guided by a new era

- I hit another Zingerman's truck in the parking lot today. This one left a mark on my bumper, too. I was backing out of a spot and thought I had room to back up just a liiiiitle bit more. I didn't. Oops.

- I am *so* proud of myself. I wrote my essay for Angela's Ashes in two days. All it needs is a bit of editing and a title and it will be done. Senioritis, my ass.

- I have completely, irrevocably fallen in love with Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. I'm a little more than halfway through 2nd gig and it makes me sad to know that after 2nd gig is just the movie Solid State Society and then it's over. :( It's soooo awesome. As per usual, I've latched onto one of the minor characters who will never get more than one or two quick appearances each episode as one of my favorites. I have to watch most of the episodes twice to understand them completely, but aaaaaaaaaaaaaagh it's so awesome.

- Yesterday I discovered Pandora. It's amazing. I've found so much awesome music on it, and besides that it's good background noise for when I'm working. I have a relatively small collection of music (~600 songs, compared to most of my friends who have ~10,000) and sometimes I get sick of hearing the same songs over and over again.

I had a driving scare today. The roads have been snowy and icey and blehhh for the past couple days, and in order to get to school I have to turn from my neighborhood onto a major road (major road = four lanes of traffic going 50 mph), and since it's from a neighborhood, there's no stop light, just us turning into unstopping traffic. So I get to the stop sign before the road and hit the brakes. And nothing happens. So then the brake pedal plummets and the anti-lock brakes kick in. STILL NOTHING IS HAPPENING. My car is slowly but surely skating into incoming traffic, which thankfully at the time consisted of two cars. The car finally came to a stop right before the right lane, and I made my turn. As I was starting to turn, the back of my car started to skid and I could see another line of traffic coming. Thankfully I was able to correct the car before it really started fishtailing and got to school with no other incidences. BUT THAT WAS STILL SCARY.

And apparently, the Detroit automakers are selling Saab and Hummer and possibly getting rid of Pontiac, Mercury and Saturn. I don't know why, but when I heard that I got all sad (except for Hummer, because they were the dumbest idea for a car I've ever heard). Even though I only like Saabs to begin with and it's not like I'm in any position to buy any of those cars. I don't even know what to think of the whole automaker-bailout idea, and I live here for deity's sake.