Friday the 13th

Yesterday sucked.

Our whole family was planning to travel up to Salt Lake, Utah this weekend to see Mom's family. When Mom told me last week she said we would be leaving Thursday night and coming home Sunday afternoon. And I said "Mom, I CAN'T miss any more school." I've been missing kind of a lot lately, because of the Handbells trip and Choir and Orchestra Festivals. But it was just one day... and besides, it's not like I really had a choice.
Then I found out my schedule for that day I would be missing.
Choir-Internal Auditions (not mine but still)
English- Big Test
Orchestra- Going over concert music I've only seen once before that we're performing in less than a month.
Bio- Big Quiz
Plus ANOTHER quiz- Geometry- I'm going to have to make up on Monday. So yeah. Really crappy day to miss school.
And then Dad had a lot of work he had to finish before we left, so we couldn't go Thursday night. So we left on Friday morning instead, but Dad still didn't get his work done so he stayed home. We got up early early on Friday morning and left without him. If I was smart I would have stayed home with Dad.
So we were driving up this hill, three hours later, listening to an audio book and whatever, and the car started making this grinding noise and slowing down. Mom tried taking off the cruise control and all kinds of stuff, but the car just kept slowing down. Within a few moments we weren't going forward at all. So we ended up pulling over, calling a tow truck (actually getting a passing highway patrolman to call a tow truck), and sitting on the side of the road for an hour waiting for it to come. I got VERY irritated during this wait, because there we were, obviously NOT going to Salt Lake, but I was still missing a ton of important schoolwork that's going to be a real pain to make up. And then the tow truck came and totally did NOT have enough room for five people in the passenger seat, so they had to call this van to come pick us up. In all fairness, the tow truck and van people were pretty polite and nice and good (except for the fairly large oversight of not bringing transportation for the five people the highway patrolman informed them would be waiting in the minivan that mysteriously refused to go forward) Anywhoo... we got towed/driven back to an auto shop in St. George (they told us the transmission kicked the bucket) and were picked up by my dad's brother and his family, who were incredibly gracious about us barging into their home for the weekend. If they are reading this: THANK YOU!!! And we stayed the night there and drove back to Vegas in a rent-a-car today.
So that was my Friday the 13th Misadventure. Moral of the story: Don't skip school, don't attempt to make a 6 hour drive with a failing transmission. But if you do, try to at least get plenty of reading/writing done.