Operation: E-6000

I don't know who invented the industrial adhesive E-6000, nor do I care. I just know that it's very, very messy and not exactly the most useful substance on the planet.

As you know if you read my previous post, I needed to glue a suction cup handle to my car window, as the cups wouldn't hold on their own. E-6000 is supposed to be one of the strongest adhesives on the planet. It didn't work (no matter how hard I tried, it wouldn't stick), the handle broke, the window is covered with the shit (which I will have to scrape off after it dries, and the tube of it -- an aluminum tube, mind you -- burst all over my hands when I was using it.

Few things are more maddening to get all over your hands than industrial adhesive, let me tell you. It's worse than super glue. In fact, it's like silicone (which wouldn't work on the window, either). Once it begins to set/dry, it becomes very rubbery and must be scrubbed/peeled off like caulk. I'll have to wait to tomorrow and take a scraper/butter knife/what-have-you to get it off the car window. It now looks like I'm back to square one with the window, and I'm out of options. So it's possible that for the remainder of the winter, I'm just going to have to be cold all the time when I drive.

In case you didn't know the (rather embarrassing) details of the situation, my Monte Carlo has power windows that don't work and/or are off-track. To raise/lower them, I must do it by hand. This normally wouldn't be a problem, but the driver's side interior door handle is broken as well, so to get back out of the car I must reach out the window and open the door from the outside. If the window is all the way sealed, I can't open it/slide it down from the inside. At all. So no matter what, while I'm driving I always have to leave my window down about half an inch so that once I get to my destination, I can push it down the rest of the way, reach outside, and open the door. Then I have to get out and pull it back up to seal it again. It's a huge pain in the ass, and I wanted to get a suction cup handle to attach to the interior of the window for the wintertime to that I could seal it fully while driving, as it's fucking cold here in Kansas and all of my driving is fast interstate driving.

Andrea got me a suction cup handle, but it wouldn't stick to the glass on its own. That's why I needed the glue, to attach it permanently. The glue wouldn't make it stick either, the handle broke, there's a ton of glue on the glass I'll have to scrape off, and I'm back to square one -- like I said, it looks like I'm going to be freezing while I drive for the rest of the winter.

The passenger's side door handle does work, by the way, but for someone as large as I am, even in a car with a cabin that big, it's very difficult for me to just hop over the seat and get out that way (trust me here, I know from experience). That's only an option if I have no other way to get out of the car, or if the window ends up getting frozen/jammed shut somehow. It'll happen eventually, I'm sure, especially if we get the ice storms the midwest is known for at some point this winter.

Yes folks, welcome to my life. This is what happens when you buy a white-trash landboat with the last $500 you have to your name just to have something to drive.

At least the E-6000 didn't do any damage to the car; the glue is on the aftermarket tinted window that is peeling and makes it hard to see in the dark anyhow. If nothing else I'll cut off the part of the tint that the glue is on with a razor blade, or something, if it won't easily scrape off. I hate tinted windows anyhow.

But enough about my car-related problems. She has fresh air in the tires and a full tank of gas in her, and she seems happy enough.

I finished grading tonight. It took a little more than three hours. All of my students now have their final scores tallied going into the final, and none of them are going to fail the course (except the ones who have already failed for absences and stopped showing up many weeks ago once they did). I almost drank a celebratory beer after I finished grading, but my heart wasn't in it. Truthfully, I feel a sort of emptiness now, a boredom that not even my Pokemon or my podcasts can get rid of. It's strange, really. I figured I'd be all excited to be free of almost all of my responsibility for the semester, but really I just feel...blah. Almost as if I have no purpose in life now for the next month or so.

That and I'm slightly miffed about the car window.

Anyway.

I made my shopping trip to Walmart this afternoon against my better judgment, as it was a Saturday afternoon two weeks before Christmas Eve. The place was crazy, as expected, and crammed so full of people I could barely walk up and down the aisles with my cart. I guess white trash in the midwest have yet to discover purchasing Christmas gifts online via places like Amazon. Still, I was able to make the purchases I needed to make in order to get me by for the next week or two, because after Thursday is over I plan to sleep for a few days and not do a whole hell of a lot. As you know, once my break starts I'm only going to leave the house when absolutely necessary. I'll have to do that again soon, though, as I need to mail off my Christmas packages as well as get a book of stamps, because after paying the bills yesterday, I am now completely out. Here's hoping my mother made it to the bank today to deposit my birthday/Christmas money like she said she would, because I'm going to need it quite soon. Virtually all of my paycheck from Friday went into paying the bills and getting groceries today, and I now find myself back where I was before, really no better/no worse off. I don't get paid again until the 23rd or so.

I did purchase for myself my one and only birthday present today, though -- it's a Batman hoodie made to look like the old-school grey costume, and the hood has the bat ears on it. As I wrote on Facebook, "yeah, I'm gonna be that guy." If you want to see what it looks like, it's this, only mine (regrettably) did not come with the cape, as it's the adult-sized version. It was $20, but I know that aside from my parents' money, it's the only birthday gift I'll receive.

Well, that's not entirely true; Suri told me she has some sort of gift for me, though I don't know what it is. This came as a big surprise, to be honest -- I didn't know anyone in the department exchanged gifts with one another, and certainly wasn't expecting anything from anyone, even Suri. I feel sort of guilty that I haven't gotten her (or anyone else) anything.

One of my colleagues, the poet fellow this year, was talking to me on Thursday during my downtime, and told me that if I was bored, I could always go Christmas shopping in the several hours before my class. I had to laugh.

"For who?" I asked. "Without [the former girlfriend], it's just me and the cats, and it's not like they know what Christmas is."

"I dunno," she said, "parents?"

"Nah," I said. "My parents are 1,000 miles away and always tell me to save my money and not get them anything because they know I'm poor."

That has been my parents' response for the past five years, by the way, when I've asked them if they've wanted me to get them anything for Christmas. After the first three years or so, I just stopped asking because I knew what their response would be.

Also, in case you were wondering, I'm not sending out Christmas cards this year; I don't have the money or stamps for it, and for that I apologize. It's no slight against anyone who will send me a card regardless, of course, it's just that I'm poor. All of my close friends know this already. I have a card I'm going to print out at work and stick in my friends' mailboxes in the department, but other than that I'm not doing anything. I really can't afford to. It's sad, I know, but all of my close friends who live out of state are getting packages in the mail over the next few weeks anyhow, so that counts for something, right? Please say yes.

I'm afraid I'm just not in the "Christmas spirit" this year as much as I usually am, either. Can you really blame me? It's been a horrific year overall, and it's the first Christmas I will spend totally alone with no one else around. I didn't even venture into the "Christmas section" at Walmart this afternoon to look at the decorations or try to find a Santa hat to wear to school next week for finals. My heart's not in it. It's not like I'm religious or anything (and haven't been for many years), but the holidays have always been a time for family and friends, but my friends are all leaving town, and my family is 1,000 miles away. Christmas, just like Thanksgiving was this year (and last year), will be just another day on the calendar for me.

At least I can take solace in the fact that this year I won't be suffering from food poisoning that will confine me to a bed for the better part of a week, as I was a few years ago during Christmas -- including Eve and Day. That was...oh, '07 or '08, I believe. I can't remember. I just remember that it was absolutely godawful horrible, and nothing short of my house burning down or the death of a family member will top that for worst Christmas ever.

Protip for you folks trying to avoid such a Christmas: don't trust expired lunch meat. Ever. I can't tell you how difficult it is, even now, for me to eat sliced deli turkey. The very thought of it makes me ill.

On the plus side, though, it doesn't look like it's going to snow again until the 19th, which makes me a little happy, at least. By that point I should be long done with all of my schoolwork for the semester, safe and sound in my house with the cats and my Batman hoodie. Don't judge me.

Tomorrow I may start creating my study guide for my Middle Eastern/Asian Lit final, or I may not. I really don't know what I'll do. Maybe I'll sleep until the evening, get up, cook some really bad food and watch a lot of cartoons. I'm good at that. Who knows.