falling apart

so we have a leak in our roof that has started coming through into my bedroom. i'd always had stains on the ceiling tiles in a few places but recently it got worse somehow. i've since lost two ceiling tiles and now i have drips in two places when it rains or snows a lot (& it's been raining & snowing a lot recently). we've called a couple different roofers now... the first ones never showed up, though a couple times they suggested they would. the second roofer was supposed to show up for an estimate on friday but that didn't happen either.

i went to eric's 11th annual birthday bash last night in anderson (where the night before, there was a fire at an enormous magnesium processing center, though it was far from the party location). the party was fun: it's a "bottle party" where guests bring 5ths of alcohol in lieu of a more traditional "gift" & everyone is free to drink all night. they put up lists of drinks they've invented & you roll d&d dice to determine what you get: 2d10 for mixed drinks (yes, there are 100 mixed drinks on the list), or 1d20 for shots. i drank my quota but never got too drunk & made sure i was sober enough to drive before heading home.

on my way home from the party, almost immediately after i got onto 69S, i hit a pothole or something, which shredded my tire. i never actually saw whatever it was; i wasn't swerving or anything, so it must've been a pothole or car part in my lane or something. so i pulled over, got my donut spare out of the trunk... but for the life of me i could not find a jack. if there's one in there, they hid it somewhere funky. or possibly i took it out for some reason years ago & forgot about it. anyway, at that time i couldn't find it.

so i called back to the party, but in all the hubbub i forgot just how far i had driven, and gave eric faulty information about my location. fortunately partygoer jeanne was on her way out & had a jack i could use, but it took her 30 minutes to find me because she was working with bad info. finally she showed up, i took my lugnuts off, we jacked up my car... but the rim (which was bent) would not come off. i don't know why. jeanne concluded that it wouldn't come off without a sledgehammer or a propane torch, so i locked up the car & she drove me home, so i could call a tower & deal with it in the morning.

come morning, lib called AAA (they have a membership but i currently don't, a problem i expect to remedy soon), & barry drove me back out there. it took awhile: the towers actually arrived a couple minutes before we did. then when the tower jacked up my car, the rim just fell off, smooth like butter. i don't know what we were doing wrong last night or what the difference was, but that's how it happened.

i've needed to take the car in for my 40,000mi maintenance for some time now, so i think i'll take it there to get the rim done too. they'll charge me more than a discount tire place would, but i might as well get all the work done at the same time.

on top of all that, barry & i went out for awhile this evening, and when we got home, barry tried to boot up his computer. it wouldn't. and barry noticed a troublesome odor. some important part of it has seemingly fried. and this was his second computer: the other one's AGP port fried a couple months back & has been offline until it gets a new motherboard. i predict a trip to the computer parts store tomorrow.