awakeSpecifically, that was when we were up this morning to shuffle
laurie_robey's brother and sister-in-law off to Dulles for their skiing trip. (Skiing seems like fun, BTW ... that's something I'd like to try someday. But I digress.)Unfortunately, Bruce, the ever-faithful old Outback, was completely not prepared to deal with the cold. After a few unenthusiastic "rrr, rrr, rrrrr..."s, it was clear that he was not going to start without a jump. Furthermore, the failure of his battery put some kind of short into the electrical system, causing the turn signals and brake lights to continually flash when he was turned off, as if part of a car alarm system -- which Bruce does not have, and therefore has no way of turning off.
So after a jumpstart from Laurie's brother, we taxied them off to the airport and took Bruce over to the doctor (or in this case, Reston Automotive), where a very nice fella by the name of Bill let us in 20 minutes before they were due to open rather than let us freeze outside filling out an "after hours drop box" form. After assuring Bill that Bruce was legal and that even though he didn't have the stickers he did have a receipt from the DMV to prove it (I haven't told you folks about that particular debacle, have I? Well I'm still not going to.) we left Bruce there, lights a-flash, and decided that the time was ripe for a Starbucks breakfast.
BEST. NEWS. EVER. The Starbucks ham-and-egg sandwich is back on an english muffin where it belongs! Our long national nightmare is over! Let joy be unconfined! Let there be dancing in the streets, and necking in the parlor! That right there made all the shivering and car-finagling worth every moment.
So anyway, back home now for showers and general get-ready-for-workness, but it's only 7:30 and already been quite a day. Oh! And like the title of the post says, we got to see this strange sort of anti-sunset, where it went from being dark to daylight. I looked this up on Wikipedia and they described it as being "dawn" -- something I've often heard about but dismissed as purely rumor. It's real! Weird.
-The Gneech