Diary of a Mad Scientist

The boyfriend and I went out to SF tonight to drink coffee and work on our laptops. I spent something like 8 hours today answering old email that I let slide during the last two weeks. That stuff piles up fast, and a big part of the work of the tour is just the email in between the classes.

Anyway, we’d parked in a somewhat out-of-the-way spot on Mission, and on the way back to the car, there was a crowd of street people hanging out near the car. A couple of them tried one of those tricks of ‘HEY- HEY! Some guy just tried to break into your car, and I stopped them, andI been watching it for you, and now give me money for saving your car!’ We had walked up to the car and were loading things into it and one guy kind of jumped the gun on telling us the pre-arranged story before all his buddies were assembled there with him. I was looking around as I was getting in, and there were several drunken bums hobbling rapidly across the street as fast as they could, trying to catch us before we drove off, so as to sing us their line about the car. Of course, being a diesel, Tom couldn’t just drive off in a rush- I’d always joked about how you couldn’t use a diesel as a getaway car because you’d have the glow plug cycle to distract you. At one point the lead bum kind of grabbed the open door of the vehicle to steady himself, and was slurring the line about the alleged break-in.

I threw down my stuff and jumped out and found myself just about to jump over the hood to go hit him, which pretty much made him back off long enough for us to shut the door. It was one of those out-of-body moments for me- kind of like a piece of the brain was watching from a distance and saying ‘look, she’s about to hit him… look, she’s jumping out of the car and getting belligerent… Jeez, I wonder what she’s going to do next?’

It’s a great feeling that there’s not a whole lot to worry about with an old beater getting uglier- the guy’s more upright/less staggery friend managed to ‘key’ a corner of the vehicle as we were driving off. I was laughing.

Did I mention it gets 50 miles per gallon?