Comedy of Errors

Well, what an interesting evening I ended up having.

After work, I met my friend, DP, and we had dinner at one of the Chinese buffet places. He was working on a story that I looked over and proofread. Afterward, we were going off on our separate ways; he was going to a concert at UNC, and I was going to conduct my choir rehearsal.

I got into my car, the lights flashed on briefly, and then... nothing. Car battery was dead. Luckily, D. hadn't left yet, so I asked him to drive me to choir practice. He was worried, wondering how I'd manage, but I said I had an idea what to do and not to worry about me. And besides, my apartment was just on the other side of Duke's East Campus, so I wasn't worried about getting home.

So I conducted my choir practice, and only had one chorister turn up. So we had good one-on-one time, working through the anthems I'd programmed for the next three weeks, as well as the service music we'll be doing for Advent.

After choir practice, my friend DD turned up. I was actually going to ring him up to ask him if he could take me home. Luckily, I remembered that the Honda dealership's service department closed at 11:00 pm, so I rang them up and described to them what happened. They said the battery's gone dead (it was probably due for a change anyway as I don't remember the last time it had been changed). They suggested I jump-start it and get it over to the dealership ASAP.

So I told D we probably should pop over to Wal-Mart and buy some jumper cables. So we made the Wal-Mart run, bought jumper cables, flashlights, and batteries, then we made our way back to the Chinese restaurant where I'd left the car.

I had bought a fancy unit that said it was capable of jump-starting a compact- to mid-sized vehicle. Thought it wouldn't be a bad idea. So I was reading the instruction manual on how to run it (really, I was wondering if it had come fully charged) on the way to the restaurant.

We got there, and I noticed that I'd parked the car very close to some hedges. I tried to move the car back, but I couldn't get it out of park, so I said never mind, I'll work with it. Whilst opening the hood of the car, I managed to cut my foot against some broken glass shards. I didn't think much of it, but D. was freaking out when he saw how much blood flowed out. So to assuage his fears and prevent him from freaking out more than he was already, I told him to get my first-aid kit from my car, and I cleaned and dressed the cut. Which was all it was: a cut, and there was no glass embedded in the foot.

Once all that hullabaloo was done, I connected the unit to the battery and asked D. to start the car. Nothing happened. The lights inside the car came on, but there wasn't enough energy to start the car.

So I had D. open the hood of his car. Unfortunately, his battery was too far away to be able to use his newly-bought jumper cables. So I went into the restaurant and asked the people if the car parked next to me could move.

Well, the driver did more than just move his car. He had parked it backside in, so he moved his car and parked it forward, got out his jumper cables, opened his hood, connected the cables, and started his car. This enabled me to start my car, and D. and I were profusely thanking this man.

So off we went to the Honda dealership. They were expecting me, and I told them I'd intended to bring it in for service and get the safety inspection sticker updated next week anyway, so I might as well have them work on all that in addition.

So now I'm home... the car will be ready by 7:00 am tomorrow morning. The foot is fine. The car will be fine. No worries. Seriously.