Chauffeuring the wedding couple yesterday was fun. The photographer sat in the front seat and was all over the place -- she knelt on the seat facing backwards, and leaned far over into the middle to get good angles for her photos -- but she was pretty good at staying aware of me and moving out of the way when I needed the shift gears.
The bad part was afterwards -- I had promised them I would leave the car in front of the restaurant for about an hour so people could look at it. When we got there, in all the hubbub I accidently put my keys down on the hood of the car. Georg and I took off to get lunch, and when we got back, no keys. I had left the windows rolled down, and I spent about an hour in total panic thinking that I had left the cars inside and someone had taken them. Why anyone would take the keys and leave the car, I couldn't imagine. Still, it was a difficult hour of looking everywhere for the keys, then driving home to get the spare key, then driving back, meanwhile between waiting so long to eat and the stress I had the mother of all headaches. And then when we got back to the car with the spare key, Georg saw my keyring sitting on the hood, right where I had left it. Doh!
It's kind of funny now (though not at the time!). I think my car is the only car in Durham which you can leave your keys on top of for an hour in the middle of town, and no one will notice, not even yourself. I have a long history of leaving things on top of the car and driving around without them falling off. Usually things we were using to work on the decorations like screwdrivers, paint scrapers and rolls of masking tape. Once I drove all the way to Chapel Hill and back with a big pair of pruning loppers on the hood! I still don't know why they didn't fall off on the highway.
After all that excitement we had to make dinner (Georg) and tidy the house (me) before our friends Vicki and John came over. They used to live in Texas so we made pibil, rice and beans and Georg got really nice tortillas from Compare. Vicki and John have been all over the world and had all kinds of experiences. Looks like they may be moving to Australia soon.
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