A coffee dessert, yes, you know it's good news

[austin_dern]

So, my car issue: it's really a small one. I noticed the tire pressure warning light on. Sometimes it does this just when it's at the near-freezing range, and the problem clears up in short order. But the car wasn't riding quite right, and on examination the right front tire was soft. Tuesday morning thus turned into my searching for a nearby gas station with air pump; Wawa's was surprisingly closed off. But I found another one which might and did charge a dollar, but also had a pressure gauge that actually responded sensibly.

But after work the tire was not just soft again but outright flat. And thus I went back to my dealership, trusting that they could probably handle a tire issue even without an appointment. They could, but after a while of my sitting in the waiting room wondering who it is always turns up the TV to ear-bleeding levels, they came back and explained that they had to replace the tire altogether, and didn't have it in stock, but should have it either Wednesday or Thursday. I left with the spare put on.

Wednesday afternoon they reported the tire was in, and I went just before yoga for what I hoped would be a quick installation. It probably would have been, but they suggested an alignment, which made sense to me, given the way the car was wobbling. But that meant I had to wait ... and wait ... and wait ... well, the customer service guy who was dealing with me came in twice to assure me I wasn't forgotten, but then he had to go home and I was passed off to someone else's care. Still, it's fixed, and the car is driving right again.

I don't know why the tire was problematic, although I suspect field debris given that after 216 blizzards this season the roads look more like the Moon than Ganymede does.

Trivia: On 10 February 1913, people in Tokyo outside the Diet rioted in the cause of promoting constitutional government. 38 police boxes were smashed and several people killed; 168 people including 110 police were injured, and 253 arrested. Source: A Modern History of Japan, Andrew Gordon.

Currently Reading: A Pictorial History Of The Talkies, Daniel Blum. This is a 1958-published photo book with short essays about The Year In Movies, 1927 to 1958, rich in pictures with no context or explanatory material. But they are interesting for that.

Comments

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

Had a tire rotation and needed an alignment myself on Wednesday; I'm somewhat disappointed it only took an hour. You see, that's an excuse to bring my netbook and transcribe bits and pieces of paper accumulated at Anthrocon; I'm not so good at doing that with distraction and it's the thing to do when there's no internet and yet a computer is available.

I got about 80% of things done and had to immediately seek out a pizza place to sit, order a slice, and finish. I know going home leads to too much distraction. :)

--Chi

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I know just what you mean. It's kind of strange in life when you look forward to something like car repairs just because it gives you this block of unassigned time in which you can concentrate on something specific.

I have used the library as a personal office to whip out things like a paper or a chapter; it's a lot easier to avoid distraction in a public place like that.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

There was a Ted Talk about this. Breaking away from a 'being at work' scenario tends to make for productivity in some ways. Or at least task-completion; this is why after I no longer had a bus commute my GBA and PSP stopped being used.

Had I not my iPod and Andoid phone, I might've managed the whole thing in time.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

And to connect things to my other big event of the month I'm confident that my not going in to work two weeks ago was key to my triumphant work since then. Besides being a psychological break I did have the time and different context to think of completely different ways to go about the basic problems, and the new way around simply works, smoothly and efficiently.

While I really really really like regular patterns in how to spend my time, clearly, there are important benefits to me in irregular and schedule-breaking events.