Tonight, I spent a few hours in another world. The world of one of my gas station co-workers.

I suppose I should give a little background. This odd rendezvous had been prompted by the conjunction of two factors: a movie, and car troubles.

Last week, this coworker (I guess we'll just call him "S") -- yes, the same one who likes to borrow books and tell "interesting" stories about his life -- said he saw a movie he thought I might like, and offered to lend it to me. After he had described the premise a bit, I decided it sounded interesting enough to check out (especially when doing so would come at no cost to me), so I said I would like to borrow it.

Today, he brought it into work. I looked at the packaging for a moment, sheepishly said I don't actually own a VCR, and muttered something about maybe seeming if my housemates had one laying around somewhere. (I strongly doubt they do, but since I haven't taken an exhaustive accounting of what electronic hardware they own, I wouldn't exclude the possibility.)

He said I would be welcome to come watch it at his place; in fact, I could come over tonight after he closed the store at 23:00 if I wanted. Not being enamored with the prospect of going across town to start a movie after 23:00, I said probably not, because I would likely be heading to bed around that time. (Does this mean I'm getting old?)

As the afternoon wore on, he told me about the strange problems he was having with his dashboard lights lighting up whenever his brake lights came on, which was annoying him to no end. He continued to speculate about the possible reasons for this, and suspected it might have had something to do with the bulb he changed in his brake light recently. (He does virtually all the work on his high maintanence, ancient-model car himself.)

He came upon the theory that if he could go back and do some rewiring in the trunk while somebody else pressed on the brake, maybe he could fix it.

Meanwhile, since my car has been non-functional for the past two months, AND since the weather is likely to turn colder, AND since I might soon have a job across town involving some early mornings and late nights... Well, it might be nice to have a working car available again.

So it was that we came upon a deal. After his shift ended, I would come back over to the station, help him out with his problem for a few minutes, and he would come over and see if we could jump-start my car. (Or even if it couldn't be jump started this time, at least I would know I wouldn't be wasting my money if I got it towed when the only issue might have been a dead battery.)

(On one previous occassion, Yanthor and I did make a brief attempt to jump start it and failed. After further research and asking around, I wasn't convinced we had done everything possible to eliminate that as a cause. Understandably, Yanthor didn't seem eager to spend more time on further attempts, and I didn't want to bug him too much about it.)

So there I was at 23:00, back at the station. After S finished his closing shift, we went to his car, he plugged and unplugged some wires, I flipped the headlights on and off and hit the breaks as he tinkered and called out instructions, and we did verify that his problem seemed to be happening because of his new break light bulb. (Why seems utterly inexplicable to me, but when the bulb in the back was screwed in, the dash was lighting up whenever the brake was pressed.)

A few more minutes of tinkering, and he got his break lights working again, but the problem with the dash persisted. He decided to say "screw it" for now, and so we proceeded down the block to look at my car.

We connected the jumper cables (this time connecting both ends of both cables to the batteries instead of one to a ground has he suggested), and gave it time to charge. Clearly, the electricial systems in my car were working with the jumper cables attached. After a minute of charging, I tried starting the engine.

Lots of clicking. No engine starting. Just like before.

We went through it several times, he did some looking at stuff, and theorized that most likely, my starter was the issue. (But there's also a slim outside chance the alternator could be dead.) Well, now I know for sure.

Having done all the diagnosing we were able to do, and not solved the problem on either of our cars, he said, "Well, you want to come over and watch the movie?"

To which I said, "What the hell, why not? Sure, if you can give me a ride back afterwards."

To which he agreed.

So it was that I found myself in a small 2-bedroom apartment in the middle of Lincoln; a residence inhabited by 4 people: my coworker and his spouse in one of the bedrooms, their roommate and her boyfriend in the other.

I had been warned beforehand that I would be the only non-smoker in the place. (In truth, aside from the late hour, this was the other reason I was initially dubious about coming.) Sure enough, he hadn't been joking when he said they like to smoke a LOT of cigarettes. They tried to be accommodating to my sensitivities, including opening a window and running a fan to circulate the air, which I suppose did help a little. Later, they asked if the cigarette smoke was still bothering me, to which I admitted that it was, and they stopped doing it in same room where I was sitting.

We watched Saw. I would describe it as quite grotesque, but well-conceived. Definitely along the same lines as Se7en, but with an even more amped up suspense and spine-curdling shock factor (at least based on my faint memories of that film). Gruesome and horrid. A worthy film for those who are into that genre.

[Bitscape's brain wears out. He goes to sleep. Hours pass. The sun comes up. More hours pass. Bitscape arises, meditates for 20 minutes (which pass in a flash), steps outside to breathe the warm November air, thinks about returning to finish this article. Returns to computer.]

[...And decides that the outdoors is too seductive to stay here and write out all my thoughts. Whatever other observations and ideas I had -- stuff which I originally intended to be the primary focus of this rambling -- can wait. The problem with trying to document everything in life is that while you spend your time writing, you can lose out on the always-oncoming potential for more fresh experiences. And so, I go.]