Shavastak: Musings of a Minor Devil

Part One: Closing and The Home Depot Run

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Part Two: The Squirrel Nest of Doom, and the Polyurethane

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That's the saga so far. More posts this weekend, because that's when the big party happens where we plan to use most of the rest of this stuff.

Oh love is never easy
It’s almost always out of your way
It’s not the path of least resistance
It’s not some words you get to say
It’s a stream running up a mountain
It’s a wave rolling out from the shore
Wish I could say I never felt that way before

I have a friend who’s lonely
She is chasing after her dreams
And she is the one and only
One who knows how hard it could be

Chorus:

There’s a treasure on her island
Buried in the city of news
Wish I could say we didn’t have that much to lose

Yeh one friend tried to end it
He could not see the good in his life
In his mirror or his pocket
And his hopes had come down like a knife

It’s a stream running up a mountain
It’s a wave rolling out from the shore
Wish I could say I never felt that way before
There’s a treasure on these islands


-Mary Black

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I've thought about this a lot, actually! The answer is Fresh Air, and I would totally talk about my comic book and all the relative weirdness in my life. It is my dream to be interviewed by Terry Gross. I hope to be famous enough, soon enough, to pull it off!

On December 25th at about 5:45 am, I got up to do my petsitting jobs. Chris came with me. I wanted to take pictures of each pet and send them to their owners via phone, to say "Merry Christmas," so it took a little longer than I was hoping. We got back at 7-something, and had to spend a little time getting the GPS filled with podcasts and doing other little getting-ready things. Finally, just after 8, we all loaded into the car and headed east.

At 6 am, the sky was clear. At 8, as we left, it was just starting to snow lightly in Knoxville.

The drive to the mountains was uneventful, although the snow got thicker and wetter as we traveled east. I was driving, and going a speed I felt comfortable with. The roads are somewhat winding, and I wasn't having any trouble with the curves. Then, some 10 miles past the North Carolina line, I come up behind a mail truck going slower than I am. We're in the right lane, which is relatively clear, while the left lane is filled with fresh snow.

I take my foot off the gas, and find that we are not slowing down sufficiently, so I put on the brakes. Not hard, just as much as you would if you were trying to drop 10 miles an hour in the space of 150-200 feet.

Immediately I could tell that the brakes weren't doing anything. We were sliding forward and to the right, and not slowing at all. The mail truck was looming rather close and there was a ditch on the right side of the road I had no desire to fall into, so I took my foot off the brake and steered to the left, aiming for the fresh snow and figuring that would give us better traction. The steering I was doing did not seem to be sufficient so I turned the wheel more, and all of a sudden the car veered left. Then we were going too far to the left, so I tried to steer us back to center us in the left lane. No luck. I hit the brakes again. The back end of the car swung outward and the front left quarter of the car hit the concrete median divider and slid along it for about 40 feet.

When the car finally came to a stop, I hit the warning lights and turned to look at my traveling companions and make sure everyone was okay. Then I took stock of our surroundings. We were on a curve where the left side of the road was less visible than the right, so I trundled the car along slowly, trying to find a spot where we could get out and survey the damage safely. Having found such a spot, Chris got out and checked the car out. Saying that the damage seemed mainly to the front left panel, he got back in and I started us back forward, slowly.

But the car wasn't driving right. After another few hundred feet, I pulled onto the shoulder so we could take another look. I had a great deal of difficulty controlling the car and we ended up hitting the guard rail. I found that I could not open the driver's side door, and Chris found, upon further inspection, that the front wheels were not both facing the same direction. The 40-foot-slide along the median divider had broken our car's ankle - the wheel had pulled part of the suspension out. The car was no longer driveable.

A State Trooper pulled up a few minutes later as we were looking for the number for our insurance company. He gave me a ticket for driving too fast under the conditions and called a tow truck. I texted people who needed to know, and we sat there for two hours. When the tow finally arrived, getting the car onto the back was an interesting adventure. The tow truck had to back up to the car six or seven times, because it kept sliding out of line with the car. When the car finally got hooked up to the tow chain, I couldn't get the right wheel to turn at all, and rather than rolling up the tow bed, it had to be dragged. We huddled in the tow truck's cab while the driver helped another tow truck drag a silver sports car out of a ditch a little ways up, and finally we started driving towards Waynesville. On the way there, we passed a red crossover that had flipped completely over.

In Waynesville, the driver dropped us off at a Shoneys where we availed ourselves of the buffet and the bathrooms and figured out what to do next. Conversations with the insurance company and the moderately helpful locals brought us to the conclusion that in order to get back home, we would have to get a cab to drive us to the Asheville airport and rent a car from there to drive back home.

I will swear that the cab was sent from one of the upper levels of hell. It was a badly maintained hatchback with two ladders strapped to the top. It smelled like shit - literally, it smelled as if someone had taken a dump in the car. The heater was on but the windows were open. The check engine light and another somewhat important light (don't remember exactly what) remained on during the entire trip, and the driver went 70 miles an hour down roads that were at least three times as bad as the roads that had tripped me up at only 60 mph. We passed more cars on the side of the road, but somehow we made it to the Asheville airport intact.

With that minor horror show over with, we rented a new black Ford Fusion and, after admiring the spaceship-like interior, started driving carefully home. Chris was driving this time; I swore off driving for the rest of the day. We passed many more cars on the side of the road, including one that had managed to drive itself up onto a guard rail. It was a very bad day to be driving.

We got home without incident, and I was able to take care of my petsitting jobs and our own pets and beat myself up a bit and then remind myself how lucky I really was. I mean, I only tore the suspension to pieces; I didn't end up in a ditch, or upside-down, or halfway up a guard rail. We were all a little rattled, but nobody was actually hurt. We got off pretty well, considering.


So this past week, the adjuster finally got a chance to get out and look at the car. The suspension would have just come under the totalled amount, but with the body work required, the adjuster decided to total the car. We talked about it, figured out what the insurance company was likely to give us for the car, and decided that we would take the check and Sue's '93 Chrysler New Yorker (fair-to-poor condition) and go get TWO new cars. We figured if we had about 6500 for the Vibe and Sue's trade-in, we could get two cars in the 3500-4000 range and haggle them down so that it would all be covered. I mean, what car dealer wouldn't want to sell two cars at once?

Yesterday, the insurance company called us back and offered us 6790-something for the Vibe, which we took, resulting in a check for 6290-something ($500 deductible) being retrieved shortly thereafter. We spent the entire afternoon - from 11 am to 6:30 pm - traveling to two used dealerships we'd seen online and trying out cars under $4k. One dealership had quite a nice '00 Altima, but nothing else we would have wanted, so we moved on to another one across town. This one had a much larger selection but the cars were mostly in somewhat iffy shape. We finally settled on a well-accessorized '96 Camry ($3450) and a basic '00 Kia Sephia ($3250 - manual windows!), and presented our offer to the dealers: the '93 New Yorker and $5500 from our check for both cars - with the resultant end price after taxes and so on eating up the entire check.

They couldn't quite make it work. They drove the New Yorker and were forced to assume there was something wrong with the transmission (it doesn't shift above 35 mph; we've been told it's an input-output sensor, not the transmission), so they could only really offer us $200 for it. Finally we decided to keep the New Yorker and only get the Kia - if they could fix the door handle, which seemed to be its only issue. We gave them a deposit to hold the Kia and order the part for the door, and climbed back in the New Yorker to head home.

By this time, we were tired, hungry, cold, disappointed, and cranky. I drove home, Sue being the most tired of us for having not gotten a full night's sleep. We debated, poorly and crankily, whether to get pizza or have dinner out or take it home or what. Finally we settled on going out for dinner at Applebees, the idea being that we would eat sooner if we sat down in the restaurant than if we had to drive it home.

We had forgotten, I think, that it was New Year's Eve. Even though it was only 6:30, the wait for Applebees was 45 minutes. I suggested take-out, which at this point I figured would be faster, and was greeted with only grumbles. I said fuck it, let's go home, we have plenty of food, we have animals that need to be taken care of, and it'll let us sleep. Sue had soup and Chris and I ordered pizza. I got some cash from Chris - did I mention I left my wallet in the car in North Carolina? - and headed out the door to take care of my one remaining pet sitting client, a rabbit, intending to pick up the pizza on the way home.

Somewhere along the way, I lost the cash I'd brought to buy the pizza, and on my way out of the house with the rabbit, just after I discovered the loss of the cash, my ring wedding ring slipped off my finger and I heard it 'ting' once on the pavement. I did find it again, after a few minutes search, but you can understand why, after I was already pissed off, hungry, tired, and cold, why this would top off my rotting-banana-split month with just the frustrating teeth-gritting turd-cherry it seemed to deserve.


Today, I determined, would start out right. I woke up naturally at just after 8, took a shower, took care of the rabbit, brought home bagels, found the lost money, sent out some much-needed emails, and decided to write it all down for the benefit of those who felt like hearing the full story. Tomorrow we go to UU services and out for a nice late lunch/early dinner. Monday we cash the check from the insurance company, pick up the Kia, drive to NC to empty the Vibe and say goodbye to it, and drop off the rental car. And the rest of the week will be spent doing all the things I should have done since the 10th of December and really should do before the 12th of January, when classes start again.

Having fended off the wererats, and snuck a hunk or two of silver ore for themselves, our heroes continued down the road toward Hiddendale, the last safe place in Ardania. On the way, they met up with Fiona, their half-elven ranger friend, who, on hearing the story of Gurdis being the heir to the throne, happily joined the cause, if only because it would give her something interesting to do.

They rounded the last bend towards town, thinking longingly of soft beds, warm meals, and cold beer, but as the town came into view, it was clear all was not well. Smoke from several burning houses poured into air already filled with the screams of frightened people. The wind brought yells of 'the dead! the dead!' And as if all that were not enough, right in front of our heroes a family was being chased from their house by an enormous bear with eyes like lit lanterns.

Fiona immediately let loose an arrow that buried itself deep in the bear's shoulder, eliciting a roar of rage and, importantly, distracting the bear from its current helpless quarry. Gurdis and Tama moved in to flank it, and were greeted by a furious whirlwind of claws. Auric fired blast after blast at it, and Ralkyn surrounded its face with swirling blades, but both found its hide frustratingly impervious to their magic. They bruised and battered it, but it hung on and unleashed another whirlwind of death. Tama, finding himself nearly beaten, retreated to a safe distance to 'scout out the rest of the town,' while his friends finished the deed, but not before Gurdis too was nearly dead.

Luckily, the town priestess of Agrela, the goddess of growth and healing, happened by. With healing magic, she thanked the heroes for saving the family, and then begged them to clear out the undead that had risen in the graveyard while she searched the town for others needing her magical assistance.

To the graveyard, then, our heroes went, and found it swarming with zombies and skeletons. These they defeated handily; Ralkyn in particular found these far less resistant to his fire than the bear was to his blades. Once the graveyard was clear, it was time to tackle the burning houses.

These they doused with water from the town fountain, and quenched with icy magic. The fires were nearly out, when Fiona, who had climbed an as-yet-unburned building to check out the lay of the land, was seen firing arrows into the darkness. As the smoke cleared, the heroes found the culprits who had set the blaze: four more wererats, snarling and laughing in the dirt road behind the houses.

Ralkyn and Auric, both gifted with the ability to step briefly into the Ether and back out again somewhere else, sequestered themselves on the roofs of untouched houses and began raining magical blows upon their enemies. Gurdis and Tama moved to engage the wererats on foot, while Fiona fired arrows from above.

With Fiona and Ralkyn doing most of the damage from the roof of one building, one wererat decided that climbing is what he needed to do. Sadly, he was not particularly good at it, especially after Ralkyn put him to sleep with a spell. Tama got himself badly hurt by one wererat, but then had the presence of mind to remove from his pocket the hunk of silver ore he had sequestered earlier that evening, and strike the wererat with it. The wererat's constant regeneration ability seemed to wane briefly, and the heroes were able to bring the rest of the wererats down.

So the 'safe' town of Hiddendale was neither very safe nor very hidden. The heroes asked around, and learned that everything had been safe and happy until about two weeks ago. At that point the local bears, which normally just ate berries and fish and hardly ever bothered anybody, seemed to go crazy, greatly upsetting the local woodsman Jack Mungstem. The graveyard had been spawning undead every night at dusk, starting about a week ago, despite the efforts of Sue Cudac, the priestess. And rats from the sewers had always been a problem, but recently they had become far more aggressive, and two weeks ago wererats, which had not been seen in decades, joined them. The wererats liked to burn houses down and steal everything of value from them, and had been causing havoc with the local trades.

Pacos, the trader, promised the heroes that more useful items would be available if the wererats could be taken care of. The heroes spent some time trying to convince Jack to help them with the bears, but he was simply too distraught, and urged the heroes to go on without him, even agreeing to pass his magical bow on to Fiona if the heroes could end the bear problem. Sue promised the two magic users that she would teach them all the rituals she knew, if they could help her get rid of the undead once and for all.

Which task will the heroes take on first? Tune in next week to find out!

Partially for my own life, and partially for the epic fantasy I am writing, I have developed a philosophy of the four parts to the self: the mind, the body, the heart, and the spirit. Among other things, each of these parts has (for me) a kind of drug that induces similar pleasant experiences. The body likes sex and exercise. The mind is intoxicated by reading and learning, especially about the harder sciences like physics and cosmology. The spirit is excited and soothed by philosophy, and secondarily by politics. The heart's drug is music, which I get as CRI whenever possible. (CRI = Constant Rate Infusion. Usually applied to analgesics given in an intravenous drip.)

As a biologist I realize that all of these things have similar physical mechanisms - endorphins and other endogenous 'feel-good' chemicals affecting various aspects of the nervous system. The difference is first in the triggers, and secondarily in the flavor of the effect.

I really need to look into research into the human rhythm centers. One of the most provoking things I have heard in the last year is the idea that animals respond far less to rhythmic music than humans do, and that this may have something to do with the speech centers of the brain being so much more developed in humans than in animals. Anything that fundamentally separates humans from animals is of distinct interest to me. My personal philosophy has a lot to do with the assumption that humans and animals are fundamentally indistinguishable, and I want to hear more about any evidence that might challenge that assumption.

Harken, all ye who would shy from evidence that challenges your basic assumptions about the universe. Do not fight this kind of evidence. SEEK it. If the evidence you find strengthens your assumptions, fine; if it breaks them, then you have achieved some real and lasting knowledge.

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I choose C.

My idea of the perfect vacation is going to exotic countrysides and seeing the wildlife, followed by talking with local wildlife researchers about their current projects. A little nerdy, perhaps, but that's what I love. My fiance and I plan to take a trip like that to Tanzania and Kenya for our honeymoon.

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Interesting question. I have had several defining moments.

I'd say the first one was the first time I realized I was in love. I remember it very clearly. It isn't that that love defines me now or defined me then, but that the moment when I realized I was in love was symbolic for a massive change that was going on in my life. I was turning from an arrogant, self-isolated child who believed that other humans were not worth my time, into a slightly-less-arrogant, involved, compassionate, and loving person.

The second defining moment was the day in the spring of my first year of college. I was sitting on the hill in front of the dining hall staring out at the landscape of the Shenandoah Valley, and I felt as if Nature walked up beside me, put a hand on my shoulder, and said 'you work for me now.' Again, it was a symbolic moment - the moment in which my life-path was chosen. That was the day I decided to be a biology major, and that biology was my calling.

The third was the week I heard about the death of Steve Irwin. Chris told me, and I didn't believe him at first. I admired Steve Irwin, and had always said that my dream job was to be the female Steve Irwin, but I didn't expect his death to hit me so hard. I was working as a kennel tech at the time, and while I enjoyed the job, it didn't really have any potential for advancement, but I hadn't really thought about what I was going to do after it. Steve Irwin's death made me rethink what I was doing with my life, and that's what made me decide to go into veterinary medicine.

The most recent one was the moment in February when I decided to propose to Chris. As it turned out, he proposed first, but my decision to do it was important in a lot of ways. And I did get to propose to him afterwards, the day our torcs arrived, although maybe it doesn't count if your partner has already asked you.

Defining moments are kind of fun. I look forward to more of them.

Okay, the next opportunity that comes along for me to devote time to something long-term? I have to turn it down.

I am VP of two clubs. I'm co-running the Fit Challenge next year. I'm on an intramural softball team with games on Mondays, I play pickup soccer on Tuesdays, and I'm training for a 5k at the end of the month. This weekend is Chris's birthday and I'm helping with an acupressure wet lab on Saturday. The following weekend I'm helping out at a fundraiser at a barn, and running the 5k. The weekend after that I'm hosting a board & card game party, and I'm on-call for the large animal emergency team. The weekend after that I may be going to alumni weekend at MBC. The weekend after THAT is the 'halfway to clinics' party. The weekend after THAT is a gaming convention in Chattanooga. The weekend after that is a run/walk for MS. And during the two weeks after that are finals. Somewhere in there I have to finalize plans for what I'm doing this summer, and actually do the work involved in being VP of two clubs. I'm certainly not going to be bored.

My summer is also looking full. One way or the other I'll be working this summer, either at school doing alternative medicine research, or for the local horse acupuncturist. I'm also hoping to run a short-term RPG campaign this summer. And there's a convention in June I would commit a minor crime to go to. And I should probably plan my marriage over the summer, although we're not doing the big ceremony/party until later, so there's not a huge amount of planning to do.

Lots of exciting stuff to look forward to!

Yeah, no lunch this week, and Sarah hasn't written me back about lunch next week, and I'm not going to make the same mistake twice in a row. Time to give up. (Petulant grumbling.)

Spring Break plans are better, I'll work on those. Gotta figure out which day to go to the zoo with the people who are still in town, and which night to have dinner with Brooke and her boyfriend. I should also try to get together with Anna and Tom, if they're in town, or Rachel and Monica. Other than that my plans are to sleep in, run with Shenzi, and study a little. I do have that physio test to study for. Oh, and I need to plan for a board game party I want to host in April. And plan for the con I want to attend at the end of April. And file my taxes and my FAFSA. Wow I actually have a LOT to do. And now it looks like I might be taking care of a friend's dog, and there's a potential new dog in the works.

He's a black great dane mix named Mountain. He's gorgeous, but he's not on heartworm prevention and hasn't had a recent heartworm test, as far as we know. I'm worried about that. I think, if I decide to take him, I'll try to get an appointment over Spring Break at the community practice for him and Shenzi and Kizi, all of whom need something, and hope that it won't turn out to be too expensive. If he turns out to have heartworms I will get an estimate from school and one from work and try to solicit donations or, if I'm lucky, pay with it from our tax refunds. Primarily I'm going to cross my fingers and hope he's not positive.

So tired. Gotta make it through the rest of the day and then I can go home and nap.