After pulling some long hours last week on film shoots and whatnot, I felt justified in taking off a little early on Friday so I could get to Edmonton. I'm glad I did, because we didn't end up getting out of town until nearly 6:00. It was a long hot drive, because we quickly discovered that the air conditioner was broken, but after some of the recent car troubles I've had on road trips, I was quite willing to take a minor inconvenience over a major malfunction.

See, there's something about the trip to Edmonton that makes my cars break down. It's like the #16 is cursed. I was willing to believe that my bad luck with cars was just a function of the fact that I used to drive a Dodge Shadow, a car known for being a bit of a lemon, but now that my 'new' car seems to be following this patterns, I have to wonder if it's the road itself. Leylines from Lloyd to Lashburn? Some sort of magnetic field generated by all the oil wells? Or is it me? Maybe I'm secretly a Fallen and just don't know it. Cars certainly don't like me. (Guns, either, but that's an entirely different story.)

Regardless of the reasons for it, we made the trip unhindered by whatever sort of bad juju has decided to befall my modes of transportation, and made it in good time to hang out with the Edmonton crowd on Friday night. Saturday we mostly hung out with T&S, and then got ready for the Paradise Lost game at DG's house. His new place is absolutely gorgeous, and I finally got to meet Ajax, his super-cute decorative mantle warmer. (see - cat)

It was great to be able to play Omen again after so long, and by great, I mean creepy as hell. She freaks me out. Actually, she freaks everyone out. It was sort of the whole concept behind the character. Given some of the things happening behind the scenes, I didn't expect her to last the night, but things seemingly went off without a hitch, so I will once again have to don the corpse-like makeup and giant sword at next month's game out at the cabin. It should be interesting...

We hung out a little more on Sunday morning, and then headed back to S'toon in time to get Layne to work Sunday night. We even made it back before anything broke down on us. In fact, I was ready to celebrate an entire road trip without car troubles when the alternator announced it wasn't going to work anymore by chewing up one of my belts and spitting it, smoking, onto my coolant reservoir while I was on my way to work on Monday morning. Luckily, I was already in the parking lot, and so I just glided into my spot and left the tempermental beast there for the day. And, even better, I was able to have it up and running again within a day, thanks to my incredibly helpful family. My uncle dropped by the next day with a new alternator, and we threw it in on my lunch break.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to go and offer up a sacrifice to the Car Gods, since we're (hopefully) heading to the lake this weekend...