Lute Riley Honda Sucks

I took my car with the ailing a/c to the dealership in Dallas. They told me it was the condenser, and it would cost $440, but that they wanted to give me a deal and so they'd take $100 off to make it $340. I arranged my appointment, and thought no more of it.

The day of the appointment arrived. I drove to the dealershipo at about 6:45 in the morning and arranged for their free shuttle to take me to work and pick me up again.

While at work, the service guy called me. He said they'd definitely found the problem, which made me feel relief. I'd already replaced the compressor at about $900 and the a/c electrical panel for $350. He told me that the service normally runs $540, but that with the $100 of that I'd be getting a great deal at $440.

I said, "That's not what you said before. That quote's gone up $100 since Saturday."

He insisted that he'd said no such thing, and that it wasn't possible that he would make a mistake like that. I told him to make the repairs anyway, and finished my work and waited for the shuttle.

At the dealership I pointed out to the service guy that he'd not said anything near $500. He said he remembered, but that he'd go talk to his manager and see if he could do anything else for me. My car wasn't yet ready, so I waited in the waiting room.

The service guy came back, and gave me the dealership line of all dealership lines, "My manager was standing right next to me, and he heard me quote you the higher price."

I pressed him some more, but he didn't budge. I ended up having to pay $420. But, oh joy, I got a coupon for a free oil change.

So Lute Riley lies. Get your quotes in writing.

Let's ban everything from air travel

I never really understood the term "clockwatcher" until this week. I've been temping at a bank, doing what's called "stacking files." I'm taking mortgage files and taking everything out and putting it back in the correct order. I keep it consistent with a series of slipsheets with headings and check boxes on them. Asleep yet?

At work today my two co-workers were talking about the terrorists that the British apprehended. One of them is afraid to fly. The other one wants to know why the airlines couldn't anticipate this threat and ban liquids sooner. Then the first one said that she doesn't know why Homeland Security can't keep us secure.

I'll tell you why. Hindsight only works one way. I can't express very well at the moment how I feel about all the panic, but here's a passage from The Liquid World by William Saletan at Slate.

"That's the bottom line: We die. In a liquid world, you can't seal off evil. All you can do is fight liquid with liquid. You have to absorb the tragedy, flowing around and through it. You need the strength of a river, not a rock. You need resilience. You can't be untouchable, but you can be undefeated."

. . .

A Job

I have a temporary job. In Dallas. At a mortgage place. Stacking files.

In case you couldn't tell, I'm SUPER excited. I get to drive through rush hour traffic tomorrow while everyone's taking their kids to school. Then I get to stay there until 5:30. That's gonna be weird. I can't remember the last time I worked hours like that.

School hours were 7:30-3:30. Mostly. Let's see if I don't end up murdering someone at the end of the three week period.

Actually, I'd just like to kill whoever made the decision to make the employees of this place take a drug test. Nothing makes you feel like a criminal quite like handing someone else a cup of your urine.

My Life Plan

I'm jobless. I quit my job and now am unemployed. School for the actual teachers starts tomorrow, and it's the first time in eight years that I won't be there.

I expected to be really sad about it, but other than feeling a faint urge to go to school anyway, I'm not sad.

Instead, I'm planning on being my own boss. I've been writing a business plan and it's going really well. I'm spending a lot of time on the internet doing research on businesses, marketing and selling and social networking.

I found this site called dandelife that I'm having a great time playing with. It's like a blog but it incorporates all your titles into a timeline, and you can add tags too. It's fun, go look.

Boys, again, are dumb

My roommate notices very little. We have, in fact, had long conversations about the things he doesn't notice. He says it's because they're ultimately not important. Not my position, but sometimes arguing about it takes too much effort.

We were in the car and passed a pretty crepe myrtle. I mentioned how I like them, but not the bright pink ones. I told him that I was pretty sure I knew the answer, but did he notice that the crepe myrtle in our backyard had bloomed, and was of the fuschia persuasion.

He said something similar to "There's a crepe myrtle in the backyard?"and then I pointed out that the crepe myrtle occupies the side of the driveway that he pulls his car into. He said no, he hadn't noticed the color. Just then we pulled into the driveway and I pointed at the shrub and the blossoms overhanging the fence.

He looked up at the side of the garage and said, "What happened to the fixtures on the wall? Why aren't there any lightbulbs up there?"

I started to laugh, hysterically, and it took a moment for me to catch my breath and reply. "Bear," I said, "you're the one who removed the lightbulbs for me, so I could buy new ones."

"Oh." he said. "When did I do that?"

Apparently, there have been deeds. . .

. . . and I should be telling you of them.

Okay, so the other night I was getting ready for bed. I was in my room taking my clothes off, and just as I had taken off my bra, in flies a gigantic black bug.

At first I thought it was a wasp, so I backed away from it, but then, clutching my unhooked bra to my chest, I noticed that it wasn't flying like one and that it looked an awful lot like a cockroach.

I searched around desperately for something to fling over myself to make the short, but very visible, trip into the kitchen to get the flyswatter, and finally found a t-shirt.

I saw the bug on the floor about to go under my bed, and pushed Calvin The Giant-Fly-Eater toward it, but the loser turned up his nose. I ran to the kitchen and grabbed the flyswatter, but the bug had disappeared. I used the flyswatter and a flashlight to search, but no go.

This made me not want to sleep in my room. I've woken up with a cockroach on my pillow before, and I didn't want that to happen again. Reluctantly, I decided to get over it and sleep in my bed despite my fear.

I woke the next morning to my lovely kittens, called The Brothers Dim by some, mauling the laundry basket. They'd found the wonderfully un-cockroachy beetle, and I captured it and put it outside.

Enough deed for you, o' pushy one?