Murphy's Law

Well, this week continues to prove the very scientifically accurate theory of Murphy's law that "Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong." Ever since our car broke down last Tuesday (that's one week and two days ago) it has been nothing but a string of complications and unexpected difficulties. Where did I leave off? Last Thursday? I'll pick up there.

Thursday - For the most part this day was pretty good. I went shopping for teacher clothes for my new job with a good friend, and we hit a pretty incredible sale at the Esprit Outlet store where I spent over $100 on items discounted to prices of about $10-$15 (some of these clothes were originally priced at ridiculous prices like $170 per item...I got a pretty awesome deal). After shopping we went back to our hotel room (which as you might remember, was provided by Julian's work because he had some conference in Edmonton) to meet Julian. Julian had the good news to say that the mechanic had driven the car and he couldn't find anything else wrong with it and that we could pick it up anytime. We phoned a friend (Caitlin) that had offered to drive us back to Barrhead if we needed some help and luckily she was free that night to take us there. The plan was to go there, pick up the car and head back to Edmonton that night so we could head to Regina for Thanksgiving with Julian's family.

So Caitlin picked us up and we took off for our roadtrip to Barrhead, and found the car. Julian had said that the guy at the car shop had left the key somewhere in the car, but I could see right away that Julian was having trouble locating it. After searching for about 10 minutes we decided to try to phone the guy (his wife works in Julian's office) and see if he could enlighten us. So we headed up to Julian's office and he found the number. I guess, the guy forgot to leave the key in the car and didn't have a key to the shop or any phone numbers of anyone who did. He also told us that they opened at 8:30 but that he would likely be late...

After freaking out slightly, thinking that we'd just wasted 3 hours of Caitlin's life and mileage on her car, we realized that I could stay in Barrhead and pick up the car in the morning while Julian and Caitlin drove back to Edmonton. But I wasn't happy about it. They went, I stayed, and it generally was an unhappy time. The one good thing that came from it was that I decided that on my way into Edmonton the next day, I would stop in at my new school and meet the teachers and students I would be working with.

Friday - I woke up early on Friday and walked to the shop to pick up the car and paid the $60 for whatever they did (apparently they replaced an $0.85 breaker and test drove the car to find nothing else wrong with it). As I was about to leave the shop, the guy that whose wife Julian works with arrived and wanted to chat with me about what they had found...he suggested that I buy a few extra fuses just in case one of them blew again, because they weren't convinced that it wouldn't happen again...so at 85 cents a piece, I bought 5 extra fuses and made my way to Edmonton stopping at Busby Elementary. I spent the morning there and it went pretty great. I got a way better idea of what exactly I would be doing and got to meet all the teachers there and the kids. It looks like it's going to be a really good job for me (Yay!!!)

I made my way into Edmonton and picked up Julian and all our stuff at the hotel. We stopped off at Julian's old apartment to drop off some borrowed Tupperware and change out of our fancy work clothes (we still have keys because the condo is owned by Julian's parents and Julian is the manager...plus we are still friends with David who still lives there). Then it was onwards to Regina with one stop at Capilano Mall on the East side of town for dinner on our way out.

We had a bit of lunch/dinner in the food court and then it was off to Regina...or so we thought...I was driving because Julian was still eating his food and as I was backing out of the parking spot, the car stalled again! and lo and behold it wouldn't start again...but no big deal because we had all these fuses that they sold me just in case this very thing happened. They had predicted that it might stall again and said that if it did I should be able to replace the fuse and then drive it to the nearest service station to have it looked at again. So I replaced the fuse (which was indeed blown) and tried to start the car again. Nothing. I pulled out the fuse and this one was blown too. I tried one more time with a fresh fuse. Car still wouldn't start. At least we were at a mall where we could get out of the cold and rain. We checked out the WalMart there to see if they had an automotives department but I guess they only do oil changes and tires. After a few hours of trying to figure out what to do which involved finding various phone numbers of friends, almost buying a cell phone and flipping through the yellow pages for places nearby that might have space to look at our car over the long weekend, we called CAA again for a tow truck and our friend Jen, who lives not to far from Capilano mall. She was not home, but her mom and dad offered us their truck to use for the weekend. The tow truck and Mr and Mrs Kinghorn (Jen's parents) showed up at almost the same time and I gratefully accepted the keys to their truck hugged them both and followed the tow truck to the Fountain Tire where Julian used to take his car when we lived in Edmonton. It was pretty obvious that Julian was pretty disappointed about not being able to go to Regina. It would have been the first time in a very long time that he and both his sisters and their families would have been back in Regina for Thanksgiving. Poor guy :(

We called David (old roommate) and told him our predicament and arrranged to crash at the apartment for a few days if we needed to. One thing I should say is that we are so lucky to have so many good friends that we can depend on if we ever get in a bind. For instance, the Kinghorns treat us like surrogate parents since neither of us have any family in Edmonton. So we stayed at David's that night and played a nice game of Settlers of Catan with David and his new roommate Steve and a very nice sleep on the futon couch (which is actually Julian's...haha) and also looked at a few car websites as we were planning on buying a new car now that I had a job that required a half-hour commute, each way.

Saturday - We got up early on Saturday and made plans to visit a few different dealers around Edmonton. The first one we hit was Sun Toyota on Whyte Ave. We test drove a lightly used 2006 Carolla. The dealer kept making comments like "I have two appointments for this car today" or "I am definitely going to sell this car today...it is such a good car" (if you can, imagine this with Polish accent with a lisp). We really liked how the car felt and were considering it, but it was the only car we had driven and it didn't have cruise control. Mario (our salesman) offered us a deal of free oil changes for a year at their dealership. We bargained with him to get cruise control installed in the car instead of the oil changes and put down $1000 to hold the car for us while we made a decision despite that fact that Mario's manager was "not very happy" with him since they had so many appointments for that car that day. We talked with the finance guy, Bernie, at Toyota to see if we could be approved for financing on the car then went back to the apartment for a while to phone our parents to get their opinions on the car. We decided to take the car and let Mario get back on his manager's good side. Bernie let us know about all the things we would need to get approval for a loan for the car and to have it licensed and registered by Wednesday, which would have to wait until Tuesday because of the long weekend.

As for the other car, Julian had gone in early to Fountain Tire to make sure they could take the car. They could and said they had found the wire that was causing the problem. They told him it would take 2-5 hours to fix, but they were only open until noon because of the long weekend. The car wasn't fixed by Saturday but we expected to to be finished sometime on Tuesday.

Sunday - Sunday was pretty relaxing and pleasant. Steve and David were planning on having a Thanksgiving dinner with some of Steve's friends. I took David and Julian to Esprit to capitalize on the amazing sale they were having (both are frugal guys who don't often spend money on clothes, so they kind of needed some nice stuff). We picked up some things to contribute to the dinner, had a nice dinner with good company and later went to play board games and card games with Dean, Scott and Nigel.

Monday - The plan for Monday was to have our friends Rathi and Jenica drive us to Barrhead to have a visit and a sleepover because our choir was supposed to have a performance for a high school band/choir retreat in the Camp Nakamun Retreat Centre on Tuesday and they both had nothing better to do on Tuesday and wanted to visit with us. They were planning on visiting us anyway on Tuesday before any of this car mess. We made these plans, and also started thinking about the performance. We were supposed to bring our sound equipment to Nakamun but realized that if the four of us were going to be in Barrhead and that the rest of the choir had school or work when we were supposed to be loading equipment, our director, Scott, would be the only one to bring all the equipment out and pretty much it just wouldn't happen and we'd have to perform without microphones and a sound system...not so good for a small jazz choir and a room of 170 teenagers.

So we arranged with Scott to get our equipment loaded after much trouble in tracking down and anxious emails begging the other people in the choir to come out and help us pack up and load the equipment. In the end it was me, Rathi, Julian, David (combined weight of probably 420 lbs...you do the math...we're not big strong people), Jenica (who has tendonitis and isn't allowed to lift anything, really) and Scott. We managed to take down and load all the equipment into the truck we had borrowed from the Kinghorns. Jen was working that day, but later phoned us and invited us all over to her house for another Thanksgiving dinner. This family is honestly one of the most kind and generous people you will meet. After we finished packing up we went over there for dinner and while there decided it made more sense for Julian to drive the truck with the equipment to Barrhead while I picked up the Neon from the shop, and Jenica and Rathi would go with Jen for our performance in Nakamun. Nobody had to sleep on the floor and Jen wouldn't have to drive her family's truck and park it at school all day with all the equipment in it.

Tuesday - I was awakened by the phone ringing at 8:00 in the morning at David's house...it only rang once so I forgot about it...until later that morning when I was chatting with David and he said that someone had phoned for me to sub at my new school and for some reason he didn't want to wake me up to talk to whoever had phoned. (Gah! Why?)

By noon I hadn't heard from Julian or Fountain Tire about the car. I had expected to be able to go and pick up our fixed car by then. When I phoned Julian he said he would phone them and find out what was going on. Meanwhile I started to make new plans for getting me to Nakamun that night. I called Rathi and she said she would pick me up after she picked up Jenica and we would all go to a pre-arranged meeting place where Jen would pick us up to drive us. About 15 minutes before Rathi was supposed to pick me up Julian phoned back saying that Fountain Tire had said that they had found the problem and it would take 2-5 hours to fix...exactly what they had told us on Saturday...somehow they screwed up and forgot to work on our car that day. Unbelievable. The only explanation I can think of is that we somehow managed to cast a stupid spell on anyone we hired to look at this car.

So we arranged to keep the truck for one more day and I went to Nakamun with Rathi, Jenica and Jen. We would bring the truck back on Wednesday for our regular rehearsal time to set it up in our jazz choir room again and pick up our NEW CAR to drive home.

The concert in Nakamun went awesomely well, and the highschool band kids thought we were just great. It was probably one of our best performances ever. And we had thought that this would be a disaster because we have only been working on some of this music for a few weeks. Murphy's Law doesn't always apply.

Wednesday - This day was my second chance to visit my new school. I spent the whole day there. The morning was spent with Grade 2 doing Language Arts, Grade 5 doing Math, and the whole afternoon in the Kindergarten room, singing songs, playing with puppets, doing pudding fingerpainting, changing peed in pants, etc. It was an active afternoon. When it was time to go home, two boys were hitting each other while putting on their shoes. I went up to them to stop this behaviour, saying "Hey, you don't ever hit your friends!" I looked at the first boy and said "Do you hit your friends, yes or no?" He started at me blankly and blinked a few times. I thought he might cry. A little surprised, I looked at the second boy and asked the same question to which he answered "No." and I let him go to get his bag and coat. I looked to the first boy again and repeated my question. He just started at me. Blink...blink...blink...blink... His eyes weren't focused on me and I tried to get him to look me in the eye, so we could talk about the seriousness of his behaviour. blink...blink...blink... trying to pick my battles, I told him it was okay and that he wasn't in trouble, that I was just trying to keep him and his friend safe at school. blink...blink...blink...blink... I took him by the hand and led him out to the hallway and told him he could get his coat and bag to go home. No reponse. He stared straight ahead. blink..blink..blink..blink... Then I noticed some drool coming from the corner of his mouth and dripping onto his sweatshirt. I yelled for the teacher I was taking over from that there was something wrong with this boy. She looked at him and tried to talk to him...nothing...I ran to get the principal (who also teaches the Kindergarten, when I'm not) and she tried to get him to respond to her...blink..blink..blink..

She picked him up and took him into the sick room at the office while the other teacher phoned his mother and an ambulance. His mom said that he sometimes shuts down when he's reprimanded but she had never seen him do anything like this. We thought that he might be having some sort of mild seizure or something. He ended up being taken away in an ambulance. When they took him out on the stretcher he looked like it was in REM sleep, his eyes moving beneath is eyelids. I don't think anyone knew for sure if it was a seizure or if he was just a really good pretender. Either way, I felt really really terrible about it.

But once there was nothing more anyone could do, I went back to Barrhead to pick up Julian from work so we could get back to Edmonton to pick up our car(s) and go to our 'Nuf Sed rehearsal. Julian had news that our old car (the Neon) was fixed and ready to be picked up, but then they phoned him back an hour later saying that when they were driving it out to the parking lot another fuse blew...

We dropped by Fountain Tire just in case they had fixed it in between the time Julian talked to them and us getting to Edmonton, and they were closed and our car was still in the shop. So we headed to the Toyota Dealership to pick up our new car, where we were barraged with a new set of setbacks. The Finance guy we were working with (Bernie) said that there was a problem with the letter that Julian had sent by fax proving that he worked for his job. He said it also needed to have confirmation of his salary and proof that he wasn't on probation. This was all news to us. He let this slide as long as Julian promised to fax in a new letter first thing in the morning. He also said that he hadn't received our insurance papers, which he needed to get our registration done. Julian said that he had forwarded the email the insurance company had sent him that afternoon, to which Bernie replied that he should have faxed it because he never checks his email. Now, I don't know about you, but I think it's bad business to include your email on your business card and then claim that it's the customer's fault that something didn't get done because he emailed something instead of faxing it. In my general understanding, most people have more access to email than a fax machine. As it was already 7:00 PM by now, this meant that we couldn't get our car registered, even though it was indeed insured. In Alberta some things that should be simple are really stupid, like not having insurance and registration one and the same thing like in most other provinces. Bernie assured us that this wouldn't be a problem because he could get us a temporary in-transit 24 hour registration so we could take the car to Barrhead and get it registered there.

So, after ironing out the wrinkles in that Financial mess of getting a new car, we headed over to the used car lot to pick up our car. Mario wasn't working at the time and the manager there said that another guy, would help us. We waited outside in the cold near the car for a few minutes before going back inside to see if someone was actually going to help us. The manager saw us again and yelled to the other guy to help us, to which the other sales guy yelled back that he couldn't do it right then because he was with a customer. After grumbling about it, the manager then decided that he would actually seal the deal and set us up with our keys and had Julian sign a few more papers. He took us out to the car to find that the car wasn't cleaned up like he had expected it to be. The floor mats were in the trunk and there were marks from stickers on the windows that had to be scraped off. We told him we didn't really mind too much, and that we had to be going soon. So he quickly ran over the instruments of the car showing us how to adjust the seats and how to dim the lights in the dashboard, etc. I asked him how to turn on the cruise control. He paused before realizing that they hadn't actually installed the cruise control like they had promised they would. He told us that we could bring it back anytime to have it done.

So, we left the dealership without cruise control or proper registration (ie. there were no plates on our car...just a temporary in-transit piece of paper taped to the windshield) and headed to our jazz choir rehearsal, for which we were half an hour late.

Driving home we were both feeling a lot better about things...we actually had a car that worked, which just made things a lot easier and things were starting to look up.

Thursday - I drove our new car (without cruise control) to school and I had a pretty good day there. Nobody had any seizures when I reprimanded them, I got to see how this teacher does music classes and the fire department came to show a fire safety video. I wasn't planning on going back to the school on Friday, but by the end of the day, I thought maybe one more day wouldn't hurt. Also, the art teacher in the school had asked me if I could take some colouring contest entries into Barrhead for her.

When I went to pick up Julian from work, he was on the phone and looking quite agitated. He was on the phone with somebody from the Toyota Dealer where we bought the Carolla. I guess he had gone to get plates for the car on his lunch break and the ladies in the office there told him that the car in question was not in their system and they couldn't register it until it had an out-of-province inspection. I imagined a very irate Julian walking back to work with a wad of cash (they only accept at these places) and no plates for the car. When he got back to the office he called the dealer and they said they would fix the problem. He called back at 2 and they said they were still working on it and that they would phone him back in 10 minutes. They didn't phone back so Julian called again at 4 and they told him they were still working on the problem. Finally they phoned him back at 4:30 saying that the car should be on their system and that he should be able to get it registered now.

We drove down to the registry office with 20 minutes before they closed. Once again, the lady looked up our car and told us that it was NOT on their system and they still couldn't register it. We told her that the manager had just told us that it would be on the system and that we needed to phone him. She asked us if we had a cell phone and when we answered that we did not, she told us it would be $5 for a long distance call from their office. We told her to add it to the bill. After 2 phone calls to the Toyota people we were informed that there was some kind of mix-up at the registry office and we couldn't have the car registered that day. Which meant we weren't allowed to drive it anymore. Which meant that I couldn't go back to my school again. So annoying!

So that brings us up to date...hopefully this series of blog entries doesn't have to get any longer.

All we can do is be happy that we are healthy and have good families and good jobs. Here's to hoping that things start to go a little more smoothly very soon.