The following points of interest aren't necessarily connected...this post is more or less a schmorgusboard of happenings...
When my friends and I ran in the KAW 5K, I entered to win...well...at the time, I had no clue what I was entering to win...I think I wanted the free giveaways that accompanied giving a man in a booth my name, address and phone number. Without thinking, I jotted down this information, took the freebies and continued on my merry way.
About a week later, a boisterous man calling from "sunny San Diego, California!" called to say I had won a 3-night cruise for two to Cozumel! Eh, too good to be true is what I thought initially. But, after convincing my coworker to check it out the legit-ness of it, we have two tickets for a seemingly fabulous cruise from Galveston to Mexico.
After weeks, months, OK...a bit more than a YEAR of good fortune with my car...and bragging about the fact that I NEVER have trouble with it, the car gods swooped bad luck upon me. Despite the fact that I hate my car, I take very good care of it. I keep it sparkling clean, get my regular maintenance, etc.
Let me paint a mental picture for you...imagine this...
It was payday. I could not have been more excited because I planned to put a big chunk of this check in my SAVINGS. Yes, it's so hard to do this because in the news business, journalists make below the poverty line (not even kidding). But, I have learned to be so so so frugal with my money. On this day, to celebrate payday, I went to get my monthly pedicure...my one big splurge. After Tina worked her magic on my gnarly feet ("I run every day, I am so sorry they are so gross!"), I looked at my watch and noticed I had exactly one hour before I needed to be at work.
"I can make it down and back to Academy Sports for some new running shorts," I thought in my head. So, I cranked up the floor AC to get my toes dry, and ripped out of the parking lot. I jumped on the freeway. I never take the freeway. I live exactly 2 miles from work. I drive my car a total of 8 miles (tops) each day. This was quite an excursion for me. I'll mention it was a blazing hot Central Texas day. I got a few miles from the salon, and, with quite a few more to go, my steering wheel locked up on me. In my head I thought I was imagining it. "Oh, it'll loosen up...I've gotta get some new running shorts before work!" Hmm...it wasn't unlocking. As I trudged on down the freeway with a locked steering wheel, I began to think maybe this wasn't such a good thing. Maybe I should try to get off the freeway. "If I can just turn my car off and on again, maybe that'll do the trick." REALLY? In retrospect, am I really that stupid!? LUCKILY, I manage to get my car to the shoulder, which happens to be the exit ramp to the access road, coincidentally very near my apartment. As I FORCE my steering wheel off to make the widest turn ever to a side street off the access road, the dashboard is lighting up like Las Vegas and warning bings and chimes sound like slot machines. Clearly, it wasn't going to "be OK" if I could just turn it off and on.
As I tried not to panic, a conversation I had with my dad just two days earlier replayed in my head. "Hey Dad, am I still covered by AAA?" ... "Oh, I'm not, OK, I am going to put that on my list of things to do...yeah, AAA has saved my toosh a few times, I really need to renew my membership." I AM NOT EVEN KIDDING. JUST TWO DAYS PRIOR! I was going to call them before I went anywhere outside of the city...I just didn't think disaster would strike in the coming DAYS. Ugh. I called AAA and renewed my membership for one year over the phone. Ca-ching, there goes some of that paycheck. But, a tow truck came instantaneously to pick Goldie and me up...and escorted us to the body shop. Maybe I should mention that a couple weeks before this, the motor on my window stopped working, so in my head I thought, "OK, I can get that window fixed while I'm here." Long story short...what happened to my car was "unforeseeable" and "a total fluke." I was reassured that there's nothing I could have done to prevent what happened. BUT, I had to fork out that big chunk of money I was planning to save. And, I'm still driving without the ability to roll down my window as this repair would have cost an extra $340. Boo...
Just a couple short weeks later, automobile disaster struck again. I'd been noticing that one of my tires needed to be refilled quite frequently, and my windshield wipers really needed replacing (and we're in tropical storm season now in Texas), so I decided to be proactive and get those things checked before I headed down to Houston to see some family friends. In a grand proactive gesture, I asked the mechanic to go ahead with an oil change, even though I had a few hundred miles before the scheduled maintenance.
Two brand new tires later (apparently they were so bald I wouldn't have "passed inspection" -- I mean, really? They looked like they had sufficient tread in my non-car-minded mind), a patched tire (yeah the one that "looked low" had a nail in it), an oil change and...A BRAND NEW WINDSHIELD WIPER MOTOR???!!! ... I'm not even going to go there...there was a recall a few years ago...umm...huh? I left with a well-oiled machine, and an empty bank account. The thing that frustrates me the most is that I take care of my car...so why the bad CAR-ma? :( Oh well. C'est la vie, I suppose.
J.J. and I finally got out of the newsroom and got to do some writing on our own. Exciting, right? Not. They sent us to a blogging convention. I thought I might learn a thing or two. Wrong. It wasn't an instructional conference on how to pimp your page, it was a gathering of liberal, grassroot-types figuring out ways to get their messages to the masses.
***
When my friends and I ran in the KAW 5K, I entered to win...well...at the time, I had no clue what I was entering to win...I think I wanted the free giveaways that accompanied giving a man in a booth my name, address and phone number. Without thinking, I jotted down this information, took the freebies and continued on my merry way.
About a week later, a boisterous man calling from "sunny San Diego, California!" called to say I had won a 3-night cruise for two to Cozumel! Eh, too good to be true is what I thought initially. But, after convincing my coworker to check it out the legit-ness of it, we have two tickets for a seemingly fabulous cruise from Galveston to Mexico.
***
After weeks, months, OK...a bit more than a YEAR of good fortune with my car...and bragging about the fact that I NEVER have trouble with it, the car gods swooped bad luck upon me. Despite the fact that I hate my car, I take very good care of it. I keep it sparkling clean, get my regular maintenance, etc.
Let me paint a mental picture for you...imagine this...
It was payday. I could not have been more excited because I planned to put a big chunk of this check in my SAVINGS. Yes, it's so hard to do this because in the news business, journalists make below the poverty line (not even kidding). But, I have learned to be so so so frugal with my money. On this day, to celebrate payday, I went to get my monthly pedicure...my one big splurge. After Tina worked her magic on my gnarly feet ("I run every day, I am so sorry they are so gross!"), I looked at my watch and noticed I had exactly one hour before I needed to be at work.
"I can make it down and back to Academy Sports for some new running shorts," I thought in my head. So, I cranked up the floor AC to get my toes dry, and ripped out of the parking lot. I jumped on the freeway. I never take the freeway. I live exactly 2 miles from work. I drive my car a total of 8 miles (tops) each day. This was quite an excursion for me. I'll mention it was a blazing hot Central Texas day. I got a few miles from the salon, and, with quite a few more to go, my steering wheel locked up on me. In my head I thought I was imagining it. "Oh, it'll loosen up...I've gotta get some new running shorts before work!" Hmm...it wasn't unlocking. As I trudged on down the freeway with a locked steering wheel, I began to think maybe this wasn't such a good thing. Maybe I should try to get off the freeway. "If I can just turn my car off and on again, maybe that'll do the trick." REALLY? In retrospect, am I really that stupid!? LUCKILY, I manage to get my car to the shoulder, which happens to be the exit ramp to the access road, coincidentally very near my apartment. As I FORCE my steering wheel off to make the widest turn ever to a side street off the access road, the dashboard is lighting up like Las Vegas and warning bings and chimes sound like slot machines. Clearly, it wasn't going to "be OK" if I could just turn it off and on.
As I tried not to panic, a conversation I had with my dad just two days earlier replayed in my head. "Hey Dad, am I still covered by AAA?" ... "Oh, I'm not, OK, I am going to put that on my list of things to do...yeah, AAA has saved my toosh a few times, I really need to renew my membership." I AM NOT EVEN KIDDING. JUST TWO DAYS PRIOR! I was going to call them before I went anywhere outside of the city...I just didn't think disaster would strike in the coming DAYS. Ugh. I called AAA and renewed my membership for one year over the phone. Ca-ching, there goes some of that paycheck. But, a tow truck came instantaneously to pick Goldie and me up...and escorted us to the body shop. Maybe I should mention that a couple weeks before this, the motor on my window stopped working, so in my head I thought, "OK, I can get that window fixed while I'm here." Long story short...what happened to my car was "unforeseeable" and "a total fluke." I was reassured that there's nothing I could have done to prevent what happened. BUT, I had to fork out that big chunk of money I was planning to save. And, I'm still driving without the ability to roll down my window as this repair would have cost an extra $340. Boo...
Just a couple short weeks later, automobile disaster struck again. I'd been noticing that one of my tires needed to be refilled quite frequently, and my windshield wipers really needed replacing (and we're in tropical storm season now in Texas), so I decided to be proactive and get those things checked before I headed down to Houston to see some family friends. In a grand proactive gesture, I asked the mechanic to go ahead with an oil change, even though I had a few hundred miles before the scheduled maintenance.
Two brand new tires later (apparently they were so bald I wouldn't have "passed inspection" -- I mean, really? They looked like they had sufficient tread in my non-car-minded mind), a patched tire (yeah the one that "looked low" had a nail in it), an oil change and...A BRAND NEW WINDSHIELD WIPER MOTOR???!!! ... I'm not even going to go there...there was a recall a few years ago...umm...huh? I left with a well-oiled machine, and an empty bank account. The thing that frustrates me the most is that I take care of my car...so why the bad CAR-ma? :( Oh well. C'est la vie, I suppose.
***
J.J. and I finally got out of the newsroom and got to do some writing on our own. Exciting, right? Not. They sent us to a blogging convention. I thought I might learn a thing or two. Wrong. It wasn't an instructional conference on how to pimp your page, it was a gathering of liberal, grassroot-types figuring out ways to get their messages to the masses.
I did, however, get the chance to write a couple stories:
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