4th of July
We went to see the fireworks with the O'Reilies and our dogs. We managed to get there right before the traffic jams and managed to park next to the Lamar pedestrian bridge. The bridge turned out the optimal viewing spot, since you can see both the Zilker fireworks to the West and the town fireworks to the East. I took a ton of pictures, many of which turned out pretty good. I wish I had taken some pictures of the boys who where completely mesmerized.
Home was a champ and simply napped during the whole fireworks show. Sammy got freaked out and Michael had to take her to the car, away from the noise. Gracy was fine with the fireworks, but had twisted her leg or someting, and was moving very slow. The poor girl is getting old.
It would have been a perfect evening, except that my damn car didn't start when we were leaving. This had happened one time last week, but since it "fixed itself" I didn't worry about it too much. Well, here we were around 11pm downtown Austin with a dead car. A guy with a pickup (who seemed to know about cars) and Michael tried to jump start us, but that didn't work. So we called AAA and the O'Rs took Homer off our hands and headed home.
So we waited and waited and waited. And waited. We saw the occasional tow truck cruising past but none of them was ours. I opened the hood so that we would be noticeable and still nada (at some point we were the only car far and wide). Interestingly none of the many police cars we saw bothered to stop to see whether we needed help (we saw at least three cars getting pulled over). The only one sincerely and politely asking whether they could help was a bunch of pierced, dreadlocked kids -- I think there is hope for our future yet.
Eventually, when our "less than 45 minutes" wait turned into an hour and half, our tow truck arrived. The guy expertly rolled my car onto Caesar Chavez (luckily traffic was no problem at this point) and proceeded to pop-start my car in reverse, thus saving us the towing fee (thank you Star Rite Towing). We were happy about not needing a tow, still, a 90 minute wait in the middle of the night is annoying. It could have been worse, though, I could have been a 6 month pregnant woman with a full bladder...
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Sorry to hear about your car problems. Even though you weren't Jenny, I'm pretty sure towards the end of the wait for the tow truck Jenny must have been complaining long and loudly about needing to relieve herself. I know from experience that for women it is not the easiest thing to squat and stay balanced to boot! It must have been doubly hard for Jenny being pregnant and all. Times like those I really envy the man's ability to be able to just whip it out and go!!