A couple of years ago, while I was working for the Houston Press, I took a trip to College Station with my friend Billy on a weekend when I had to get a bunch of galleys turned in by Saturday morning. We drove out Friday night and I spent part of the evening working, then borrowed his car to drive the hour and a half back to Houston so I could turn in the galleys. The idea was that I'd then turn around, come back to College Station for the rest of the weekend, and Billy would drive us home late Sunday night.

Billy drove an old stickshift Pontiac. I'd learned to drive standard a couple weeks before.

The galleys were done around two. I left College Station about five-thirty AM, bumped-and-ground the Pontiac through empty streets to Highway 6, eased it up into fifth and cruised back to Houston. At Beltway 8, I decided to peel off and get some gas. I pulled onto the feeder and stopped at a red light. When it turned green again, I did something wrong with the clutch and killed the engine in the middle of the intersection.

Some fuckwit picked just that moment to come screaming over the hill and rear-end my ass. On a three-lane frontage road, mind you. A three-lane, otherwise empty frontage road.

That's about what this week has felt like. I've been cruising along, basically getting things taken care of when and where they needed to be, and then WHAM! Blindsided. By a pile of responsibilities, in this case. I will be running around like a maniac this weekend.

So. Take a shower, go get that fucking paycheck that payroll keeps not mailing to me, mail it to USAA, turn in the library book that's been sitting in my carrel since last semester, go to class, call the lady about the condo like I forgot to do last night, go get my car, go see the condo, buy some groceries, see about getting a futon mattress, call the people in Oklahoma about that traffic ticket, get some reading done for Discrete Structures, look at the syntax homework, maybe go to Dan the Younger's party, maybe get some writing done, sleep, get up, find something productive to do until 2, go to SAGA, go home, sleep, spend Sunday working on that story for class.

Fuck me.

It turns out that the CD I was looking for is in fact an import. Thus, armed with the knowledge that even if I had been able to find it here, I probably would have paid $20 or more, I turned to the Canadian music stores of the web. And I'd like to share the particularly neat shopping experience I had with MyMusic.

I guess these guys are primarily a Canadian outfit, since when you first go to the site, all the prices are in Canadian dollars (there's a button to change them to US). They are also cheap as hell. On most of the other sites I checked, I was looking at $17-$30CDN, which translates to a little less than what I could find an import for here. MyMusic had it for $15 Canadian, and their price calculator puts that at $9.90 US. Add three bucks for shipping, and suddenly I still have it for less than it'd cost at Soundwaves if I wanted to wait till I got home.

(Thanks for offering to look for it for me, Karine, but I don't think you'd have been able to find it and mail it to me for under that price. So I just went ahead and ordered it. I really appreciate your volunteering, though!)

But that's not all of it. Under payment options, they offer credit card, check, money order, and gold bullion. (!) And apparently new customers get free Bazooka bubblegum with their first order. (That wasn't even a promo. They mentioned it on the print-this-for-your-receipt page.) And their secure server is quite fast. I am very pleased with how smoothly this part of the transaction went. Here's hoping the rest of it progresses apace!