11 11 pm pdt   [ death visits ]

When I awoke this morning at Matthew's house, his mother told me that her brother had died. I gave her a hug and we talked about other things to try to distract ourselves.

Matthew's mum went to be with her sister, and he and I spent the day together. He bought himself a birthday present: a 190 mm 1/10th scale remote control car, with an NSX body and a BMW 3 series body. He was in toy heaven. I gave him three of the five presents I got him:

• a turkish bathrobe
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
• Gravity's Rainbow

It was a quiet day. I was tired after after I over-ate at brunch, and though we went shopping for clothes for me (his anniversary present to me) I didn't find anything I wanted.

I sat with him in the airport while he waited for his plane and played with his BMW car body. We talked about next weekend. We kissed goodbye over and over. I left when I saw him walk onto the plane.

I pulled up next to a cop on the road and he -- or rather, they -- waited and pulled behind me. I tried to go 35 but I was going much slower than the flow of traffic (even though I was in the right lane) so I sped up a tiny bit. The I noticed a sign that said Construction Zone 25 mph. Just as I started slowing the lights started going. Fines are doubled in construction zones; my heart was racing. There was no where to pull off the road, since they were doing construction, so I just stopped in my lane. the cops seemed to think this was fine, and they stopped too. I forked over my liscence and the insurance card. That was when the cop told me my registration was expried. I must have looked shocked, since that certainly wasn't what I had expected him to say. He said, "Didn't you know?" and I answered, "The car isn't mine." Once he had established that the car was my dad's and had left me sitting in my car for five minutes, he came back and told me to update the registration. And that was that.

I was so relieved.