Wtf: A Study in Murphy's Law

[black_sluggard]

This has seemed to be a nothing-goes-right day for everyone I've come across. First day of the new quarter for me, so unused to a schedule that starts an hour earlier than it did last quarter, I got so caught up in writing the newest interlude for Black Edelweiss (#13, no less) that by the time I finished I looked up at the clock and realized I was supposed to have left for the bus stop half an hour before. Fortunately, my sister's friend was helping her drop off a computer for Tony to fix, and was able to give me a ride to the lightrail station.

While I was on the train, I noticed one of the guys who goes to my art school (I had a class with him a couple quarters ago.) But when I got off downtown, I realized he wasn't there. It seemed odd, since I thought he was headed to school, but then figured maybe he was headed elsewhere anyway and really didn't think about it... It wasn't a long wait for my next bus, but the 88's sign had gotten stuck on 13. I really should have taken it as a warning. The bus driver wound up turning off before we got on the freeway... Apparently he had started taking the wrong route. It took several minutes for him to get us turned around and back on track.

I forgive him, though, because when someone pointed it out to him he did this sad little apologetic, embarrassed head-dip that was really kind of endearing. I mentioned how it seemed to be one of those days for just about everybody, and wished him a better day.

Most of the rest of my day was pretty decent. Taking algebra this quarter, and I'd been worried about getting the same teacher whose class my sister failed twice. Thankfully that didn't happen. My teacher seems like an okay guy, kind of an oddball. Really, really thick Vietnamese accent, pretty funny guy. I'm not a fan of math, but I don't usually have a problem with it when the teacher engages with the class, so I'm optimistic.

Got off an hour early. Killed some time browsing in the library. Finally decided to get around to reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. I've only read one other book by Michael Chabon, but I really enjoyed Summerlands, and I've heard only good things about this one. Haven't started reading it yet, though. Oddly, it took like...four or five minutes to actually check out the book, because while it had its stickers and barcodes, somehow it hadn't actually been put into the catalog... Go figure.

Oh, and the school had a free "Sundaes on Monday" thing for the beginning of the quarter. It's pretty shameless when it comes to bribing its students...

Waiting at the bus stop for the 88 for the ride back, I saw the guy from earlier that morning. Apparently he wasn't used to being carded for his RT passes, and hadn't realized the fare he was used to paying was the student discount... Which probably meant the reason he didn't get off the train downtown was that he'd probably gotten ticketed. Poor guy.

Got a chance to catch up with another guy who was in that same class two quarters ago. I'm not overly social out here in the meat universe, but he sat across the table from me, so we had a nice chit-chatty acquaintance. So that was nice.

Got home to be told by Tony that Dave was coming by. Long story not-really-short: Dave gave Tony two laptops to fix. Tony gave Dave an Xbox to sell for him. Tony didn't hear from him for almost a month, so Tony sold me my "new" touchpad-doesn't-work-but-at-least-it-won'-explode-using-firefox laptop. Dave shows up last night. Still hasn't sold the Xbox. He and Tony get into an argument about Tony thinking Dave had ripped him off, and Dave accusing Tony of ripping him off by selling the laptop. Dave says he's going to bring his "homey" by, who the laptop apparently belongs to. So, when I got home this afternoon, Tony said I shouldn't let Dave see the laptop when he came by, so I decided to stick it out in my sister's room (where there is no cat or dog to try and sit on the keyboard).

I had already started writing this post when I heard my mom swearing. I got up and went into the kitchen to see if she was okay. Turns out she was fine, but she had dropped a full bottle of cooking oil and it gooshed out all over the floor. We put down phonebook pages to soak it up, but I'll still have to clean that up properly later. I promised.

Then yet another shitty thing happened. I got up to close the window and looked into my sister's rat cage. I found her pet rat, Gus, lying on the floor of the cage, dead. So I got to call my sister and let her know about that...fun times. He is now in a tiny box in the garage, wrapped up in yet more phonebook paper, awaiting burial in the side yard once the sun is up.

Gus was a cool little guy. He was a rescue, but not of the normal type. He wasn't adopted so much as he adopted us.

The rats around here are not afraid of people one little bit. Several months back, my parents had one start coming into their room (which is actually a remodeled greenhouse in the garden, but anyway...). A pretty huge one, maybe 8" not including the tail, but fat and brown and super musky. Not only was this rat not afraid of people, though, he apparently had no problem snagging a bag of cheez-its from right next to my dad while he was playing Fallout. One time, my sister went to shoo him with a fly swatter and he actually sat there while she just...poked him with it. She and my dad both felt kind of bad for him, so she got him into a trash can with some food and dropped him off in the bushes on the center divide. He came back. He came back from her doing this twice, and each time he took up residence in the greenhouse with my parents and their scaredy little dog (I love Pinky, who believe it or not was "adopted" in a fairly similar fashion to this story, but seriously, it's like he pretends the rats don't exist...).

As time went by (and my parents couldn't really use traps or poison out there, that could wind up bad for Pinky), this rat got more and more brazen. It eventually got to the point where he would climb up on my dad or my sister's shoulder, crawl over their hands while they were playing Xbox. He even let them pick him up and pet him. We finally decided he had to be a hybrid domestic rat, or else a pet that had gotten loose, because he was really very docile.

We finally wound up trapping him again, only this time he was removed to a long snake aquarium we had. Later, he was moved into a two-story ferret cage. We eventually noticed that one of his teeth had grown very long, curving about an inch out of the right side of his face. We took him to the vet and found out the poor thing was probably fairly old, but also that he had a broken tooth-socket on the right side of his face, meaning that the tooth we'd seen was growing from the left one. Poor thing.

I like to think he had a pretty nice life with us. Not perfect, but definitely far better and longer than he would have had if he'd stayed on his own. He wasn't given a lot of attention toward the end since my sister lives at her apartment most of the time now, but he had food and water and shelter and pasta. God, did that little dude love his pasta. He was a fucking fiend for it...

So yeah.

(To clarify: I like rats. My first pet was a rat. Fred was cool. Gus was cool. The little shitbirds that keep populating our kitchen and steal kibble out of Pinky's bowl while I'm sitting there trying to write fic are not cool. Ergo, they were the inspiration for Life!Javi's midnight snack scene, not poor Gus.)

Oh, and I'll update if Dave shows up with his homey wanting to bust a cap...