Push Me, Pullman

Five-Thirty Monday morning I got up, got dressed, got in the van and drove to Spokane. I wanted to get to Golden Gate Auto with enough time for them to finish before lunch. I couldn't remember either of the two street names required to get there. I never seem to remember street names as often as I remember what the turn looks like. Its not quite as efficient, but none-the-less interesting while driving in the tail end of Spokane rush hour traffic.

I passed the first exit confident that it wasn't the first. Then I passed a familiar row of churches, gas stations and fast food restaurants. I'd been down the upcoming exit before so I knew it was not it. Then came the freeway sound blocking walls with the deadish-looking ivy "growing" on it. And then nothing. And more of nothing. And more and more and more of nothing. Had I missed it? I don't remember wh-there it is. After turning onto the bypass I knew from the quarter mile of curving I had found the right exit.

I drove around back to the garage entrance of the repair shop and pulled out my cell phone. An older man answered.
"Hello?"
"Yes, This is Chris Veatch. I have an appointment to have my van fixed. And I'm here and I need someone to meet me around back."
Pause.
"They're there."
Click.
I looked around at the empty back parking lot as I hit redial. The call hadn't even began to ring when two guys walked out of an alley and passed the van. The first walked to the garage door and shoved it open. Then the second followed him inside backwards, motionioning me in while a breakfast sandwich hung from his mouth.

It took three hours for them to fix the van. In that time I sat in the store front of the mobility auto place trying to read. I had took to reading when I was without internet or a computer. I bought “The Camel Club” by David Baldacci after seeing an interview with him on Good Morning America where he described it as "four hundred pages of nothing leading up to something".

I had been without a way to get around by myself for a while so now that I capable to do so again I wanted to get Amanda a Birthday gift. She rarely says she wants or needs anything so when she does I usually get it for her. She had grown more accustomed to having her own computer than I knew and had mentioned a few times how she missed it. She also tried unsuccessfully to find a replacement motherboard for her old laptop. So I went to Best Buy to pick out a laptop and to bitch them out for taking so long to change a power supply. Well to my most pleasant surprise it was fixed. Even better it was already back in. So I had the fruity looking clerk from the Geek Squad place my tower in the front seat floor board. I got Amanda a Compaq Presario. I didn’t intend to, but it was the best deal. It was funny though that I had gotten her the same type of laptop for her birthday seven years ago.

Back at home. Back online. Life is good. I spent most of the first few days downloading, updating and generally setting up both our computers. After they were running the latest software and both computers could see each other over the network I set back into the World of Warcraft. It sucked when my computer broke. No internet. No email. No blog. But probably the most distressing was knowing my gnome mage was only six levels away from the level cap. I was rejuvenated coming off of a month and a half break and returned expecting to find all my guild mates at level sixty ready to pvp and raid the toughest instances, but most were hovering around what I remembered them being at before. Come to find out two of them just had a kid together so they never came on, one was trying to save his marriage so he never came on anymore and the others just got bored. We had spent many hours questing together and had established a vocal chat server for better coordinated attacks. It’s sad to see our group dwindle and die, but such are online friendships.