Tag: car

Saved by the gPhone

The last several times I’ve gotten my car washed, it’s always been less than 48 hours before a rainstorm. (Which gives you an idea of how long I tend to put off getting it washed.) And it really needs it again. I’d planned to get it before work last Friday, but didn’t make it, and figured I’d take care of it this morning after dropping alenxa off at work. (Which was an adventure in itself, mainly because neither of us realize how mind-bogglingly bad the 55 south is during morning rush hour.) Then I realized I hadn’t checked the weather forecast this morning.

Well, yesterday I finally talked myself into getting a T-Mobile G1 (I’ve posted my first impressions of the phone at K2R). One of the apps I’d installed pulls data from the Weather Channel. It took me about 15 seconds to discover there was a 70% chance of rain tomorrow.

Saved!

Rainmaker

1. Wednesday morning, I took the car in to a place that would not only wash the outside (which it desperately needed), but vacccum the interior. I paid a bit more than I probably should have and had the car waxed as well.

Thursday morning, I set a 3/4-empty coffee cup on top of the car as I arrived at work. A gust of wind promptly knocked it over, spilling it all over the windshield and hood.

Thursday at lunchtime, a freak storm hit, drenching the entire region, flooding streets, causing mudslides in canyons.

Talk about timing.

2. Meanwhile, we haven’t managed to excavate the tv yet, and only half the couch, but alenxa and I watched Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade on one of the computers last night.

3. Also, finaly let myself get talked into setting up a profile on Facebook. Trying to figure out the culture, not so much for the people I still keep in touch with, as for the people I haven’t seen since high school. Now I know why there are so few members of my graduating class on LJ — most of them must have waited until Facebook was the big site before they started getting involved in social networking.

Heat Wave and a New Car

Last weekend I spent a lot of time reading on the balcony after things cooled off enough that outside was better, with the slight breeze, than the inside. I finished rereading A Wizard of Earthsea and The Tombs of Atuan, and started on The Farthest Shore.

Monday alenxa and I tried to run out to the local second-run theater and see Pirates 3 again, but they were sold out. None of the other movies looked interesting, so we spent an hour and a half in Barnes & Noble instead, then went for an early dinner at Ruby’s.

Even though it cooled off substantially Monday night, the apartment stayed warm, no matter how we arranged the fans. We seriously considered sleeping out on our balcony.

Tuesday I had the dubious honor of changing a tire in 85-degree heat, which was better than changing it in 100-degree heat on Monday would have been, but still not much fun. I took it to Costco, where they said they could repair it (it was an obvious puncture, with a 1/2″ bolt sticking out of the tire), but the tire was worn down far enough they wanted to replace it. I told them I was looking at replacing the car in a few months, so they stuck with the repair.

As it turned out, we ended up replacing the car this weekend.

Current Mood: 🙂relieved
Current Music: Almost Rosey, Tori Amos
Current Location: home

Oh how I hate to get up in the morning…

alenxa dubbed yesterday the Day of Mechanical Failure, though, come to think of it, it was more the day of following up on mechanical failure. The car is beginning to seriously show its age, and we’re starting to think about replacing it. Then there was my mom’s flight home from Chicago, which turned around and landed in Denver because they were losing fuel. How exactly does one “lose” fuel in mid-air? I have several ideas, and none of them are good. (She made it home yesterday.)

After going back and forth a bit, I finally decided to get up in the middle of the night and watch the lunar eclipse this morning. I took the digital camera out, set it for full zoom (ha!) and took some blurry photos that make the moon look rather like Mars seen through a telescope.

Looks like I’ll be living on coffee today, but on the plus side, for the first time ever I managed to get my toast to actually come out of the toaster at work as toast without hovering over it. On this toaster, the line between charcoal and warm bread is a very narrow one.

Current Mood: 😴sleepy
Current Music: Superstar, Nina Gordon
Current Location: work