Returning the Rental Car

March 30th, Thursday-Today I have to return the rental car, my little breath of freedom, before 9:30a completely gassed up by Hollywood and Highland. I am late. I try to get gas at the nearest place to us, which is in the wrong direction. The station is full of people. I pick pump #6 and get out of my car only to find that the tank is not on the driver's side. I then move the car to turn it around and someone else pulls up. So I have to pull in front of someone else. This person is not happy with me at all. I try to explain but she just throws her hands up at me. I get out and use my debit card and select pump #6 three times and finally realize that the gas isn't flowing because I'm at pump #2 now. I run into the station and tell the guy who has already deleted it and I start again from the beginning. This time I pick pump #2. It takes me forever to unscrew the tank cap because the previous person who used the car screwed it on abnormally tight, perhaps thinking that they would never need to gas the car up again, because after all, it's just a rental. I put the nozzle in and push the start button and nothing happens. I do this three or four times until I realize that I'm pushing the wrong start button. I finally find the correct start button and put the clip on so that it warns me when it's full. It takes way too long and when it finally clicks off I am relieved. I go to collect my receipt from the machine and can't seem to get it to give me my receipt until I go through the process three times (which seems to be the number of times I need to do something in order to get it done correctly). I finally get my receipt only to have it fly out of my hand from the wind ( I kid you not. At this point I'm thinking, am I being punked? By God?). I chase after it and get it and drive through really slow traffic to the rental place a good twenty minutes past 9:30a. I return the car and wait in line and after they check the car out they tell me that the car is only three-quarters full. (What? Seriously, God, is this a joke?) I'm shocked. I tell them I just came from the gas station and the tank read full the entire time I was driving. There is no way it was only three-quarters full. God was kind to me though, after punking me, and they didn't charge me for it, but I was late, so they charged me for that. I was so angry about the whole thing and when I told Daryl about it he said that's how he feels when he drives. I told him it wasn't about the driving, it was about trying to return the car and get gas! Daryl brought me to The Griddle to cheer me up and it did because they have a fabulous soy chai latte and the best bacon in town. You can't leave that place unhappy, I tell you. Oh, and we saw Ian Ziering there too with his lady friend. They weren't nearly as interesting as the Gunslinger chili which ranked an 8 on the 0 to 10 hotness scale. Daryl had had it before but we are still waiting to see a chili above that number. We especially want to see the 10. It's called the Demon.