Oops

[livingdeb]

I may have figured out why I got that evil sticker on my car. That journal entry said the notice was for illegal parking, but I now think that was just an assumption I made; I think the notice was actually more vague.

Today I looked at my inspection and license stickers and noticed that both said 2005. I'd thought that the expiration date was printed on them rather than the start date. I looked at other cars; theirs all said 2006. I hate when I'm a complete idiot.

If your stickers are expired, that means your car can be classified as a junk heap. You are not allowed to pile your junk in the street, so your neighbors can ask the police to tow it away. I'm pretty sure police rarely enforce this without a call of complaint, so I still have a wiener-head neighbor.

I found one of the current stickers in my mail pile. I went and got my car inspected (and it passed) and got the other sticker. Since this is the first year the inspection in Austin has included a test of the exhaust emissions, it wasn't necessarily a given that my 1991 car would pass. The stickers are now both on my windshield where they belong.

I am now lending my junk heap to my sister again so that she can get the brakes on her real car fixed. Heh.

Nanowrimo Update

Word count: 1695. So I am still barely on schedule. I have two section titles with nothing at all in them--too boring to write anything at all. I have a scene about auto inspections. I have a sappy crappy afterword. I remembered the Alamo (theatre) and have dragged Jackie Chan into my mess. And Leslie (a politically active homeless person with a presence downtown in controversial clothing).

I think I need to have my characters get sad sometimes. The scene in "Firefly" where Inara starts crying in private (after she finds out that her love, who she is not dating, has had relations with a friend of hers). My characters are all very cool on the outside, like she was, but they are very tra-la-la on the inside, too. Fake! Fake! Fake!

But I don't have time for this hard stuff right now. I need more scenes. When most of them are only 200 words, it takes forever.

I'm really having trouble thinking up stuff and want to quit. But I'm on schedule and have only two days to go. So I'm not going to.

(Ironically, I think it will be fun next month to put my scenes in order and do the research required to make it more true. For example, I will have to watch Jackie Chan's "Drunken Master" again. And research how well Leslie did in his (actually, she'd rather I said her) mayoral campaigns before 1999 when my story is set. But meanwhile, ugh.)

Comments

Leslie

[raaga123.livejournal.com]

Leslie might have more luck with the "she" thing if she'd shave her beard. That would destroy the mystique, though, so I hope she doesn't.