Dr. Strange Luck

I'm beginning to think that maybe I have a weird curse right now that prevents anything in my life from being simple and, as a side effect, I have really weird luck. I'll take a little blame for the lack of simplicity, but the rest is pure fate I guess. Lemme 'splain:

Remember a little more than month ago I ordered a set of new headllight assemblies for my truck from some company out in California. I ordered the headlights, they refunded my money and then shipped the lights out anyway. I receive the lights only to find that they're the wrong part. So, I work it out with the companmy and we cross-ship them, meaning that I send them the wrong ones, they send me the right ones. That worked fine, too. They even paid for shipping BOTH sets of lights to and from the west coast. I received the lights and they were the right thing. But then I sold my truck. Ok, so I sold the lights to a guy on CustomTacos. So I arrive home yesterday and there's a box sitting on my front porch. I said (out loud) to myself "This can't be good.." (side bar) I've been selling all of my custom parts off of my old truck over the past couple weeks and so I feared that one of my shipped packages had been returned (/side bar) So, I get the box inside and discover something pretty funny: It's another set of Tacoma crystal headlights!!! So, I put them up for sale on CustomTacos last night. Maybe I'm now somehow subscribed to the "Headlights of the Month" club.

And so this weird luck that I'm having. It sucks. I won't dwell on it too long, but here's an interesting story: My new truck has been having it's share of strange problems. The A/C compressor makes a strange whining noise when sitting at a stoplight, my passenger seat rattles on rough spots in the road, and (most annoying) my horn sometimes honks when I turn a sharp corner. Yeh, really annoying...and scary the first couple times it did it. So, I've been working out a time to take my truck into the service shop at Haley Toyota, but had removed the fuse for my horn in the meantime so that I wouldn't scare myself or piss off other drivers who thought I might be honking at them.

Yesterday evening was the time we decided upon to drop my truck off at the dealership to be fixed. As I'm driving through the parking deck leaving work (on my way to Haley), I see a red car with its brake lights on up ahead. I slow down, but notice that the car's reverse lights are not on. So, I proceed with caution. (the next few seconds happend in slow motion) Just about the time my front bumper gets behind the red car's bumper, the backup lights come on, and back comes the car. I immediately stopped, but my bumper and fender were squarely in the red car's path. I begin freaking out and slamming my hand on the middle of the sterring wheel. Nothing. No horn. No fuse makes horn not blow. I begin screeming at the red car. "HEY!!!! HEY!!!!!! HEY!!!!!!! STOP!!!!!!! STOP!!!! STOP!!!!!!!" The car continues coming back towards my truck. More yelling. More horn pounding - more nothing. With a mere two feet between my bumper and the red car's bumper, the girl in the driver's seat finally turns around and sees me and stops. In my frantic panic, I yelled at her, "YOU GOTTA WATCH WHERE YOU'RE GOING!!! YOU GOTTA WATCH OUT!!" She just stared at me with a scared look. She turned back around and slowly drove back into her parking spot. I sat there for a second, reeling from what just happened, and then continued on.

The interesting thing with this is that this is the first time that this has happened to me in the three years I've been parking in that deck. So, what are the chances that it would happen on the ONLY DAY when I had no horn. I'm sure she would have stopped sooner (and I wouldn't have soiled my drawers) if I could have blown the horn. What are the chances? That's been my luck lately.