Guess I shouldn’t have told the universe I was considering splurging $15 on a narcissistic costume photoshoot at Dragon*Con this year.

Because now my car is dead.
The transmission passed on! It is no more! It has ceased to be! It is an ex-transmission!

I was in Kincardine for the purpose of having them check my car because we thought the tranny was dying. And yes, it was. Oh yes. Dangerously so, even. Joy.

So not only is my car stranded back in Kincardine awaiting a quote on how much it’ll be to replace the transmission (and no, I’m not getting a “new” transmission so much as a “refurbished” or “junkyard” transmission 😛 ) but I had to rent a car in order to get back to Guelph. I’m not sure if the bus from Kincardine runs on weekends, and even if it did, then I’d be in Toronto without a car and need to take another bus. I could have dealt with that if not for the fact that Josh works late this next week, and renting a car is cheaper than the taxi drive needed to get him home from work (since he works too late to catch the bus, of course).
Based on my parent’s recent transmission-replacement costs, I’m probably looking at around $1k+ (including labour) if they can find a good used one.

On top of that, I have to work next weekend, so I can’t get back to Kincardine then, and thus return the rental car and get my hopefully-fixed-by-then car back. If they can find a good used on and order it on Monday or Tuesday, they could probably have me all fixed up by next Friday or Saturday. But oh no, that would be too easy. I already hate the fact that I’m stuck working random weekends long past the time I was told I would be, but now working next weekend is going to cost me an additional $250 to rent the car for a second week and return it the weekend after. D’oh.

Moral: Never let the universe know that you are slowly climbing out of your Debt-Hole, because it will find a way to cram you back in deeper. 😛

I’m tired.
I spent Thursday and Friday working 11 hour shifts, and then I was at work today (but only for 8 hours, yayz). We ran out of water All. Three. Days.
Seriously.
We desperately need to upgrade our ultra-pure water system. Right now we can only produce 10L/hour of water, and we can only store 200L at a time. Soooo not enough. It used to almost be enough to make 5 batches in 3 days (we still have the woman come up from the States for “supervision”, and she has a real job so she can only come up for 3 days in a row). Now we’ve got a minor pH problem (read: some customers are complaining that the pH is too high, but we can’t verify this internally, and external testing says we’re high, but not as high as the customers say we are, so part of the problem id their stupid incubators anyway. Blargh.) so they’ve tweaked the process a number of times resulting in more and more water being needed for each batch, so I freaking run out. I ran out each of the 3 days this time. Usually, we might run out once during a production run. I also have to make the final batch on Monday because … guess what… we ran out of water.

My boss promises that we’re upgrading our system. I’m not holding my breath. Josh and I are buying a house, too, but it’s not like that’s within a reasonable time frame.

Of course, the week where I work at 7am is also the week Josh works until 12:30am, so I don’t get home from picking him up until 1:30 am, so yayz for running on 4 hours of sleep.

On the plus side, I was told I have a great work attitude by my boss’ associate. Here’s to fakin’ it while I die of sleep deprivation and severe water-related frustration inside.

Also, Jim* (our scientific director): please stop making changes to the process in order to figure out the pH problem. Make ONE change, and we’ll see what happens. I cannot determine cause and effect when you change 4+ variables. Plus, it just wastes the water that I don’t have in the first place.

/rant

~~~~
I’m thinking of getting this wig in white for my Smirnoff Fairy D*C costume.
It looks kind of “frosty” to me (or, well, it would in white) instead of a normal wig.
This costume is going to be mostly a frost/ice themed costume, involving some “icicles” and faux fur. I really doubt I could pull off a Russian accent to go with it, but if stop being lazy (haha) I might try to give it a shot.

I really want to get these boots, in white, for this costume (Get it? See, the clear heel is like ice, yo.). I think I just have a thing for knee-high boots. I wish I could find them in matte, instead of patent, though.

*name changed to protect the innocent my job.

Last night was such a bust.

We didn’t even get home until after 6. This is even after I left work early (by coming in early) at 4:30 to slightly beat the rush hour traffic. It took me over an hour to make a 1/2 hour trip to Waterloo. At least coming home only takes a half hour like it’s supposed to. That drive infuriates me every day because it’s so useless and frustratingly slooooow. And there’s usually at least 1 or 2 people who seem to have absolutely no clue how to drive a motor vehicle. I’ve got an allergy to stupid that causes my road rage to flare up. I don’t usually drive more agressively, but I get super steamed and hate everyone.
Anyway.
Since we have been so busy lately, and my parents visited this weekend, we hadn’t carved our pumpkins yet. We started as soon as we got home. I just made the same Devil Flanders one from last year, only it looked shittier because I was in such a rush. Josh had been going to do one of the VGCats ones, but didn’t want to spend the time printing it out, so he just made a scary face type one.
Sucky pumpkins suck.

This is all, of course, on top of the fact that my costume wasn’t 100% complete either. I wore it to work with the legs held together with safety pins. Even though my co-workers all thought it ws as really cool, it felt really lame.

This was the first year since leaving home that I’ve had real Hallowe’en decorations. I went out and got a little string of LED pumpkin lights and a handing ghost with plastic hands and face that lit up for the porch, and a cheap plastic skeleton to hang on the front door.

And we got about 10 kids. All night. After rushing costumes and pumpkins and getting decorations and candy ready, our doorbell only rang 3 times. Blah.

When we finally decided that no more kids were coming (9:30), we turned out the light and went to bed. We had been planning on wandering over to Paul & Robyn’s place because they are within walking distance, but we were both too tired and frustated so we just went to sleep. Yay sleep.

If my costume hadn’t sucked, it would have been awesome, though. It’s a faun. ^_^
I’ve even got digitigrade legs (that’s where the stripper boots and insultion foam came in), which looked good despite the quality. The legs are missing the fethering around the hooves, which would hide the bright white boot heels, but I didn’t have time to add that.
At least the boots themselves are reusable (for this costume) even though the pants need to be re-made and I still have to make the “real” top – the toga top in the photos is mainly a concession to the fact that I wore it to work. Here’s some photos:

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I blame Josh for the quality of the photos, and the fact that I was cranky and tired when they were taken. They will be replaced when I get it completed “for real”. ^_^