Bad Day

Yesterday my phone went for a quick dip in the ocean. It sorta survived, actually - I think it would have been okay if it had been fresh water. But it corroded overnight (surprise) and that's that. Luckily the phone was very cheap, unluckily, I now have to be without a phone until I can get it replaced.

Flew into Columbia this morning. After the blue gulf of Mexico and eighty-degree sunny days, the totally grey sky, the grey branches, the grey streets and the 30 degree temperatures were not very welcoming. I drove to my residence hall and it was locked up tight. No sign explaining it, but I found another building saying the campus wasn't going to be open until 1. So I had two hours to kill.

I went to Walmart and bought some hot food, then went into the back to try to buy a phone. They were sold out of all the cheap ones - apparently everyone breaks their phones during holiday season. The cheapest replacement I could buy was $40 - it should have been $15. I decided to go and try the other Walmarts.

On the way out I sat on a bench near the entrance and thought I could quickly eat the food I bought. I luckily had a fork in my backpack and right before I opened the container, people were yelling at me. Apparently I was setting off the alarm by sitting too close to it. So why was there a bench there!?!?!

I assumed the alarm was just a door-open-too-long thing, but then the greeter checked my purchases to see if they were setting it off, and asked me to walk through with just my backpack. The shoplifter alarm went off. Of course I didn't have anything, but it was hard to prove since I had my entire flight backpack on with all sorts of rubbish in it. Luckily the guy trusted me and let me go after checking the new hard drive I had bought at best buy and looking in the bag a little bit.

I went out and ate in the backseat of my car, then got back behind the wheel. My plan was to see if AT&T was open, then try the other Walmarts. I put AT&T into my GPS, but it took me to an older, defunct location and I couldn't remember where it was now, and I couldn't call anyone to ask. As I was putting Walmart in to find the other locations, a man started honking at me. When we came to the light I rolled down my window and he told me that one of my tires was really low on air!!

Embarrassing fact - In four years of having a car, I have never once put air in the tires. Did my parents do it for me when I was at home and they borrowed the car? Did the garage do it when I stopped in for oil changes, etc? Honestly I'm not sure how I've avoided that necessity. But now I was panicking. I told GPS to take me to the next auto shop. It drove me a few blocks into the bad part of town (Columbia is small enough that if you take a wrong turn, you might be in the bad part of town). There was no garage there, but there was a gas station across the street.

I went in and asked the clerk where I could go to put air in my tires, apologetically. She told me I could do it at right there at the gas station (I'd thought so, but when I pulled in and looked around, I hadn't seen the air pump right away). She made change for me so I could use the machine. The tire did look pretty bad, but I set it right again. One crisis averted. As I said, I was in a dodgy part of town, so people kept coming up to me to ask me for money, or if they could help me with the pump. I couldn't tell if they were just trying to be nice or what, so I just cheerily said "I've got it, thanks!"

I'd had enough adventure so I drove to my friend Tina's house. Most people were still gone for the holidays, but Tina had written that she'd likely return to Columbia after Thanksgiving. And, since Tina calls her car "the Impala", and I know what an impala is, her car is one of the few of my friends cars that I can recognize. It was in the driveway, so I knocked and she let me in. She was awesome and let me call my parents on her phone to let them know I'd arrived, as well as letting me stay until my dorm opened and feeding me delicious cobbler.

It hasn't been the best day. XD But Tina helped a lot!!