How's the car?

They found what was wrong with my car.

That's a spark plug wire. It's supposed to be in ONE piece, not three. I'm not sure how it snapped. Cold, I guess? My block heater was also broken, but that was under warranty, so they fixed it for free! :D I wonder if that may have been part of the reason why the wire snapped--because the block heater wasn't working, so the wires were too cold to start without getting torn up, but I kept starting the car anyway. Of course, the warranty doesn't cover other things that may have broken due to heater failure. Oh well. Life goes on. It was fairly quick and simple to fix, for which I'm glad. It was sad not having a car.

I've decided I definitely like my German professor. She smiles almost as much as Carrie (my last German professor,) and she's actually from Germany, although her accent is so slight that you'd hardly know it. She tries to give us assignments that make us get up and move around and talk to people so no one falls asleep, which is particularly good since it's a morning class. This Thursday, we're supposed to give three- to four-minute powerpoint presentations that are basically introductions of ourselves, our families, our hobbies, et cetera. She gave her example presentation today and said that she likes to bake. So of course, I asked if that meant she would bring us cookies. She said only if we're nice to her. Then I asked if we could put pictures on ours. She said yes, please, she prefers pictures. "Extra points for pictures!" "How about cookies instead?" "Oh, yes, you're right! Cookies for pictures!"

Yay, cookies!

This last weekend, I wrote an essay for history. It didn't require any kind of research or anything; the professor just wanted to know if we could go back and observe any period of history, where would we go, what questions would we ask, why did we choose that particular time and place, et cetera. It's a correspondence class, so I haven't met the professor, but it seems fairly clear from his writing that the professor will appreciate creativity. I at first thought of writing my essay it in past tense story form, but decided that a) that would be cheesy, and b) everyone else would be doing something like that too and thinking themselves creative. So instead, I wrote it in subjunctive, which actually gives me even more creative license, because if I have three possible fun ways something could happen, I can write down all three of them and they all happen and don't happen at the same time.

The professor specified that we had a "universal translator" too, so language barriers wouldn't be an issue. So I took that at face value and decided to go back to the time of the dinosaurs to see what they thought was the most important event in dinosaur history, because people study human history all the time, but dinosaur history is much more fun. So I said I would go to the late Cretaceous and talk to a Troodon, which is supposedly the smartest of all the dinosaurs. Then I wrote about my adventures that didn't end up happening, including using my leet ninja skills to keep the Troodon from eating me and discovering that dinosaurs are hyperactive and easily distracted by anything shiny. It was a really fun assignment.

* * * * *

Finally, I would find a dinosaur wearing a monocle and would assume that the monocle meant he was supposed to be an intelligent dinosaur. So I would ask him what the most important event in dinosaur history was, and he would say (with a British accent, of course), “Why, my dear bipedal, that is an obvious question you ask, to which the answer is equally obvious.” And I would refrain from asking why the question is as obvious as the answer, and he would continue, “The most important event in all of dinosaur history was when the thesaurus ran for king of the dinosaurs. It was gargantuan! All the dinosaurs for miles came around to vote for him and there was a great hullabaloo over whether the female dinosaurs and the black dinosaurs would be allowed to vote!”

“The thesaurus? That’s a reference book, not a dinosaur!” I would argue.

Then the monocle-wearing dinosaur would get all huffy and I would have to apologize and then ask why it was that, in dinosaur culture, you had to run for king when monarchy is, well, not democracy. And then the dinosaur would roll his eyes and say, “Don’t ask me. My brain’s the size of an avocado pit. What do I know?”

Then I’d ask, “If your brain is only the size of an avocado pit, then how do you know how big your brain is?” and he would shrug and get huffy again and try to eat me, but I would throw a shiny penny and he would run off after it because dinosaurs love shinies. They can be so immature sometimes. Anyway, I think he was making up the bit about the thesaurus, because seriously, that bit about the female and black dinosaurs not being allowed to vote? Even dinosaurs aren’t that stupid!

So then I would give up and jump in my time machine and go forward in time a little bit to where the dinosaurs all died out to see what it was that killed them all. Some people say it was failure to adapt to their changing environment. Some people say a giant meteor hurtling toward the earth killed them all. Other people say that’s only true if you would call Chuck Norris “a giant meteor hurtling toward the earth.” Other people say that dinosaurs never existed at all because the Bible doesn’t say so. But they’re obviously wrong, because I just talked to a bunch of them. Dinosaurs, that is, not religious zealots.

Anyway, I would watch all the dinosaurs die out and not do a thing to save them because I’m not allowed to change history. Except I would save a deltatheridium and take it home as a pet because it looks like a six-inch-long weasel and that’s just cute. Then if I still had time, I would watch humans evolve. Or watch God make them and exile them from the Garden of Eden. Or watch them land from an alien space ship. Or however humans came to be. Because then I could go back and say definitely, “This is how it was.” Not that anyone would believe me anyway.