One of my skills in life is that I'm really good at finding places. As in, you can drop me in any major city and I will find Target. Without a map. Or directions. Or a homing device. I can also figure out which way is North at any point in time, which comes in very handy since I'm inclined to wing it every time I go to a new city. When I traveled a lot, I used to bother with a printed map or something in case of mystery, but have always tended to just sort of find the place I was trying to get to. Seriously, I'm very good at it. I'm not saying I get there using the shortest path possible, but I get there without any help.

I would have done the exact same thing on this trip, especially since I knew my hotel was downtown and hello! downtown is ALWAYS easy to find. However, we recently acquired my good buddy AusTom the GPS, so I figured I would make him earn his keep.

Oops.

AusTom and I sort-of-maybe-kind-of got in a bit of a fight on the way from the airport to the hotel the other night. It was ALL AusTom's fault because he is a big fat lying murderous piece of electronic junk. I SWEAR this is EXACTLY how the battle royale went down:

Keep left . . . keep left . . . exit right.

What?

Exit right.

When?

Exit right.

Now? Across five lanes of traffic? WTF? (Yeah, I say WTF when nobody's around. WHAT ABOUT IT?)

Exit right then turn right.

Whatever.

Turn left.

Hello! That is a one-way street. Are you trying to get me a ticket? Do you realize that I look way more Snow Whitish than I do in my license picture? Like any cop is going to believe THAT shizznet.

Turn left.

Screw you.

Exit right then take the motorway.

The motorway? Hello, Madonna and your fake British accent.

Keep left then exit in two miles . . . keep left . . . exit right.

OMG! What is wrong with you?

Turn right.

THERE IS NO ROAD THERE. Seriously. You ARE trying to kill me. OH HELLS NO. That is a river, you moron.

Turn around.

In the midst of this whole scenario in which I learned that AusTom can't deal when a highway splits into three parts, the Na Na Song came on the radio. Before the second "Na" could fall out of P!nk's mouth, my right thumb was busy trying to slam the up volume button the steering wheel which wasn't there because OH YEAH the goobers at the rental agency only had momivans and the momivan that I'm driving doesn't have radio controls on the steering wheel. That is WRONG WRONG WRONG because I need those stupid controls for when the Toddler in the back seat is yelling at me to turn up her Na Na Song. Yeah, sure, I didn't actually have the Toddler with me as I struggled to figure out how to crank the radio, but I'M TRAINED.

It was stressful. In an all in my head sort of way.

As for the momivan, there is a reason that I drive an itty bitty car. I need weave room. If whatever I'm driving is so big that it actually takes up a lane and I maybe-sort-of drift a bit because, oh, I don't know, maybe AusTom is busy telling me to stay left when I really need to stay right and I'm trying to figure out who is for sure right by reading signs and AusTom's little display, there's likely to be some sort of incident.

Not that I would ever dream of launching AusTom down a one-way street into the river or anything. Nope.