micaela's crappy adventures                                    

  (for those stories that don't quite fit under the gripe o' the month)

Don't start with me. You know how I get.

5/4/01

my final exam adventure

ok. it is friday, may 4. countdown: 6 days to graduation. final in restoration/18 century literature, 12:20 pm. we leave our side of town at 10:30, allowing plenty of time for any accidents on the freeway, parking issues, flash issues, or any other general end to civilization so that we even have time left for extra, last minute studying. we stroll leisurely through campus beginning at approximately 11:15 am. stop by another professor's office and drop off some papers. la la la. isn't everything GREAT? i'm graduating in SIX days! woohoo. walking to the other building. . .crossing the path of someone who is in the class the final is about to be in. at this point, i say "hey! so did he cancel the final or what?" and smile, laughingly. she says, "ha ha - yeah, it's canceled" and keeps walking. so, having plenty of time, we stop at a soda machine and take our time walking to the room where we will still be 45 minutes early to study. time: appx. 11:35 am. tamar, my accomplice, opens the door. i notice that there are 3 people in there already. nothing new - some people in that small class of about 20 are pretty anal about last minute study time. we enter the room. the professor, sitting behind the table, smiles and greets us with a friendly, yet sarcastic, "hello." why the heck is he here already? i begin to glance around the room and notice that people are not, in fact, studying but instead scribbling in blue books. immediately, i turn back toward the professor, jaw dropped completely open, and see a stack of used blue books on the table in front of him. next comes the classic line from our dear friend tamar, "am i late?" yes, that's right. the exam started at 10:00. this is not the retelling of one of many nightmares that i have had about missing final exams. this is reality. i am supposed to graduate in SIX precious days and this is a required course. oh sh*t. ok, ok. remain calm. breathe. resist the sudden and overwhelming urge to vomit. i try to speak but incoherent sounds emit themselves rather than forming themselves into a recognizable argument. "whaa - howwww? ehhhh? 12:20." then he says "why don't you meet me in my office at noon?" as we shuffle out of the room, i mutter something about having a nervous breakdown and we head for the hallowed halls of the language and literature building. . .

the 20 minutes it takes him to arrive are excruciating. what will he do to us? fail us? make us write a 20 page last minute research paper? he surely wouldn't FAIL us! here he comes. is he smiling or smirking? suddenly, the ability to make any excuse necessary reveals itself. "but we left 2 hours early! we were trying to be SO good and early and we were going to study. . ." then he says "normally i would just sit here and watch you take it now but i have to leave right now for flagstaff and i won't be home until tuesday." GREAT. let's just return the cap and gown, folks. but he goes on: "why don't we just use some empty room up here, you can take it and then slide it under my door?" WHAT? are you for real? surely, there must be some catch. nope. "just don't use your books - you're on the honor system." no kidding. at this point, i am so thankful that i am nearly ready to die. you had better believe that we do not say a word to each other the whole time, nor open our books. there really are second chances, but at what emotional cost? when do things like this stop happening to me? argh.

i don't make this stuff up, people.  how could i?  watch out, i could be dangerous. . .

12/16/98 - bo and micaela in the deathmobile

no - it didn't break down.  bo and i were happily traveling home after completing our last final exam of the semester.  everything was great - we had already been ripped off by the bookstore with book sell back and wrote our essays until the last drop of intelligence was gone and our fingers permanently attached to the pens.  all that was left to conquer was rush hour - nothing that we hadn't faced hundreds of times before.  things were moving along rather normally when a big white dodge intrepid squeezed its way in front of the deathmobile.  ok - no problem.  we soon recognized that the driver was taking a little bit longer than normal to respond when the stop-and-go traffic started moving again.  no problem, until a few times later when he didn't move.  20 seconds - no movement.  his head is tipped back on the headrest with no sign of motion.  bo honks the horn - no movement. of course, with the traffic behind us and moving along the side, we were trapped.  within the next minute, we began to wonder whether the person was dead.  i was wondering exactly what you are supposed to do in this situation - they don't tell you about this in driving school, after all.  i have my phone in hand and bo decides to get out (we were in the inside lane) to see what is wrong with this person.  still, a few cars behind us were trapped, trying futilely to venture into the passing traffic from a dead stop.  so bo gets about halfway to the car door and all of a sudden it takes off.  fast.  what is the problem here?  why us?  out of all the cars on all the highways, we somehow end up behind this person who either fell asleep or was trying his psychology experiment on innocent people to see how long a response would take in a potentially serious situation.  that was beyond strange.    

9/30/98  - micaela (almost) gets a new hood ornament

picture this.  band rehearsal just ended.  i am sitting at the intersection of Rural and the 202, anxiously awaiting my turn to wait in long traffic backups to get home.  i'm the second car in the outside lane, turning left.  green arrow - everything is great.  8 words:  stupid bicycle person riding on the freeway on-ramp.  that's right, just a bit far from the crosswalk (which was 'don't walk' anyway, obviously) while people (with a green light) are getting on the freeway.  he came out of nowhere and rumbled across the right hand lane (how he even got past the people turning right is really beyond me). the car in front of me was already past this point when mr. idiot came through.  apparently, at some point he realized that there, in fact, were cars accelerating as they rounded the corner and quickly applied his brakes which caused him to be partially thrown from the bike directly in front of my large, sparkly green truck.  ABS fortunately allowed both lanes to stop shortly before running down this moron and/or the person in pursuit  before rear-ending me. let me tell you this - if anything happened to my truck, i would be really pissed. there will be no blood on my truck.  then, the guy stands up, picks up his bike, and offers me a congenial "oops" wave.  what the hell is that?  yeah - that's just great.  you almost get yourself run down and you wave at the person that could've gone to jail for killing you?  i don't think so.

If you don't like my driving don't call anyone - just take another road. That's why the highway department made so many of them.

June 4, 1998

i'm sure you've discovered by now that i can rarely do anything without facing some kind of conflict. yesterday, i got up early (9am - unbelievable) to go and have a bagel down at einstein's. it was so nice and peaceful, until i found myself a witness to old people fighting. one old guy walks inside and up to this old couple. sometimes you will see a friend in there or something, so i thought nothing about it. soon, it became obvious that this was not a friendly greeting. . .right about when the guy who was sitting stood up and stuck his finger in the other guy's face. then the obscenities started flying. old people - in their 60's screaming at the top of their lungs. and what were they fighting over? a handicapped parking space. i kid you not. then they started pushing each other and screaming even louder. "don't talk like that in front of my wife you @#$^%&*!", etc. apparently what happened was this: the guy who was sitting inside with his wife had parked in the space without any handicapped parking decal or plate. his wife had obviously had some kind of foot surgery because she had a huge cast on it and a cane. the guy who came inside after them had parked his jeep (with a handicapped decal, i might add) directly behind these people - blocking them in. (by the way - did you ever see that one 'judge judy'? it was almost just like that). finally, they start heading in my direction, near the door, to take their fight outside. luckily, i was not injured in this exchange - whew. why can't i ever have a normal trip anywhere? probably because i need something to put here. . .at least this story was clean enough. : )

March 25, 1998

spring is in the air when spring training comes to arizona.  even though baseball is not exactly one of my favorite pastimes, i enjoy to venture out to the ballpark each spring. . .catch a few games.  my brother-in-law managed to get some tickets right behind home plate. great view for a game.  5,000 seats (at least) in the whole place and I get to sit by the most drunken person there.  a group of four people, who said at one point, and i quote, "it doesn't matter how loud we are - we're on vacation!!  have a good time!!".  and the most drunken of them all, a woman well into her 50's - yes, 50's - was my lucky neighbor for the evening. drunk before the first pitch was even thrown. wasted beyond belief - this woman proudly announced in the 2nd inning that she had already consumed 6 beers - right before she loudly called the 'beer stud' over for another.  every single time that someone came up to bat she felt that it was her personal duty to remind the batter that "EVERYONE GETS A BASE HIT!!!", and at one point she asked her husband (i'm assuming) exactly which team she was supposed to be cheering for anyway.  well, if you add the ones that i actually saw her drink, she had 9 beers in all.  nine.  at one point, i wondered exactly who the designated driver of the group was?  the person who only had 4 beers?  by the time that she came back from the restroom (mid-6th inning) and let everyone know that "[her] bladder was empty", she was drunk enough to really let the expletives fly.  f-this and @^#$%&^*! that. . .finally at the beginning of the 7th, someone came to escort them out.  it was really too bad - i was looking forward to her rendition of 'take me out to the ball game' during the 7th inning stretch. . . . .

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give 'em hell devils!