Carfights and Catmax

Stop. Reverse that. Okay.

Today was, let's say, interesting. The least of the interesting things happened to me at my tai chi class today. My instructor was showing me a new part of the form, and he says "Then you turn like this, and you keep your hand up here, and you swing your leg out and up and around and kick your hand." And I said "Oh, I do, do I?" That got a laugh out of him. Seriously, I'm not sure if I'm insanely rigid, or if he's insanely flexible. But he's kicking his hand out in front of his head, and I'm swinging at some ghost's kneecaps or something. (I got my kick up around waist level, but his was crazy high. Guess it pays to do this for a while.)

Then I got my car cleaned at a detail shop to have it look vaguely respectable when I took it to carmax, and I got some food at wendy's while I was waiting. There was a mom and three mid-teen girls eating there as well. (Not sure if they were all sisters.) But it struck me on a subconscious level that they were all really quiet. (I noticed it, but I wasn't aware of it until the following events happened.) Anyhoo, they left, and maybe two minutes later the mom comes back in and asks one of the employees if they have anything to clean a window with, because her daughter had just thrown her soda against the restaurant's window. Employee says he'll take care of it, mom leaves, and I think about how odd it is to throw your soda against the window. I'm odd, and it seems odd to me. It doesn't seem a particularly "wee! This is fun!" thing to do, so I thought maybe one of the girls had a handicap and I just didn't notice. (I try to avoid looking at teenagers, because they rarely look like teenagers and I feel creepy.) Well, maybe five minutes after that, I here the employee say that there's a fight in the parking lot. I look outside, and mom and girl 3 are trying to break up a royal brawl between girls 1 & 2. These two are really going at it, swinging left and right, grabbing at hair, pushing, etc. I considered going out to try to help end it, but wasn't as though either girl's life was really on the line, so I opted against interfering. (What's the phrase? "No good deed goes unpunished.") Anyway, mom finally gets them back in the car (although clearly not settled because I can still see girl 1 yelling at mom) and they drive away. What in the hell happened in that restaurant to provoke that? They were fighting as though one had just told the other that she'd slept with her boyfriend or something. It was nuts. I think at least one of the two of them needs to be medicated.

Then I went down to carmax, in the (apparently vain) effort to get out of my car. The car they had was really nice. It was a '97 Accord (check) for $8000 (check) with 114,000 miles (checkable) four-door (check) manual transmission (check.) It drove, shifted, revved, started, accelerated, felt, smelled, air-conditioned and pretty much everything just fine. (Brakes could use some adjusting, and the body looked like someone tried, poorly, to touch up some scratches. But it is a '97.) Unfortunately, they only offered $14,000 for my car. I owe just under $20,000. I have some money saved up, but not that much. So my only other real option is to put mine in the paper (and show potential buyers carmax's rather flattering appraisal) and try to get more out of it for them. So we'll see how that goes.

And then I came home to eat and type on here. Yay! And now I'm off to fill my parents in on the whole carmax event. So adieu to all of you! (Hey, I rhymed!)