It's a bad sign when you're sitting on the train, within sight of the next stop, and the train comes to a grinding halt with the announcement: "The train has stopped due to mechanical difficulties. Your engineer will be stepping off the train for a few minutes to attempt to fix the problems." I knew seeing a cat crawling around under the platform at my stop was a bad omen. Luckily, the engineer really was able to fix the problem by crawling around on the tracks, and we were moving again shortly. I made a quick bus connection, and I was only a couple of minutes late to work. But I still never want to hear that message again.

{Internet's still down; I feel mostly better, but still dragging; more good news on the car front.}