I did it again - after I bought the ThinkPad which worked well, so I was feeling good about the purchase, and eagerly anticipating our trip to Las Vegas, I was actually happy there for a moment. This is very bad. Whenever I’m so foolish as to allow myself to be happy, even for a nanosecond, this little red light goes on over Fate’s desk, she rears her hand back and SHWACK! swats me like an annoying housefly.

Last night I was leaving the drug store after picking up an allergy prescription refill and the sunlight happened to hit just right for me to see something shiny in the tyre on the front driver’s side. I reached down to brush it off, or to see if it was a nail or something, and sliced my finger open. It was steel. As in a steel-belted radial, steel. There was a strip of about 8" - 10" where the rubber tread was gone - just completely gone, and braided steel mesh was exposed. Less than optimal. Of course, it was two minutes after seven, most of the tyre places in Conyers close at seven (the ones which don’t close at six) so I couldn’t even call around to find out who had my tyres in stock, who had the best deal, or when they opened this morning. I wanted to cry.

In fact, I did cry, a little, but that was later on at home. Of course I realize that everyone’s tyres wear out, that anyone who owns a car must replace the tyres (and other components) from time to time and that, in general, things wear out, things fall apart. But why NOW?!? Two days before our trip to Vegas, in the middle of all these wedding plans, neither of which is exactly cheap and right after I splurged on the laptop, NOW, for some reason, entire strips of my tyres decide they don’t want to leave I-20, even if I do. Such bad timing is the theme of my entire adulthood. And since it’s me, it couldn’t be that I happen to notice my tyres wearing a little and mentally schedule a time to get that taken care of, maybe on a weekend or once we get back from Vegas - oh, NOOO, whole big chunks of Goodyear rubber have to disappear, like a science fiction critter has been chomping on my tyre and it’s got to be a frickin’ EMERGENCY that disrupts my life, The Boss’s schedule and the meeting I was supposed to be in this morning.

Yes, I was late to work YET AGAIN, that’s about the 45th Tuesday in a row, because obviously I couldn’t keep driving with the tyre like that (especially in the rain, it’s raining today of course) and instead I had to go buy tyres at 7AM. The guys at Big 10 were nice and helpful, had the tyres I wanted, got me in and out as quickly as possible, three hundred dollars later...there’s no real point to this story, I guess, except that if you ever happen to see me and I look like I might be happy, do me a favor and trip me, or poke me with a stick, or steal my purse or something, will you? You'll only be saving me from something worse happening later on.