Happy Anniversary!

I'm ready for my cake please. Today is my three-week anniversary of being unemployed! Isn't that exciting? But who knew that being unemployed is almost more work than being employed. Between job searching, unemployment, COBRA (what level of Dante's Inferno was COBRA conceived on?), 401k rollovers, and my new house frau duties I'm busier than I ever was in the 9-to-5.

In an effort to keep some kind of money rolling in I took an odd job from my wife's uncle. He is an antique car collector, although none of his antique

cars are in running order. What he needed was someone to drive to Phoenix, then to Albuquerque, then back to San Francisco. So he says to himself, "Who do I know that doesn't have a job?" And the answer was me.

So I take him up on his offer and hit the road. The first day was no sweat. 11 hours in a car to Phoenix wasn't bad. The next day started off as no sweat. Six hours in the car to Albuquerque (with a 4:00 a.m. departure) wasn't too bad either. After picking up said uncle at the Albuquerque airport, picking up a U-haul trailer, and then picking up an antique jalopy from a pack of good-ol-boys 30 miles south of Albuquerque we finally hit the road home. As we're driving the uncle keeps commenting on the trailer's amazing fishtail abilities. He thinks it's just the speed we're going (who doesn't go 75mph with a loaded car trailer behind them?). Around 20 minutes later a women pulls along side us and starts yelling and pointing at the trailer. We pull off the road to find out what her fuss was about and discover that one of the trailer tires has blown. The fishtail mystery is solved.

I did not get a picture of our actual blown tire, but it looked something like this one I found on another blog.

Now begins the downhill slide of our story. We wait for U-haul's emergency service to bring a new tire. Three hours later we're fixed and back on the road. Three hours of sitting on the side of Interstate 40 in New Mexico. Most fun ever! We get back to Flagstaff at midnight, get lost trying to find the hotel, attempt to barter with the late check-in clerk for beer (unsuccessfully) and promptly fall asleep.

I had never been so ready to be out of a car in my entire life.