Look Ma, No Automatic Transmission

A few weeks ago I achieved the un-possible. I drove a car, without an automatic transmission… and nothing blew up.

Now, driving a motor vehicle without causing the engine to suddenly burst into a thousand bits of molten metal may not seem like much of an accomplishment for most people. But I am not most people…

Once upon a time I had a boyfriend. And that boyfriend had a (fancy schmancy manual transmission sports) car. And one night, he was drunk, and I was not, and so I snatched the keys from his hands in the hopes of driving us home safe and sound. Sigh. See, the thing about hope is that it can be a deceiving little bugger. And just when you’re not paying attention… bam! Hope kicks you in the keister.

It was perhaps my fourth time ever driving a stick-shift, and my drunken driving instructor/boyfriend was, at the moment, of little to no use to me as a driving coach. (In his defense, he was, in general, a pretty good teacher, except when it to came to giving snowboard lessons, which he was terrible at, but that’s another story all together.)

Anyway, so there I am, driving a stick, sweating profusely and clinging to the steering wheel with a death grip to end all death grips and he’s (inebriated and) shouting driving commands at me. Second gear! Third gear! Downshift! Floor it! You can make the light! Let’s race this jerk in the car next to us! (I’m about ready to smack the jerk in my passenger seat, Mr. Drunky Von Drunkerson! Shut up!)

He calmed down a bit until we got to freeway. There, he decided that it was time for me to practice my downshifting / driving like an asshat technique. I was cruising along (panicked, yes, but also) happy in the slow lane at 65 mph when I started closing in on the car ahead of me. Now *I* was more than content to slow down to a perfectly respectable 60 mph so that I could stay (nice and neat and safe) in my slow lane. No fuss, no muss. But the boyfriend was not having it. This was, apparently, a PERFECT opportunity to drop the transmission from 5th to 3rd, floor it, and (if I remember correctly) “blow past this grandpa”.

Huh??

HURRY GO!!!!! Before the guy coming up behind you beats you to it!

What?

Clutch in! Shifter out of 5th and over-up into 3rd! Then Floor it! GO!!!!!

Uhhhhh…

GOOOOOO!!!!!

Ok! Clutch… 5th… over to 3rd… and up…

They say you can’t put a finely tuned, German engineered, spots car going 65 mile per hour into 1st gear. But let me tell you, you can. And it ain't pretty.

Ka-Ka-Klang! Ka-Ka-KLANG! Our bodies were thrown hard against our seatbelts as the car grinded (quite literally) to a halt. Hazard lights, tears, hyperventalion. Not pretty. My boyfriend, bless his drunken heart, saw my melt down and noticed that we’re were on the shoulder instead of cruising along down the highway, blowing past some grandpa. “What’s the matter?” he asked, concerned, “Did you stall?”

(Must resist urge to strangle drunk boyfriend!)

“Yes darling, I stalled. Quite permanently. We have to call AAA now.”

“No no, I think you’re fine, just turn the car off and start her up again.”

I think his skin may have actually smoked a bit as I burned his face with my death stare.

We towed the car home and, being engineers, eventually took the whole engine apart to examine the extent of the damage. It was, let’s just say, extensive. Hunks of deformed metal EVERYWHERE. A whole piston – gone! Cylinder walls obliterated. A dozen or so guys crowded around to ooh and ahh and holy crap! over the mess I’d made. Their faces cringed as we peeled back layer after layer of the once beautiful straight-6 to find more and more engine bits in places where engine bits did not belong.

Never again, I thought. Until recently. When Kyle trustingly handed me the keys to his manual transmission.

My car was in the shop for the day and I had school and work and errands to scurry to and from. I was desperate. And probably a little sleep deprived. And definitely not thinking clearly. But I took the keys. And I drove his car all day.

And nothing blew up.

Whew.

Totally Nomal

This just in... I am officially TOTALLY NORMAL!!*

*...at least when it comes to the cells on my cervix. I went in today for my Colposcopy exam and, after some poking and prodding, got a clean bill of health from my doctor. She didn't even have to biopsy anything. Hooray! Thanks everyone for the prayers, the support, and the well wishes. Warm fuzzies to you all.

Champaign Wishes And Lap Dance Dreams

For five Mondays in a row, four girlfriends and I dutifully donned our skivvies and some ridiculous shoes and headed to a seductively lit studio for our pole dance class. We laughed, and fell down a lot, and pretty much made fools of ourselves, but in the end we looked damn good and the classes were a blast. Once we got passed the bruises and sore bodies, Monday evenings became a time for bonding over our girlie-ness, boosting our feminine confidence, and celebrating our general all around sassiness. Come to think of it, Mondays rocked! So when the class ended last week, it was no surprise that the five of us were sad to see it go. Desperate to keep the dream alive, we decided to give our tired bodies a much deserved Monday off while we watched the professionals have at it. Yep, we went to a strip club. On a Monday. For an awesome reconnaissance mission / girlie bonding adventure. Yay!

Let’s just say that Mondays are not the most happening night to go to a strip club… apparently others have not yet received the “Monday = Pole Dance Day” memo... but, on the upside, without much competition from other patrons, we got oodles of attention, which we couldn’t have been happier with!

We told dancer after dancer that we had just finished a pole dance class and that we were there to do some research. They were SO excited for us and most of them did a special pole trick in our honor and then came over and hung out with us for a while afterward. We chatted with them about how difficult the tricks can be, where to buy the best outfits and shoes, and what music was the most fun to dance to, then we begged to know how they kept their skin so smooth. Such girl talk!

Meanwhile, men from across the club sent round after round after lap dance after round over to our table. Champaign, top shelf liquor, any girl we wanted. It was all taken care of.

I’d never been fortunate enough to be on the receiving end of a lap dance, and I’ll admit that I was more than a bit frazzled about what the heck I was actually supposed to be doing with my hands/arms/legs/face while a half-naked 23 year old writhed all over me (Holy Cow was her skin soft!), but once Paige (stage name, Dillion) was finished doing her thing on my lap and I could breath again, I have to say that, looking back, it was a very pleasant experience. I certainly felt special. And when the next dancer (whose name escapes me, becuase my heart belongs to Paige) sat us all on a bench and then did the splits across all five of our laps – well that was just REALLY COOL. Plus, the several free drinks we enjoyed while it was all happening weren’t half bad either.

We ended up staying out way too late and drinking way too much Champaign (I’ve been paying for it all week), but Mondays now hold an extra special place in my heart. Next up, amateur night???

The No-Thank-You Dance

So we've all been there... out dancing with the girls, giggling, having a blast, drinking just enough alcohol to shake your booty, but not so much that you'd want to shake your booty up against some strange guy. It's a girls' nights. No boys allowed! You're buying your own drinks, not making any eye contact with members of the opposite sex, and you've got your impenetrable girl circle going on on the dance floor. Life is good. Good until some slimy guy decides that your girl circle is an untapped resource that apparently needs tapping. You give him the "I'm not interested" look, you gracefully dance away from him, you even have a girlfriend pretend to be your lesbian lover in the hopes that he'll get the point that, really buddy, I don't want what you're selling! But the slimeballs are relentless. The girl circle is forced to hunker down and fend off attack after pathetic, drunken attack. You and your girls must be vigilant in a modern day circling of the wagons to keep the unwashed heathens out. Ugh.

If only there was a better way.

Ladies, there is! It's called the no-thank-you dance.

When one of the unwanted unwashed tries to infiltrate your posse, you simply switch it up a bit on the dance floor. Start with your arms in the air above your head, fingers spread eagle... think jazz hands. Now, to no particular beat what so ever, slowly wave your arms back and forth in a strange naughty by nature's "hey-ho!" / "We are the world" sort of hybrid motion. The slower and more awkward the better. Overzealous head bobbing is also strongly encouraged. Throw in a kick and an elbow jut here and there and you're golden. The goal of your dance should be to put Elaine from Seinfeld to shame.

No man can dance with this. I know, because I saw several try as my friend, Lucia, waved wildly to a beat that existed only in her head. The heathens dropped like flies as we all broke out the no-thank-you dance and flopped ungracefully around the dance floor. It was awesome. And it worked like a charm. I can't remember the last time I had such a great/slimeball free evening of dancing.

One small word of caution though... if you're going to use the no-thank-you dance, be sure to wear waterproof mascara, because you WILL laugh so hard you cry. I promise.

Because I Live In California Where Recycling Is Cool

I'm up to my eyeballs in work this week, with no time for a real post... but recycling is hip, no? Anyway, here's a post from November '05 (Wow! Where does the time go!!??) that is vaugely related to love and stuff. Enjoy. And happy Valentine's Day, everyone.

Kiss And Tell
Hello, my name is Courtney, and I am a kiss-aholic.

Behold:


Note the perfect form...


Eyes always closed...


A kiss *and* a hug...


Sometimes the recipient is very drunk...


In fact, *usually* the recipient is very drunk...


Sometimes I kiss girls...


Sometimes I start giggling half way through...


Sometimes it's a group effort...


And sometimes, it's JUST RIGHT!


I think this one might be a keeper. (Hello Understatement!!)

:)

So That You Might Be Saved From Making The Same Mistake

I must first remind you all that I live with boys - twenty-something year old boys who have not had the benefit of proper (attempts at) training from wives or long-term live-in girlfriends. Many years have passed since last they lived at home, with mothers to gently remind them how to behave in polite society. They are raw and unruly… in an environment almost completely free from nagging they have returned to their most natural, most instinctual, most unrefined state. They are messy.

And I have neither the time nor the energy to do anything about it.

(So the boys are messy. You all get that, right? This fact will be important later on when we assign blame.)

A few nights ago I walked into a kitchen that looked… strange. Mounds of dishes, with days old food caked on them, had somehow disappeared. Oh, the crumbs and dried spills and various bits of dinners long since passed remained on the counters (and floor)… but the dishes were gone. Panic set in as thoughts of dish robbers raced through my mind. Not the good plastic cups! Please don’t let them have taken our good plastic cups!! Just then, I opened the dishwasher. And, prepare yourself, it was full of dishes. Now, they hadn’t been rinsed off or anything momentous like that - countless food boogers still clung to plates for dear life and a cure for cancer might very well have been growing on the milk residue at the bottom of a few glasses - but the dishes were in the dishwasher! Hooray!

And now I must point out another very important fact/aide-to-blame-assignment.

Our dishwasher SUCKS. It really ought to be called a dish-redistribute-the-dirt-er. (I believe in truth in appliance naming… blenders blend, toasters toast, ovens… well, whatever. A dishwasher should WASH DISHES. Mine does not.) So really, this appliance should only be used to rinse several pre-cleaned dishes with very hot water all at once. Its usefulness is questionable at best. If it wasn’t installed, nice and neat, into our (rented) kitchen, I would throw it away... in an instant... off a three story roof.

But I digress.

So, my very messy roommates placed their very messy dishes into our very crappy dishwasher. And did I mention the dishes were piled in the dishwasher two to three dishes deep? NO WAY were these things getting clean. But it was late, and I was tired, and I was so happy that dishes, in any state/quantity, got removed from the sink/counter that I didn’t care. I wanted to run the dishwasher.

And here’s where you should take note of what not to do.

In addition to dishwasher soap, I also poured in (a VERY small amount of) regular liquid dish wash soap… you know, the kind you squirt on a sponge to hand wash all your pots and pans. The kind that makes lots and lots of fun soapy bubbles? Yeah, that stuff.

Don’t look at me that way! I wanted to give the dishes a fighting chance at getting clean!!! And sudsy dish soap was the only thing I could come up with short of unloading the entire dishwasher and hand-scrubbing each and every dish. You weren’t there. You can’t judge.

Well, the folks at Ajax should be pleased to know that just a small(ish) squirt of their Ruby Red Grapefruit Original Formula dish soap goes a VERY VERY long way.

I dropped in my dishwasher tablet… poured in some Ajax… closed the dishwasher door… hit start… and happily went to bed.

Ten minutes later there was a frantic knocking on my bedroom door.

The awesome grease cutting suds that were supposed to be inside the dishwasher, awesomely cutting grease, were, instead, pouring (like an avalanche – coming down the mountain) out the front of my dishwasher.

GAH!!!

The kitchen floor was COVERED in snowy white bubbles… several inches deep… and getting deeper by the second. And the worst part? There wasn’t anything I could do about it. Even if I turned the dishwasher off, which I did immediately, there was still no way to get the Ajax soap out. So I just had to let it run its course… and dump soap onto the floor… which I then scooped up and deposited into the sink as fast as I could.

It only lasted 15 minutes, but it was a mess. My pajamas were soaked, the kitchen was soapy and filled with soggy towels that proved to be all but totally ineffective, and my nerves were frazzled.

I think it’s safe to say that the incident was not entirely my fault. There were mitigating circumstances up the wa-zoo. BUT, still, wa-zoo aside, if I could go back in time and NOT put liquid dish soap in the dishwasher, I would.

Please learn from my mistakes.

More Pics

More pics of me and PSD, taken by her VERY talented husband, can be seen on her site. Go see em! Go see em!!!

:)


One more from PSD's hubby! Too Cute!!

In The Flesh

Wanna know what's really cool? Meeting new friends via the wonderful world of blogging.

Wanna know what's even cooler? Having a glorious 3 hour lunch with one of those friends in person!

Miss Pink Sun Drops herself was in my neck of the woods this past weekend and we met up for a leisurely late-afternoon lunch in Santa Cruz. We laughed, we drank cocktails, we enjoyed amazing food, we played on the beach, we had her husband take a ZILLON pictures of us... in short, we had a blast.

What an amazing Saturday!

I am continually blown away by all the good stuff that blogging brings into my life. Who'd of thunk?


With the Pretty Lighthouse in the Background


Toes! on the Rocks in Santa Cruz (sounds like an interesting beverage you might agree to order after one too many Mai Tais...)

What Language Barrier?

Check out the email I received from my cousin, Sven, in Germany a few weeks ago. (p.s. His wife, Alex, is pregnant with their first child... and p.p.s. they don't speak much English... and p.p.p.s. I don't speak any German.)

Is this not the cutest thing you've ever read?

Hello your loves,
We wish you glad Christmas. Unfortunately, I have lost whole email addresses. Please it mails me once more. We hope it well goes for you, with us in Germany everything is in order. Grandma Anni asks always for you. Maybe you can write sometimes a post to map or a letter. Alex becomes thicker and thicker. Now is in 6 months with our small baby. Please, number gives me your whole addresses of you to all with phone. Thank you many.

Lots of love,
Alexandra and Sven and baby

And look! Today they sent pictures!!!


Sven with the Baby Carriage


Alex, 7 months pregnant!!

YAY!!

:)

(It's babies babies everywhere in the K family this year... I officially love 2007.)