Sadie is Senile

Sadie is my not-so-reliable, yet faithful, companion. I've had her since my senior year of high school, and though we've had our ups and downs, she's still, miraculously, there for me. We had a nice bonding experience over vacation. On my drive up to Bangor last Monday she suddenly decided that she was getting a phone call and turned off the radio. The display said "CALL" and I couldn't do anything to turn it off. Sadie has been in the family for over 10 years and in that entire time she has not had the car phone that she was manufactured with. So for her to suddenly think she was getting a phone call was strange. I had completely forgotten that she even had a car phone once upon a time. It was really annoying driving without any music, and I still had at least another hour before arriving at my destination, so I pulled over and tried to figure out what was going on with poor old Sadie. I turned her off, but the display stayed on, so I waited a while and in the meantime tried searching Google for a solution to my problem. This was how I learned that she thought she was getting a phone call on her missing car phone. Eventually the display turned off, so I tried starting the car again and I had music! Hurrah! Or so I thought. I got on the interstate and kept driving and it wasn't even 5 minutes before "CALL" came back on the display. Frustrated, but not willing to pull over, I kept driving. I drove the rest of the way to Bangor without music--longest drive ever. 

I didn't drive my car anywhere while I was in Bangor, and the display never turned off, so by the time I was ready to leave a few days later, my battery was dead. Go figure. We jumped my car and she still thought she was getting a call on the car phone that she didn't have. So I drove all the way back to Farmington without any music. All the way back. Without music. It was pretty much torture. All I had to keep me company was the sound of the wind trying to blow my car off the road. When I got back into Farmington I was going to switch cars with my mom so that I wouldn't have to worry about a dead battery at work, but after I changed and got ready to go switch cars, I looked down at the hole where the car phone used to be ages ago. I saw what looked like a wire, so I went to pull on it and as soon as I touched it, my music came back on. All it took was touching the wire sticking out to make my music come back on. Of course that couldn't have happened before I left Bangor, no, it had to wait until after I got back to Farmington. 

And now she's making a terrible dragging noise some of the time while I'm driving, like there's something dragging on the ground, but of course I can't see anything wrong with her. Oh, Sadie. Always keeping me on my toes. At least the radio fix didn't cost me any money.

15 minute free write (or rather 5 minutes at this point)

Having two jobs is not where I expected I would be at this point in my life. Not that I really mind, because I do like being able to pay my rent and buy food, but some days I really wish that I only had to have one job. One job that I could go home from at the end of the day and relax. Not two jobs where I have to go home and then get ready to go to the other job. Don't get me wrong, I love both of my jobs, but days like yesterday make it incredibly difficult to enjoy them. Yesterday was a migraine day. I taught all day with a migraine, which wasn't as bad as it used to be now that I've learned some techniques to deal with my migraines. But then I had to go to Big Lots and stand at a register for 6 hours. With a migraine. And pretend to be cheerful, when all I wanted to do was go home and crawl into bed. What made things even better was that I wasn't the only one who was having a rough day at work yesterday. Tena's foot/back are still giving her problems, so she has to take more breaks than she likes to, more breaks than she really can as an assistant manager. Trixie did something to her leg, so she was limping around, too. And to top it off, Rob, our District Loss Prevention manager, basically a really important guy, had to come to the store to fix something that was wrong with our computers. Rob's a nice guy and all, but knowing that he's coming to visit puts us all on edge. I wish it had been Jeff instead of Rob that came, but luckily Rob only stayed for an hour or so and spent most of his time in the office working. And he didn't stay until close so we didn't have to worry about him while we were doing our closing routine.

Reflection on Reading Reflections

While reading through blogs this weekend, I noticed that a majority of the reflections I was reading were actually just summaries. Then I realized that I never gave an example of a reflection and that my directions probably never said to stay away from summarizing the entire plot. Some summary is okay, but remember, I have read the book, too, so I have a pretty good idea what happens in the story. What I don't know, though, is how you felt about it, what questions you have, what you think might happen next. Those are the types of statements I'm looking for. It is totally okay to use "I think" in your reflections. You can also post images that relate to what you're thinking, or even songs, movie trailers, any type of connection you can make. See below for an example reflection on a book that I'm currently reading (sorry, not going to reflect on 451 for you!).

Reflection on Scarlet by Marissa Meyer:

In this chapter, Scarlet and Wolf arrive in Paris to look for Scarlet's grandmother. I still don't really trust Wolf...there's something shady about how withdrawn he is and how he avoids Scarlet's questions. What motive does he have for helping her find her grandmother anyway? He claims that he was not involved in her kidnapping, but the timing is a little fishy if you ask me. I think he is lying to her about something. And how he says that he is sorry right before they go into that building? What is he sorry about?

Scarlet keeps trying to convince him that she is fine on her own if he would just give her directions, but he refuses to abandon her. She wonders if she's leading him to his death, but I think it's the other way around. What if he is tricking her into going back to the secret headquarters or whatever it is so that his pack can kill her? I think that something bad is going to happen to Scarlet, whether it's Wolf's fault or not I don't know.

While Scarlet and Wolf were walking through Paris, Scarlet was describing some of the different things she was seeing, and some of them were really intriguing. For instance, the billboard that advertised a shampoo that changes with your mood! That sounds like it could be fun and useful, but maybe also dangerous. What if you could tell someone's mood just by looking at their hair color? Then you'd be able to tell if you made them mad because their hair would change color. Hmm, someone needs to create this for real...It kind of make me think of Effie Trinket in The Hunger Games and how she always has crazy hair colors.