Hasbro’s Titanium series of die-cast ships from Star Wars has recently been expanded to included ships from Time’s Best Television Series of 2005, Battlestar Galactica. The current three-ship run includes the Galactica, a Cylon raider, and a Colonial Viper (Mark II).

I’ve been eagerly anticipating this release for several months now, and a quick check on eBay reveals what one last week did not — that Hasbro has finally shipped the Galactica assortment, and that the appearance of those ships on eBay confirms it.

I’m hitting Target tomorrow, hopefully I’ll find ‘em.

(What can I say? I’m a twenty-seven year old kid).

I’m the last person in the world to complain when my car gets more mileage to the gallon than I expect, but boy was I pissed when I averaged out to thirty-seven at the end of work Friday night — I’d calculated at thirty.

I’ve gotten into the recent habit of filling up my car every night at the end of my shift. This way, I can always know whether or not my mileage compensation (a dollar per delivery at both shops) is adequatly covering my costs. My Celica gets excellent mileage — between twenty-eight and thirty-two “city”, and damn close to forty on the highways. I didn’t drive at the Indy Friday during the day (I worked the counter), which probably explains why my useage was so low — the wide openness of the franchise lends to a lot of long deliveries at close-to-highway speeds on what passes for the major roads.

In any case, after getting off work Friday night, I drove two miles north to the Enroy station at the corner of Jarrettsville Pike and Hess Road. At a time when every other station in the combined delivery area of both shops is charging in the two-seventy range, the Enroy is a welcome relief: $2.64, if memory serves. I estimated my mileage useage at thirty, divided that into how many miles I’d driven since my last fill-up (I reset the counter), multiplied that number by the cost of Regular, than walked into the Royal Farms to get that money applied to Big Ugly Green Pumping Station Numero Whatever-It-Was.

There’s this woman who works the counter, C. something. She’s a very, very, very nice lady, although its impossible to interact with her and not feel uncomfortable. Unfortunatly, she is also not exactly the fastest person ever to sling a cash register, and I wound up at the back of a line of four people. Right, so it’s not like a Baltimore County liquor store right before closing on a Saturday night before a football game (stupid blue laws). In other words, I should be done and clear in five minutes — and that’s if she’s really fucking slow.

Actually, being slow at keying stuff in and giving change, and starring at the register like its displaying a foreign language, what’s taking so long is her “cute” mumbled phrases to the customers as they approach the register, do their transaction, and attempt to leave. “Thank you, sir, here’s your change, *mumble mumble mumble*.” This prompts the customer to say, “Excuse me?” at which points she looks a little flustered, then repeats it louder and clearer.

Friday night, I’d been wearing a blue shirt with a giant Pac Man profile under my uniform shirt. Leaving work, I stripped off the uniform shirt before getting gas. When she mumbled at me as I paid, it was the first time I could understand what she was saying — “Have a nice night, Pac Man.” This was a relief, because a lot of times I think she’s saying stuff like “Hey, dirtbag, you smell” or “You need a shave” or “I want to fuck your brains out” and I’ve never, ever, had the courage to ask her to speak up so I could understand her, instead prefering a quick, “Oh, thank you very much” and running out the door, filling up my car as quickly as possible, and peeling rubber out of the lot.

So anyways, she thinks my name is Pac Man, and I get my however-many dollars and however many cents credited to the pump. There is, by this point, a line of four or five people behind me. For an empty rural wasteland, there sure are a lot of folks needing gasoline and cigarettes. Happy to have my daily dose of C. over with, I go to fill up my car.

Herein runs the problem.

I’ve estimated my fuel useage at thirty miles to the gallon. It works out to actually be thirty-seven miles to the gallon. This works out to me overpaying by a buck-oh-eight.

This means I had to go have a second dose of C.

I was tempted to just drive off, but, y’know, it’s a dollar. Or, as I prefer to think of it, fourteen point one miles.