running on empty...

Once upon a time, Christine was having an off-week. Things just didn't make sense, and she wasn't paying attention to the world around her. Be it from exhaustion, or lack of separate food groups in her diet, or stress... Christine found herself wondering what in the hell was wrong with her. She put silverware in the refrigerator, and attempted to put a box of crackers in the dishwasher. She fell up some stairs at work, spilled food and drink (more than once) all over her desk, bumped into walls... She'd been talking in her sleep, and forgetting things like keys and access cards, and having nightmares about being paralyzed from the knees down, and then wake up falling out of bed onto the hard floor (happened 3 times in 2 weeks). All in all, things were very uncomfortable.

After a long day and night of working in Virginia, and then working at the Harp & Fiddle, covering 2 sections including a sex toy party, Christine was exhausted. It became difficult to remember key things, like when was the last time Sampson (the goldfish) was fed? Or, did her gas light come on that morning or the night before? How many times has she driven to Virginia, and back to Bethesda, since her light came on? Well, apparently, it came on the night before, and she went to Virginia and back twice before arriving at Harp to work last night.

See, what happened was...

After leaving the bar last night, Christine was going to take Marco home (our non-English speaking dishwasher), and 14 feet after leaving the parking lot, the car sputtered, became quiet, and died. Luckily, other people were still inside, so while Marco stood by the comatose civic, Christine, Aimee, and Renee (bouncer) and Alan (bartender) took a field trip to the gas station a few blocks away. They didn't have a gas container, or tank, but they did manage to find a bucket.

After filling the bucket, and taking it back to Christine's car, the small crew of Flanagan's stood, puzzled, contemplating how to get the gas from the bucket into the gas tank. "We need a funnel!" Marco motioned that he knew where we had a funnel, and it comes as no surprise that such a contraption would exist in a kitchen. As the four other members of team-gasoline-for-Christine waited out front, Marco ran back to the kitchen, returning gleefully with none other than... a traffic cone.

GO-GO-GADGET GAS FUNNEL!

By this time, Sean had arrived, just after gracing Tastee Diner with his presence, to watch the charade that was about to ensue. As Aimee and Christine stood, curiously laughing, and wondering why Renee has a cigarette hanging from his mouth, the three men argued over how to make a funnel. Sean and Alan both wanted to use a plastic bottle and cut it into a funnel, although Sean seemed to have the right idea cutting it at an angle, as cutting it straight across (as Alan--drunk, and cutting the bottle braced on his leg with a pocket knife--demonstrated) yielded a fountain of gasoline pouring down the side of Christine's car... Renee however, was determined to use the traffic cone. When the traffic cone failed, Renee resorted to rolling newspaper into a funnel, but was beaten to the punch, as Sean and Marco used the now-angled plastic bottle to funnel in the rest of the gas.

Success!

The moral of the story: When the gas light comes on, refill your tank that trip. Always make sure to have amazing friends nearby that'll lend their hands even if it is 3am. Then you can turn a stupid mistake with an embarassing outcome into an adventure and a good story.