Final cost of fixing my car: $1284. This includes replacing the compressor and the water pump plus a gasket cap on my engine that was cracked and leaking antifreeze, and replacing the low coolant. At least my air conditioner works now. But I was warned that the alternator is not functioning properly and the shocks are leaking, so although I'm ok for now, I will definitely need more repairs down the road. Yuck.

Then let's add on top of that the minor annoyances of this weekend, like discovering I've knit almost two entire balls of yarn into a dress while misreading the pattern. I had to unravel the entire thing and start over. Or spending $12 on an official archery rule book at the archery championships only to discover on the train that the entire thing is written in French. (Yeah, I should have looked closer, but who's going to suspect something like that? And the guy who sold it to me didn't even say "you know that one's in French, right?")

The only reason this weekend wasn't an entire waste was that the archery championships were really great. I can not think of anything I have done in New York that's cooler than standing in Central Park on a glorious Saturday afternoon watching a world championship ... and then listening to the exuberant Italian team belting out their national anthem when their countryman won the men's tournament. (On another note, Italy has an insanely long national anthem. It goes on forever. But it does sound very operatic.) It was awesome in the literal meaning of the word. And I got a lot of good research for the novel.