Gah

Yesterday's Mid-Autumn Festival. Mom's managed to ship me a small tupperware full of mooncakes, wrapped in more tape (the tupperware, not the pastry) than even my anti-serium shipment, which had to be sent on dry ice in a box inside another box. But hey, food. It was nice of her. I also had grapes, and didn't call my relatives in Beijing like mom asked me to, for which I feel extremely guilty about but I just can't bring myself to, even after I remembered. ...and it's hard to feel happy after that. Even with the mooncakes.

I also forgot to mention that I did, in fact, finish Persuasion during the retreat, and liked it better than Pride and Prejudice. There's less of the witty repartee, but also less of the Prince Charming On A Horse Of White feel. (Oh come on, Bennet was marrying into wealth and class. Even Darcy had said that her family is way below his but he loves her anyway.) (Well, maybe not in those exact words.) Mostly though, I just like Anne Elliot a lot more than I ever liked Elizabeth Bennet, or the Dashwood sisters for that matter (those two seem to spend most of the book moping, if I recall correctly).

Now for something completely different: I nearly got in a car accident with someone this morning. I was going down Grand (post grocery shopping), when a car shot out of one of the small side streets (Grand, Balboa, and Garnet are the three main streets in Pacific Beach, and while they're not quite El Camino they are still the main roads). I'm guessing he didn't see me, because by the time he saw me, he was right in front of me already and of course he stepped on the breaks, because that's sort of the instinctive response. Unfortunately, vector math indicates that means his car is therefore also spending more time directly in front of my car. At that point I was slamming down the breaks but the cars are so close that there was no way I could've stopped in time and so I ended up executing this wild swerve (successfully, thank God) and left some rubber, I think, on the road. (Just to point out that I was close enough to see his head turn and to use the pronoun "he" even though he drove off right after.)

I was very thankful that it was early enough, that the car density was low enough, that I could swerve without crashing into anyone else.

People would've been shocked if they'd heard the stuff that was coming out of my mouth. Even I was somewhat surprised, after I realized that I was, in fact, swearing under my breath. (In my defense my mind was doing that whole slow-motion-before-collision-thing and I was 95% certain I was going to crash.)

I do not like driving. At least, not in urban areas. Affirmative.