cheri had a bad day trying to get new license plates for her car.

I go down to my car, notice how absolutely filthy it is. Then notice that someone has stolen the Honda emblem off my hood. That's just lovely.

Being only mildly annoyed, I started the license plate process. First, I had to go get an emissions test. Pure torture. I drive out, and surprisingly I find the place without trouble... it's that big building with a Long line of cars coming out of it's driveway and lined up halfway down the street. It's only supposed to be 110 degrees today, and I am sitting in an idling car which is slowly but surely over heating as it refuses to find a good idle speed. I roll down the windows and start sweating while my poor little car revs itself at 3500 rpm. The line moves forward one car length every ten or fifteen minutes. I smell something burning so I turn the poor car off. Little car is much happier when I turn it back on to inch forward again. An hour later, I get to the head of the line and they play with my car for 10 minutes and I get a sheet of paper that says Pass. Yay!

Next, is the registration torture. I had forgotten my directions, so I go home and pick them up, dry off my sweat and refill my water jug. The place is on 26th Ave. No problem. I head out and shortly discover that there is no 26th Avenue. I zig zag a couple of times trying to find the damn road, to no avail. I head home again and turn to MapQuest. I print up a map and find that you have to take 27th Ave to get to this little road that I'm looking for. Sheesh. So I'm driving. And I find that 27th Avenue doesn't exist either.

So now I am driving aimlessly, trying to get to a road that either really does exist or at least shows up on my map. I make a few U-turns. I'm waiting patiently at a stop sign, looking to the left for a break in traffic and I hear a thump on my right. Some stupid little kid has just run his bike into my car! I resist the urge to get out and beat the living crap out of the child because there's a break in traffic. The other kids are laughing at the dork as I pull away.

Anyway, I finally find this stupid place, fight for a parking space, go in and get in line. There are about 50 people in front of me... My number is D314, they are serving D285 plus all the A's and the C's and the F's. And I forgot my book. But at least the air conditioning is running.

I get up to the front of the line and sit down and spread my papers out. The lady takes one look at all my Georgia stuff and says, Nope, you have to go get your car inspected. Okay, fine. So I go and get that taken care of, it was even relatively painless. And I go in again, only have to wait for one person in front of me, sit down and spread out my papers again. Lady says, Nope, you have to give me your old license plate. Say what? She sends me out with some pathetic looking tools. The tools were inadequate for the rusty screws holding the old plates on. Inadequate.

So here I am, all but crying in the parking lot, not wanting to give up, but I must. I go back inside a complete and utter failure. My lady with my stuff has disappeared. Eventually she returns and makes me sign a form about the license plate I couldn't give her. I'm pretty sure I traded off my soul with that signature. I paid the poor, exasperated lady and tried not to get lost on the way home.

My story has a happy ending tho. I got real tools and a strong man to help me with the cursed thing, and I now have pretty Arizona license plates on my car. Yipee!