Sucky Week…. Sort Of. Thank God for Dawson’s Creek!
I have a confession to make. For the last month or so I have lapsed back into an unexplainable fascination with Dawson’s Creek. Yep Dawson’s Creek. I can’t really explain why. A couple of years ago, back when I had my dingy but all-mine one bedroom apartment in the hood, I didn’t have cable. Gasp! No cable. I know, I know. That’s almost like having no Internet. Not quite as bad but almost. That sad but true fact forced me to buy an antenna for my brand new TV (my first major purchase as an “adult” in the “real world”). That antenna allowed me to receive a grand total of 5 real channels. I don’t count the public access and home shopping channels. I’ve always been a night owl. Not a night owl that goes out on the town and parties. I’m just a night owl that stays up and reads or watches TV or plays video games or listens to music until all hours of the night. Well it turns out that back then 11 o’clock was THE time for me. I was fully awake (I’m a night owl so that makes me a non-morning person. Which means that any time before 3pm I’m not conscious and I’m not fully awake until around 6 or 7pm) and ready to go at 11. That just happened to coincide with the time that our local ABC/WB affiliate switched over to their nightly WB coverage each night. Prime time in the late night. So naturally I got hooked on all the WB shows that were all the rage back then. Buffy, Angel, Roswell, Felicity, and yes Dawson’s Creek.
The fact that I started watching all of those shows is kind of ironic actually. All through college my friends and I constantly bagged on the WB and shows like Buffy and Dawson’s Creek. We had never actually watched them but we were always quick with a joke or one liner putting the shows or the network down. Dawson’s Creek was part of our running joke. Anyway for that year and a half or so, excluding the last decent season of The X-Files, Making The Band, and the Saturday night British Comedy block on PBS, I watched nothing but WB shows, at least Monday through Wednesday. Thursday and Friday were Blockbuster nights. So that’s how I first caught the Dawson’ Creek bug. After moving out of the hood and in with a roommate that actually had cable, my WB interests waned. I did an okay job of sticking with Buffy and Roswell and Angel and Felicity and Dawson for about half a season or so but then I kind of fell off the band wagon. Shortly before moving out of the hood I got a regular 8 to 5 job (as opposed to the odd hours I had been working previously) which made staying up until 1 am or 2am watching my favorite shows less practical. And even though I had a fancy, high tech, top of the line VCR I didn’t have much luck recording the shows for later viewing. I’d either forget to record the shows all together or I’d set the VCR but forget to put the tape in or I’d set the VCR to record the wrong channel or I’d set the VCR but forget to leave the cable box on or I’d set the VCR leave the cable box on but forget to turn the sound up on the cable box or my roommates would forget that I had the VCR set and just turn on the VCR and TV and watch something else. When Buffy and Roswell made the move over to UPN I thought that would be the solution to my need for a WB fix (even though they made the switch they will always be known as WB shows). Unlike the WB, UPN actually has a full time affiliate in Memphis which means that Buffy and Roswell would come at more reasonable prime time viewing slots. Alas it wasn’t to be. I was on my 4 day a week work out kick and usually went to the gym while the shows were on. Setting the VCR was out because my roommates wanted to watch TV and they didn’t have TVs their rooms. That meant watching on the big TV in the living room or in my room. Neither were brave enough venture into the chaos that was my room so that left the big TV. I consoled myself with the fact that both shows sucked after they made the move. Roswell only lasted 1 season after the move. Buffy mercifully ended a couple of weeks ago.
I said all of that to get to this. Fate, work schedule, and advantageous TV programming came together several weeks ago to rekindle my Dawson’s Creek interest. TBS started broadcasting the last season of the show in anticipation of the season/series finale. They showed 4 episodes a morning for a couple of weeks which culminated with the rebroadcasting the season/series finale a day after it originally aired on the WB. It just so happened that this block of shows came on the air just as I was getting off from work. I got to see the finale season in it’s entirety over roughly a 2 week time period. Once the finale aired, they started over from the beginning, episode 1. This has been a tremendous development for me because not only have I been able to fully catch up on the happenings of the Dawson and the gang but now I get to watch all the episodes I missed originally while I was in my WB-hater stage. A 26 year old guy watching Dawson’s Creek is probably pretty odd but I don’t care. It’s a nice escape that provides a couple of hours of distraction and stress relief at the end of a stressful day (My day is the normal person’s night and vice versa thanks to my new shift at my new job). I can’t go to sleep anyway when I get home from work. Why not watch a show that I enjoy? Besides teenage angst is so much more endearing than my mid-twenties angst.
It turns out that this special brand of teenage escapist fluff was just what the doctor ordered this week. This week in a word has sucked! Last Thursday I went to Florida for an abbreviated fishing trip. Thanks to my new schedule I had to be back Saturday night to go to work. So Saturday, after driving 7 hours from Florida back to Memphis, I slept for 4 hours and then went in for my usual 8 hour shift. I’m young so it’s no big deal right? Well normally it wouldn’t be but the next morning I had to go straight from work to church to lead singing for morning worship. I’ve lead singing before but never going on just 16 hours sleep total in the last 72 hours. Red Bull played a huge part in my drive down to Florida Thursday night but I was determined to lead the Lord’s Worship substance free. I made it through the worship service without a hitch and proceeded to crash at home for the rest of the day. I figured that this had been a grueling weekend but now things would get back to normal and I’d have a normal week. Boy was I wrong. Monday went off without a hitch. It was Memorial Day for everybody else but for me it was a regular work day. Got home at 7am. Slept all day then went in to work again. Being a holiday, TBS showed a movie in place of the 2 hour Dawson’s Creek block. I should have figured out then and there that something was going to be off with this week from here on out. Monday night at work was a little weird. Again it was a holiday so I was there by myself but the night went smoothly. The next morning sure didn’t though. I got off work at 7 wide awake and looking for breakfast. Yet again there was a break in my usual routine which should have been an indication of impending disaster. Instead of driving home (less than a mile) and eating breakfast there, I decided that I would go get some cash and head over to Chic-fil-A to get a couple of Chicken biscuits. On the way back home my car started acting weird. The check engine light came on and the car started hesitating. I had never seen the check engine light on this car before but I wasn’t too worried. The last time the car had acted anything like this was a couple of weeks after I bought it. That time I’d simply run out of gas. Well the tank was almost on empty Tuesday morning so I figured that the gas must have been lower than the gauge indicated. No sweat. I’ll just pull into this Amoco (in the process of being converted into a BP) and fill up. $12.00 and a bottle of gas treatment later I was pulling out of the gas station hoping that the problem was solved. It wasn’t. The check engine light came back on and the engine shaking got worse. I couldn’t take her above 3rd gear and had to poke along at a measley 30 MPH. Thankfully I wasn’t too far from home so I put on the emergency flashers, moved to the far right lane and slowly limped home.
Needless to say I didn’t get much sleep Tuesday. I just laid in my bed trying to figure out what I was going to do. My financial situation, while better than it’s ever been, still isn’t exactly the best. I’m no Mark Cuban. I spent the day hoping and praying that it was something minor that could be easily fixed. Like maybe a dead O2 sensor or something like that. Tuesday afternoon I got up and decided to give the car dealership a call. I figured the odds of me getting any real sleep that day were shot so I might as well get something constructive done. I have very little trust in car dealerships so I dreaded having to deal with one. Alas I’m no mechanic so what could I do? I called the dealership and talked to one of the managers. I described the symptoms and asked him if he thought I should try to drive the car down there. After a little deliberation he suggested having it towed. The dealership is less than 7 miles away but he didn’t think trying to drive it would be a good idea. So I had the car towed down there. I didn’t know how long it would take but I figured they would fix whatever was wrong and I’d go down and drive my baby back home in a few days. Zoom to Wednesday. I rode my bike home from work and went straight to bed. I was tired so I set the VCR for D’s Creek and crashed. Bob, the manager from the dealership service department, called around 9:30. I could tell by the tone of his voice that something was wrong. Upon further reflection, I’m sure that that’s a tactic he uses all the time to make the poor customer think that things are worse than they are. Anyway he told me how extensive the damage was and what the price tag would be. I was floored. Over a $1000 dollars of damage including parts and labor. This from a car that I have had absolutely no problems out of in the year and a half I’ve had it. I almost started hyperventilating before getting a grip and remembering something. At the time of purchase I bought a 4 year extended warranty so I decided to mention that to Bob and see if that would have any effect on the cost. If not, I was going to have to tell them to close the hood and tow my baby back here cause I couldn’t swing that kind of cash all at once. Bob, said he’d check on that and give me a ring back. That call came a couple of hours later. He had checked with the Toyota warranty people and it turns out that about $500 of the work would be covered by the warranty. I almost shouted for joy at that news. $1000 bucks I couldn’t do. $500 or so bucks, I could do. I gave Bob the green light to do the repairs and proceeded to get the best few hours of sleep I’d had in a while. The best part was that they had all the parts on hand and could have the car ready by close of business that day. I was stoked! It would be a minor financial setback but I’d get my car back in working order and move on.
Sleep. Blissful sleep. Sleep that was interrupted abruptly at 4:30 pm. I knew when the phone rang that something was up. The call came too soon for it to be the ‘Come on down and give us your money. We’ve got your car fixed’ call. Bob, sad voice in full effect, started the call off with, “We’ve run into a little snag. ” My heart sank. “What’s wrong?” I said. When he told me what had happened and what the remedy would need to be I was blown away. Bottom line, they said they’d need to replace the cylinder head which would set me back another $2600 big ones. That’s on top of the $500 dollars of work they had already done. I told him flat out that I could not afford that and asked them to button everything up as best they could and tow her back here. Bob said they were a little bit behind and wouldn’t be finished with the work they were doing on the car until noon on Thursday. I said fine and the call abruptly ended. Talk about a roller coaster. I went from the depths of despair that morning to the relative heights of relief a couple of hours later back to the depths of despair a few hours later. The tow truck dropped off Allycia (my car) around 3pm Thursday. Since Bob discouraged me from cranking the car up or driving it all I had to push the car into a parking space. Tow truck dude showed no love at all. He dropped the car in the middle of the parking lot, grabbed his cash and jetted. Luckily my car is small and light so I was able to maneuver her into a parking space after about 15 minutes of sweat and struggle. That’s where she’ll sit until I either save up enough money to get the repairs the dealership guys say are required or I get a second opinion that says that she’s okay to drive or maybe just needs a few other cheaper repairs to get her back on the road. So that’s been my week. It totally sucked…. sort of. Don’t you think? Thank God for Dawson’s Creek. I really needed the distraction this week.