I feel like the events are a much larger universe are aligning against me, like a colossal magnifying glass purpose built to channel misery into my life. On top of the $248 Sunpass bill I just had to foot, I picked up a check engine light on the way to my interesting court date. More on this later.

At the court house, I was more nervous than anything, and I stood amongst the jittery citizens of Orlando just trying to get through their court date and on with their lives. I finally asked for help from the man who appeared to be the public defender. He examined my two violations and told me that he could only dismiss one. He was calm but firm with me, saying that he would only be able to get one of them released and I would have to plead no contest to the other. He sympathized with me and made me feel like he too was frustrated with he system that kept assigning these insane fines for a simple transponder malfunction.

Lies.

The man who let me assume that he was the public defender was actually the Orange County prosecuting attorney for these toll cases. Only one other person in the courtroom pleaded no contest, some people with three times the tickets than I had them dismissed without any convincing reason. He singled me out as someone who deserved to pay this fine, and "negotiated" for me to do so. There was no legal council there.

I was asked to pay because I came dressed nice with checkbook and wallet in tow, and because an expensive-looking sports car was on the ticket stub.

My check engine light worries me to no end. Sebring is tomorrow, and it seems like some higher power does not want me to attend. I'll be spending the rest of the day today attempting to remedy this problem, which I hope is just a service reminder for my 70k mile maintenance.

Max Payne is nothing like the trailers would have you believe. Congratulations to Mark Wahlberg for being able to fire two semi-automatic shotgun rounds in under 2 seconds while his generic action movie assailant somehow misses him from a 5 yard range with his way-too-many-scoped assault rifle in full auto. Similar praise is due for the marketing department, which had the whole audience believing that somehow this movie was about an army of fallen angles operating in secret to end the world, rather than being a movie about Mark Wahlberg shooting steroid/lsd junkies for two hours.

Update: My Spyder is suffering from trouble code P0141, a faulty o2 sensor heater in bank 1. I unregistered from Sebring and put those monies into my pre-cat removal funds.