unplanned productivity

Today I woke up at 6:30 in the morning because both dogs were howling. Loudly. And then the alarm clock went off in the other room. I knew it was hopeless. I got up.
I had been planning to get up pretty early anyway, to schedule a time to bring my car in for an oil change and tune-up before my Very Long Drive next week (next week!). So I called them at 7, when they opened, and then just stayed up.
At 9, I went to Starbucks, partly to get out of the house, partly to work on my DVD project and partly for a latté. I sat between some people doing an interview (still not sure who was interviewing whom) and a group of what I took to be young New-Lifers, one of the ultra-Christian churches in town. They talked about Batman for about half an hour, saying how they would never bring young children to see it, making terrible faces about how graphic and terrifying Heath Ledger as Joker was. I'm not going to judge.
What did I do between 7 and 9? I still don't really know. I started packing, I put some stuff in boxes, I moved them into the spare room, but I don't think that should have taken up two hours' worth of time.
Oh well.
I left Starbucks, went to the library to return some books, and came back to lay out in the park for a while. (I know you probably don't really want to hear about every second of every day, but that's what ya got.)
Then I took my car in to the Saturn dealer, where I was confronted with those terrible questions about whether to replace seemingly vital parts of my car that may or may not cause the engine to fall out, catch on fire or explode. I chose to risk it. It was either that or pay $400. Life's tough when you're poor. I still ended up paying $250 for new brakes, which really did look bad and were clearly in need of replacing. The other part, that could be any dirty old metal part on the engine, but I know what brakes look like, and I know mine were bad. So they replaced them, and I got to take them on a test drive with the manager of the Saturn dealership. That's why I like Saturn — everyone who works there is so friendly. I've really had nothing but good experiences with them.

And that's all.
Cheers!