When is it better to leave well enough alone?

Hello out there in the blogosphere. Please keep in mind the title question as it's one that both Chuck and I have learned over the course of the past few days. First, let's start with Chuck. As I mentioned in previous posts, this weekend was the Christening for his cousin's twins. Prior to leaving for Cleveland, Chuck decided to tinker with his car because the air conditioner was on the fritz. Sure, it worked, but it didn't get as cold as it used to. Being the handy guy that he is, Chuck read a couple of articles and looked-up a couple of YouTube repair videos, and seemed prepared to futz around in the engine trying to remedy this problem. While in Cleveland, his car started to act funny and the A/C quit working altogether. Needless to say, he returned just fine late last night; however, his car let out the most hideous squealing racket, followed by smoke pouring out of the engine. The A/C compressor siezed up causing a major belt to break. This is his week to do some work in northern Indiana and we were hoping to use his car for our up-coming camping trip, so getting it to the shop for repair fell upon my shoulders. On the plus side, my AAA membership is up to date, so the tow to the mechanic's was free. On the down side, the repair estimate came in at $1,300. [Yes, you read that right.] I'm almost convinced that whatever he did to his engine for "repair" didn't necessarily break it because it wasn't working correctly in the first place, but his actions probably helped accelorate it's decline.

Now, for my little lesson: I made the bone-headed decision to trust Chuck to attach our "congrats" card to the gift box with the cupcake hats inside, so I didn't bother to place a label onto the gift. Yes, that was very retarded of me. Chuck had reassured me that he'd sign my name to the card, since he hadn't bought it yet and that was his contribution. Unfortunately, he sat the box onto the gift table, then stuck the card into the card box. This usually wouldn't have been a problem had this been a normal-sized gathering, but let me back up and say that there was approximately 100 RSVPs to the Christening party; and (according to Chuck) the cops offered to help with parking and traffic control during the event. Apparently, the cops on duty were Croat, and their Christenings are even larger than the Hungarians', so they were very prepared to lend a hand. I'm hoping that Chuck's cousin will see the handknitted hats that were wrapped in pink giftwrap stamped with red hearts and know that it was from me. I really don't feel like calling over there out of fear of sounding expectant and tacky on the phone. If there's a "next time", I will insist on taping the stupid card to the gift myself.

Okay, enough about us -- it's been a while since I've had a crazy experience and boy do I have one that just made me smile. Saturday night, I attended the MSU Summer Circle performance. I made plans to meet up with Mark there; he arrived early to the "theater" and ran into Turfgrass Sue and her husband Scott. (Ok, so what if she no longer works at the Library, I'll always think of her as associated with Turfgrass). They opted to sit in the bleachers to have a straight-on view of the stage, which is where I caught up with them. I didn't care, just as long as I could see. We had plenty of time for chit-chat before the performance, and that's when I first noticed him. Perched on a bleacher seat three rows down and to the left was my Saturday night loon with wacked-out hair and beady eyes. You could tell that something was just a little off with the way that he kept nervously looking around him and fidgeted; and despite the sweltering 80^o weather, he was dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt. He seemed to keep it together for the 2-hours or so of the play; but afterwards, there was a late performance of Beckett's "Rough for Theater I" and that's when it happened. Throughout the first half of the sketch, Mr. Saturday Night wasn't in his seat, so I thought he had decided to take off (as a lot of people did). During a particularly tense part of the performance, out he bounds from the pitch-dark bushes (presumably after being in the Aud) and walks towards his previous seat, where others have moved to so that they could have a better vantage point of the stage. Rather than sitting on the bleacher, he asks one of the guys sitting there in a not-too-quiet voice, "Hey, man, do you happen to know what time it is?" I'm not sure what it was -- maybe it was his delivery or the fact that he was completely oblivious to the performance on stage or it could have been just the sound of his voice, but the largest shit-eating grin spread across my face and I immediately glanced over to Mark, who looked at me like he was going to throttle me if I started to laugh. Ahhhh, sometimes I find that I'm more enteretained by the world around me than I have any right to be.

OK, enough of that. A couple of things before I go: first, in case you're here because you're truly interested in my knitting, let me warn you that I am currently test-knitting a couple of patterns for friends of mine and won't be highlighting these projects until they've published their works. I hope to have these projects done after the holiday and thing's'll get back to normal. Second, I know that this is a couple of days old but just in case you haven't seen this yet, I really enjoyed this Buffy vs. Edward video and hope you find it as entertaining as I did. If you're watching this while at work -- be forewarned that it's about 6 minutes long and you definitely need sound to truly enjoy this.