Last week I took little sis to the beach to teach her to body surf. I figured I had to since that appears to be my role in the family- I'm the One Who lives in California. Which while not much of anything, is still much better than being "The One Who is Unemployed." And what says being Californian more than teaching someone how to body surf? Besides, Little Sis was born in California but as she has spent the past for or five years in the East Coast, is slowly losing her California-ness and there's nothing more important to retain than someone's inner California-ness (something I knew I succeeded at when she refused to leave when we were supposed to because she was having too much fun swimming in the ocean. How much more Californian can you get?). So, anyways, off we went to the beach, me driving the rental car.

When we were done, we went back to the car and unlocked the door. Car alarm goes off. Okay, no big deal, this has happened before, I knew what to do. The rental car had those new fangled car keys in which you can unlock everything by pressing a button. I pressed the button. Nothing. Car alarm still blared away. I opened the door, hoping that would work, but it didn't. So I shut the door and quickly locked it, hoping that would work. It did. I stood there and pressed every damn button on the car key at least four or five times but everytime I opened the door, the damn alarm went off. I even went so far as getting into the car and starting the engine, but the thing wouldn't shut off. Turns out the key thingy was jammed and so wasn't working anymore (whether or not it was caused by my accidentally leaving the keys in my pocket when I first went into the ocean is open to debate).

What to do? Futz with the car some more or make a run for it, alarm blaring away? After about ten minutes of standing there, trying to figure out what to do, I decided to make a break for it and we got into the car to drive off, the alarm blaring away. For the entire ten minute drive back to the hotel, the alarm wouldn't stop, pretty much alerting everyone on the strip of road we were driving that something was amiss with the car, a thing you always want to have happen when driving a car in a foreign country. Not conspicuous at all, no sirree.

We made it and got out of the car. Thankfully, the car shut up once we left and we told my dad what was up. He called the rental agency, which didn't give him much good advice as it was all in Spanish and he just opened the door to the car and cut the chord to the alarm. That worked but had a bad side-effect, or at least one bad but not as bad as the fees he was eventually going to have to pay for breaking something in the car- the sound the car makes when it's turn signal is on would constantly play over and over again. Always a good thing to happen when going on a two hour drive back to Santiago.