Catching up

Had to take my car to the shop this morning, which caused me to miss my son's swimming. Luckily his Mother agreed to take him, can't thank her enough. Very nice thing to do.

Had a lot of time to kill before finding out the diagnosis on the car so I borrowed my wife's bus pass and got to walk around the city on a foggy morning.



Kept waiting for the sun to burn through the fog, but it never did.



Got a lot of walking in, from Buttles and High to the new park being built to the Main Library. There, I waited with others for it to open, and took over a computer to see the score of the Tottenham/Arsenal game while I waited for the mechanic to call.

Finished a book, and a few minutes later, got the call. I expected the rotors and brake pads to be shot, and they were. What was a bit of a shock, but not overly surprising was being told the head gasket is leaking.

It's a 22 year old car, in rough condition, with 241,000 miles on it. The mechanic and I agreed that sinking $1,600 to fix that was not a good idea. So I'll be watching the coolant levels, and hoping the car can hang on through the winter.

Backtracking to Thursday night's Decathlon Slam, team Shake and Bake was defeated. I lost the one minute round, and still do not the the judge heard the cheers properly. had to sit though an excruciating trivia round. Kids these days do not know their history. Then there was the Haiku Death Match which was closer to sitting at lunch in the high school cafeteria. I think the haiku was that old as well.

We did a group piece based on one of Kim Braswell's pieces about being dissed in a slam, complete with accents. I'm still trying to figure out what the accent was but I ended up yelling out in Long Island. Oh, and right as I was starting my first line the bell in the college went off. Nice.

I was representing our team in the Dozens Round, which is essentially - "Your Poetry is so..." Had come up with some solid hits. Your poetry is so bad Sarah Palin quotes your Tweets. Greg Oden's knee is stronger than your poetry. This was the first time I had done this and I was hanging in there.

I was up against Izetta, who beat me earlier this year at Writing Wrongs. She had my poetry being so bad that Kanye would not interrupt it. Finally though she came up with this gem. "Your poetry is so stupid, Fantasia reads it to her daughter at bed time."

Game. Set Match. She owns me, for now.