I have no excuse for not blogging at the end of last week, as I drove to Brooklyn on Saturday. I had to get out of town; the stark colorless Arcticness was getting me down. So I had a wonderful sushi dinner Saturday night with Sa and Sk, at a place that had opened the nights before. Expensive but worth it (of course Sk treated me...). Sunday me and Sa went to a sample sale in Cobble Hill. Three local designers had their stuff in an apartment, a beautiful, slightly-beat-up former industrial space with a skylight above the dining table. Very nice. I bought what was probably an $80 skirt for $20, and Sa got a funky hat and a tiny croched necklace. Then we went to the mecca of my trip, the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. We had to walk quite a ways in the freezing cold to get to the conservatories; along the way we saw a formal lily pond with large goldfish hanging out below a four-inch-thick blanket of ice. Once we got inside and reached the marsh room, it was so green and warm and humid that I felt like curling up in a corner and going to sleep, to let all of the oxygen and warmth in the room penetrate my body. Instead we kept moving through to the jungle and the warm temperate rooms. Sa and I had brought our digital cameras so we took some arty shots (will post one or two tonight).

Sunday night a drive into Manhattan took a turn towards disaster when a pipe in my engine sprang a hole, spurting warm antifreeze all over my hot engine (oh yeah), causing much steam and smoke to billow outt from under the hood. I managed to pull over across the street from the Worst Customer Service Garage ever. I walked in (after knocking) and saw a guy peeing in the bathroom with the door wide open. I pretended not to see him until he was done. They acted like it was a huge favor to even look at the car. The guy put some patching caulk stuff on the hole and we were told to come back in half an hour when it was set (and not a minute more, as they needed the garage space; "I'm doing this as a favor to you," the head guy told us). We wandered around SoHo, which is all chain stores now, and came back, and the stuff still wasn't set. So we watched the superbowl for a while until it became clear that the patch was not holding back the flow. The mechanic decided to replace part of the metal pipe with rubber pipe and some pipe clamps. I was dubious but he said it would hold me until I got home to MA. It barely held me until I got back to Brooklyn, actually, and even then the antifreeze was all but empty by the time I parked.

I started calling mechanics the next morning and I miraculously seem to have found a good one. Unfortunately the part I needed had to be special-ordered, so I was forced to spend an extra day (and night) in Brooklyn. I played a lot of Monkeyball, watched some Game Show Network, and saw most of a movie that seemed to have been someone's grad school project on the IFC. Monday night Sa hosted "Chicks with Sticks" so I used the fabric scraps I bought at the sample sale to do an applique thing for a purse I may someday make. Then Sk came home and we watched Joe Millionaire. It was a pretty good way to spend a stranded day.

Tuesday was more depressing, as I didn't know when the car would be ready, plus I was alone in the apartment. I read a book with a cat or two until I got the magic call around 2 p.m. I'm $230 lighter now (plus $50 for the "patch" in Manhattan) and a little wiser: people, always do your preventative scheduled maintenence on your car. If only I had gotten my 105,000 mile check done...