staying up late on a

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staying up late on a Monday April 22

staying up late on a sunday night is somehow defiantly poetic, as if you're looking the monday ahead and the entire week in the face and scowling...i really did not intend for last night to be one of those late times, but you can never really plan these things. as a result: a frame-by-frame synopsis:

9:45pm: charlotte informs me that she's coming over to study japanese.

9:48pm: stephanie informs me that she's ready to come over and study japanese.

9:56pm: charlotte arrives.

10:03pm: stephanie arrives.

10:08pm: ameya comes downstairs to tell me about the rest of the ece project. he remains for fifteen minutes, there are five people in the room.

10:25pm: ameya leaves, charlotte and stephanie and i attempt to start on our japanese.

10:35pm: stephanie's friend needs to be picked up from the train station. it seems i'm the only one who really knows how to get there from allen.

10:43pm: we roll up to the terminal, snag her friend, and do the drop-off at synder.

10:52pm: back inside allen, we set out a second time to finish japanese. stephanie begins to lose consciousness, she received six hours of sleep over the weekend.

11:10pm: hell has officially broken loose. todd, charlotte, and i are talking about life, not japanese. stephanie's using a pillow to lean against my bed while sitting on todd's because she's going to pass out. we're not getting any farther on the japanese.

12:38am: eventually, we get enough gusto to finally "finish", if you can call it that. still, they remain to continue talking with todd and i.

12:45am: the game is afoot, and that is all i'll say about that.

1:10am: they leave.

1:12am: todd has a cigarette, we discuss the evening, and return to the room to begin (a) my ece lab report and (b) his cgi comment script that is currently unimplemented.

1:24am: the phone rings, and i remember todd distinctly saying, "it's 1 something...who's calling?"; this event is rather unusual for us.

1:25am: stephanie informs me that her car will not turn off. yes, that is correct -- the key is stuck in the ignition.

1:26am: i cue up sublime's what i got as my "go" music, and slap on the rollerblades to head out to E14 and be the guy (along with todd) who takes care of it.

1:41am: i arrive in the E14 parking lot to find, yes, no one. no lights on. no cars running. todd and i check all over to find nothing. we return.

1:55am: we leave polite messages on both charlotte and stephanie's machines asking what happened; figuring they figured it out and left.

2:00am: the phone rings; charlotte wants to know why we're not out there. so this time, she takes her car (she and stephanie had driven separately) and picks us up.

2:06am: we determine that the reason we could not see their car is because they had neglected to leave the taillights or headlights on. apparently, a dome light was not enough.

2:10am: initial checks. yes, the ignition is stuck. the engine is running. how do we fix this? brute strength? intelligence? the force? these questions remained to be answered. we needed to turn the car off.

2:14am: john baggoire, my high school autoshop teacher, rings into the back of my noggin. "mark, this is a ford. fords have a fuel shut-off switch in the trunk. turn that switch. kill the fuel. that kills the engine. yay."

2:16am: i cut myself on todd's leatherman. jon, that's for you.

2:21am: todd and i realize that this fuel reset switch is a one-way switch, and there is no way to trigger it off without hitting the car very hard. we tried anyway. failure ensued.

2:30am: we popped the hood, snagged a flashlight from charlotte's trunk, and determined how the hell we were going to do it.

2:39am: the car shuts down as todd and i disconnect the control harness from the ignition coils. engine dies, battery still connected.

2:45am: todd and i find the right arrangement of sockets and bits in charlotte's toolbox (thank god for that) to disconnect the ground wire from the battery. no more juice.

2:46am: the bastard car is defeated. off, and powerless.

2:51am: we drop off stephanie at synder, she was gone.

3:00am: todd, charlotte, and i roll into merry ann's for food and discussion. awww yeah.

3:45am: coffee and food later, charlotte takes us back.

4:42am: the last time i remember seeing the clock.

it's all in a day's work, you know? as i said to stephanie, the most interesting things in life happen after midnight.