unwanted passengers

Fantastic night tonight. I went out driving with Imogen Heap and her new CD. Visited with some friends at my Patrick's house. After gaining two creative and fun refrigerator magnets made from bottle tops and given to me by a friend, I headed out to the bookstore. I sat in the uncomfortable, gray bookstore chair for two hours racing the closing time clock to complete Julie & Julia, which I am attempting to read there since I'm too poor to pay $16 for a book and the library in town doesn't know how to do its job well. Sometimes living on your own is financially worse than being a college student. And yet, unlike proclaiming your status as a college student, it's somehow not a valid excuse for free food to be fed to you...? Sadness.

The strange title of this entry comes from the fact that as I left the bookstore around 11pm and started walking toward my car in the murky light, one of the few things I've retained from Drivers Ed echoed back to me. "Always check for unwanted passengers..." This is not actually a rogue thought, it comes to mind quite frequently as a girl who is alone in a town that doesn't have a ghetto because it is one. Then I inwardly laughed as I realized, (somewhat to my relief?) that my car is too full of crap right now for any unwanted passengers to even fit. HA. Take that creepers of Joplin.