of at least an R rating. Or I'll know the fucking reason why.