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today the glitterbomber is... |
2003-07-30 i finally called the guy who hit my car and told him that i�d need a rental for the three days that my car will be in the shop. he was more agreeable than i thought he�d be. i guess he really doesn�t want me to contact his insurance, and you know, it�s quite nice of me not to do that. i have a sneaking suspicion that i�m going to lose out somehow, somewhere along the line here. since i�m nonconfrontational about most things, i�m letting it slide. i spent some time this morning checking out rates for different car rental places. i�ll call him tonight with my findings, and then he�ll add that to the cost of the repairs and send me a check. i hope it all goes smoothly. as much as this whole process has inconvenienced me, it�s still a useful thing to experience. now i�ll know what to do should it ever happen again to me or to anyone i know. my boss� boss brought me in a big bag of fresh basil. it�s sitting on my desk now, and it smells so yummy. i�ve never had much luck growing basil. other people�s plants seem to take over the garden, while mine just seemed to grow halfheartedly. they probably needed more sun that what my porch could provide. i didn�t even try to grow any herbs this year. it was too cold to plant anything for a long time, and by the time the weather turned, it was probably too late. even now, i only have some flowers in a window box and one pot, and i have some wildflowers that i started from seed in another pot. a couple of the plants have buds; it�ll be a surprise to see what they open up into. i can�t wait to have a yard where i can plant a garden of flowers, vegetables, and herbs. i�d love to be able to pick what i need instead of paying a lot for it at the store. when i got to my car yesterday after work, i noticed a big, white caterpillar near one of the windshield wipers. it was one of those bristly ones, and it had some longer tufts on either end and an orange tuft near its orange head. i have no idea how it got there unless it was there when i left for work in the morning. i was afraid to touch it because, well, when i was a kid, an older neighbor boy told me that if you touched bristly caterpillars, you�d die because the bristles have poison in them. and i believed him (i was a very gullible child, but that is another entry unto itself). now, as someone who has the fa�ade of a logical adult, i know that i won�t die from touching a caterpillar, but still�you never know. so, i got a piece of bark that was down by the windshield wipers, too, and scooped the caterpillar onto it. i was going to put it on one of the I-beams that supports the floors of the parking garage, but i stopped. i realized that it probably wasn�t ever going to find its way outside from the sixth floor of a huge parking garage. i couldn�t leave it there to die because i�d feel guilty as hell and probably wouldn�t be able to get to sleep at night. i brought it back to my car and put the caterpillar into a little cubbyhole i have on the instrument panel. usually the cubbyhole is reserved for necessities such as lip gloss. now, it was used for emergency animal rescue. i left the garage with the caterpillar crawling around all over the instrument panel. once i got to a grassy area, i pulled over and put it in its new home. i�m a real friend to animals, i tell you. maybe not so much to people, but caterpillars can�t be bitchy to you or hit your car or threaten to arrest you for taking a plant. here�s another animal story, while i�m on a roll. my boss� boss was taking her dogs for a walk in the park one day last week. a squirrel ran down the trunk of a tree and stopped about a foot from the ground. one of the dogs went up to it, and the two animals simply stared at each other for a couple minutes or so. then the squirrel dropped dead and fell off of the tree. how weird is that? *** quote of the day: �i�ve never been so excited about towels before.� �my boy |
