Misadventures

Okay, because sometimes it's fun to celebrate your neutrinos rotating in the wrong direction (which is an old in-joke with someone who probably doesn't even read the blog, but anyway...) this is my life since Friday:

*  Wake up feeling very warm; suspect catching one of three versions of flu rampaging through the school (the district ran out of subs!)

*  Realize it's Friday, and therefore it's very likely that one of my staff will not be at school

*  Get to school and find out that, lo and behold, there will be no Aide J

*  Somehow survive the morning, begin special Friday afternoon routine (clean the classroom, clean the desks, play board games), when PH hits another student (Drama Queen, of course) for the first time all year

*  Allow Bulldozer to help me prep for the following week, as I've promised Patrick a couple of hours at Disneyland (he wants to video the fireworks with his new video camera)

*  Wait for Drama Queen's...someone (her family is really messed up)...to pick her up.  That someone, G., is late, so we wait for quite some time for someone to pick her up

*  Get home, tell Patrick that we will have to wait, as we've missed our pre-rush hour window for leaving

*  Fall asleep while watching The Ark of Truth, on Sci-Fi HD, where it looks purrty.

*  Wake up in time to see cute scene at the end where Sam gives Cameron the cookies she baked for him

*  Have disappointing dinner

*  Watch Dollhouse

*  Go to bed, and have very weird dream where (I absolutely kid you not) I dreamed that Disney replaced the flume ride part of it's a small world with some kind of rotating scary train ride.  Went to City Hall to complain, where a cast member confided that (kid you not) new Disney board members, including Ben Browder (??!), had tried to vote down the change but were overruled.

*  Wake up with a very bad headache

*  Laze around in the morning and eventually take very hot shower in attempt to get rid of headache.  Both fail.

*  Have lunch, walk outside, and want to rip eyeballs out of head due to the sun

*  Motrin starts to work, go to grandpa's house for laundry (he has a functioning dryer...ah, luxuries) and to update his computer (he's on a 3-week long cruise)

*  Anal side of me takes over, and I suggest that perhaps we should start his car one more time, as we only drove it once

*  Turns out Patrick didn't close his door all the way (which we didn't see 'cause the dome light doesn't work) and the car's battery is very, very dead

*  AAA guy says to drive it at least an hour, without even the stereo on, to recharge the battery (it was that dead)

*  Pull out of driveway, unsure of whether to go for a drive up or down the coast, face west, shriek at sight of setting sun, decide to have dinner at Downtown Disney

*  Dinner, though it takes a while, is very good.  Turns out ESPN Zone's Caesar salad is almost -- and, perhaps, equally -- as good as Planet Hollywood's (my all time favorite, and, yes, I know it's a very weird place to have The Best Caesar Salad Ever, but it does)

*  Stop at Wetzels for pretzel and soda to munch on way home to stay awake, discover huge line, go to Marceline Confectionary (fancy word for outside-the-park-extension-of-Main-Street-candy-story) instead for a small bag of taffy

*  Encounter large line there, too, but assume (incorrectly, as it turns out) that the Disney cast members are used to this and will move the line through with alacrity

*  Eventually make it to very long tram line, even though it's after the fireworks and before the park closing

*  Patrick gets grumpy and decides it's my fault that there's a line for the tram (yup)

*  Eventually make it to car, where we spend five minutes figuring out that I am not, in fact, in charge of the size of the line for the Disneyland tram system

*  Start driving home, only to see traffic advisory that the 5 North is down to one lane from the 110 to the 2.  Having experienced this once before (can you say, leave Disneyland at midnight and get home at 4 a.m.?), quickly head over to the 101

*  And immediately stop dead

*  Crawl forward for several miles, see a CHP officer running a traffic break, which then dissolves and things open up

*  Try to listen to KFWB for traffic info and discover an hour-long informercial (what the bloody heck?) and listen to KNX instead, which insists there are no traffic issues on the 101, but that there is a fatal accident on the 170

*  Revise plan again (was attempting to avoid 101/405 interchange due to emergency road repairs I'd heard about) to proceed up 101 to somewhere that looks promising to cross back to north end of valley

*  Turns out the work is done, head up 405, get very sleepy, and get off to head west across valley on city streets in order to make me pay more attention and (hopefully) stay awake

*  Drive up to grandpa's house, click button to open garage, and...

*  ...the garage goes up about six inches, then back down

*  Repeat 10 times, to no differing effect

*  Give up, drive grandpa's car home, collapse into bed

*  Straggle out of bed, shower, go to lunch and grocery shop, come home, make News-2-You video, and hope that maybe the neutrinos have turned around.