Hungry vs. Tired

This morning found me getting up at 7 AM to bring my car in for an oil change and emissions inspection.
I hate the system that the service center at my car dealership uses. Basically you call in to make an “appointment,” which just means that you’ve reserved the right to wait in line on a particular morning.
Given that people seem to camp out there like nerds in line for Star Wars tickets, you can never hope to be the first in line, and when you get there you’re never really sure if you should pull off into a parking space to wait, or actually stay in the line with the other idling cars until they finally open.
Once they do open, you’re never sure if you should go in or not, because they usually send someone around to the cars to assign them a number. You can go inside and talk to them, but it seems like you’re better off getting a number put on your car’s rearview mirror first, though they don’t actually seem to work on the cars in any sort of particular order anyway, so ultimately being the first in line may not do you all that much good.
In any case, once my car was being attended to, I went off to sit in the waiting area.
Given that something I always does, I expected some sort of problem that would cost me money and leave me without a car for at least a day would pop up. After having sat there for over an hour, I was sure of it, and waited for the shoe to drop once my name was called.
The service guy said, “There’s a problem.”
I said, “There always is.”
However, this one would cost me anything extra and won’t even deprive me of my car. All it will cost me is some irritation and additional waiting.
Basically my car’s computer got reset somehow, which means that there’s no information in it that can be used for the emissions testing. This means that I have to put 50-75 miles on the car to allow it to capture data before bringing it back to get the emissions test done.
And at least with the inspection I don’t have to get it done in the morning; I can bring it in any time during the day.
Of course, I don’t drive around enough to quickly put on 75 miles before the weekend, so it’ll have to wait until next week.
Once I got home I found that I was very tired from having only gotten about 6 hours of sleep, and so, since it was only 9, I considered going back to bed.
While I’d been up, though, I’d gotten hungry, so I also considered making breakfast.
It then became a contest between hungry and tired to determine my next course of action.
After climbing into bed it seemed clear that tired had won, but while I was lying there hunger asserted itself and soon I’d made the move from the bedroom to the kitchen.
From there it was back to bed, where I only managed to half-doze for about an hour.
Once I got up I thought about going to see the movie Children of Men in order to speed up the mile-logging process.
I gave Brian a call to see if he wanted to go with me, but he said he was too swamped today, but that he could do it tomorrow, so that scrapped my plans for the afternoon.
(I’ll bet he would have cleared his calendar if I’d said I wanted to see Stomp the Yard)
And that’s been my day so far. I still may venture out into the world to get a few things, though I don’t need much, as I managed to stock up pretty well last week when I went shopping.

Oh Yeah, I Forgot One Department:
When bitching about commercials yesterday I forgot one.
It’s the commercial in which we find ourselves at some sort of party where a group of attractive(ish) women in their 30s are gathered around having a discussion about birth control, and one of them brings up this exciting new product.
Once she mentions it, one of the other chicks says, “Oh yeah, I’ve heard about that,” and then proceeds to completely take over the conversation, rattling off facts about the product as though she’s some sort of paid spokesperson for it.
After she finishes reciting the pharmaceutical company boilerplate, one of the friends jokingly says, “Show off,” to which the spokesmodel says, “Hey, I didn’t go to medical school for nothing.”
They all share a hearty laugh, and go back to their Sex in the City-esque repartee.
The thing that bothers me is that chick who brought up the product in the first place never gets to talk about it, and doesn’t seem bothered by the way her friend, who obviously has a compulsive need to be the center of attention and can’t wait for an opportunity to rub the fact that she went to medical school in all of their faces.
If I were the chick who got shouted down by Dr. Talksalot, I’d be all like, “Bitch, I was talking. Nobody asked for you to recite the press release you got from the pharmaceutical company along with your free samples, all right? We all know you went to medical school seeing as how you never talk about anything else.”

In any case, that’s it for this particular edition of pointlessness.
(Oh yeah, and be sure to click on the National Gorilla Suit Day banner over on the right. Thanks to Neil Gaiman for bringing this important holiday to my attention over on his blog.)