The drive home on wednesday was unusually slow. I kept replaying the parts of the day where I'd screwed up at something. I tried to reason with myself, but the only thing I could do was worry.

Mom and Scott got into a few unusually loud arguments over Scott's brother and how Scott needs to cut the protective big brother shit; this happens at least every other day. Long story short, Scott's dad left the boys a trust (and the house that Scott, Mom and I live in now). The brother misuses his and Scott's trust accounts, doing shit like buying 3 luxury house boats so he can sell them and keep one for himself. The brother even bought off Scott's son with an 11k USD christmas check, just so the son could spy on Scott and report back. My mother hasn't been regularly paid because of the brother, so she takes every opportunity to belt it out of her system, with tears and screams and otherwise.

Mom and I spent thursday taking care of financial errands and seeing if we could ressurect my car (which has been in Gran's driveway since October).

We first stopped off at the Unemployment office so I could register. I'd been putting it off for awhile, but I needed to officially be jobless in order get my student loans deferred (i.e. put off). The building reminded me of Shubert's death march. You know, the "dun dun duh-dun" one. It was a squat grey square with a black line along the top like the cowl of an executioner, shifting down into parallel bands of suicidal blue. I was expecting to wait in a Great Depression or Soviet style line/queue for 5 hours, eyeing government officials with veiled hatred as I mentally masturbated about little Alexander and how I'd pay for his soul-releasing violin lessons or some foreign film shite.

Nope. I got my official "Yes, you're almost officially unemployed" card in 3 minutes. People register almost exclusively on the 'net now. They even have computers and classes set up in the place so anyone can do it. So we got home and I registered for no benefits (since I only worked in Ohio, and Ohio can't grant me benefits because I live in California).

After that Mom and I tried juicing up the '89 Ford Probe for a few hours. It looked like a 2 ton off-white turd, complete with fossilized leaf imprints along the body and generous bird shit accents on the windshield. We kept laughing our asses off at the poor thing. After all, it was MY piece of shit. I even posed for a picture holding a pitchfork in front of it. The best part was that transmission fluid and a jug of water had leaked everywhere inside, so that about 10 different cultures of mold and mildew had sprung up to create this overpowering, hacking odor. We had to cover the backseats and floor entirely in garbage bags so the smell wouldn't be as bad.

Lo and behold, though, we actually got the thing up and running. Mom and I took it around a few blocks, laughing our asses off as people kept staring at my car in disbelief; the look on people's faces at the car wash was priceless.

Eventually, Mom drove the mold mobile over to Scott's. This left me driving alone in her truck for the first time--along heavy freeway traffic at night. I almost got into an accident, but remaining panic-stricken and continuously playing the theme for the Death Star in my head saw me safetly to the other end.

Friday wasn't so hot at the Zivago lab, but in retrospect not much went wrong. On saturday and sunday I mostly went hiking, did some photography and wrote out the experiment procedure ("protocol") that L should have done weeks back.

On monday I helped inject our last remaining row of 6 rats with that depression-inducing shite. We'd gotten halfway through when we ran out of drug. L had left for class, so things promptly went to hell while I tried (illegaly) unlocking a 4 combination safe to get at the chemicals needed to make the drug. Finally, though, Dr. Zivago came back from wherever and made the stuff that I should have been able to make. The rest of the day was spent ferrying some paperwork for L and cleaning glassware in scaulding hot (160 Farenheit) water with chemicals.

And on monday night, Scott bitched about his brother, which naturally set off Mom. At least there are some things you can count on being constant.

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