Something crazy happened to me just before I went on vacation. First, I bought a macbook. Yay! it's the black one. This was 2/22/08, Friday.

Then, on my way home (it had been raining that day, and was still drizzly)... I was driving down 75/85 S near the downtown world congress ctr exit... I wasn't in that exit lane - I was one lane over to the left, in the lane that becomes exit only for Freedom Pkwy. In front of me and one lane to the left, this red car decided it needed to be in my lane, so I swerved to the right into the downtown exit lane to avoid colliding w/ the car. In the conditions, this led me to start sliding to the right towards the cement wall. I tried to straighten out by turning the wheel a little to the left... but I overcorrected. I think I ended up just jerking the wheel to the left, since I was already starting to spin, to get the spin over with faster. I ended up facing the opposite way... sliding backwards w/ my hands gripping tightly to the steering wheel and my foot planted on the brake as hard as possible.

As I slid, I thought of the inevitability of hitting the metal barrier betw the exit lane and the rest of the highway. "Fuck fuck I'm going to hit that guard rail thing really hard." But, to my surprise, the car came to rest w/o impact, leaving me to wonder how close I'd gotten.

I was shaking. I looked to the right, and the guard rail was right there... I decided this was worth getting out to take pictures... And as you can see, my car is really fucking close to that thing. Like the back bumper is maybe 5" away from it.

Macbook saved my life. I'm convinced. I u-turned it in the exit lane and drove down a few streets to get to Freedom Pkwy. I didn't die in February. Later that night, I wrote a thank you note to the universe and burned it into the sky.