Car Sadness

My car broke. It's been acting funny for a little while but it finally decided this afternoon that it had had enough. I can't really blame it considering it was something like 16 degrees. I wouldn't run in that either.

Last night as I was driving home from North Olmsted the "check engine" light came on while I was on the highway. I've had a lot of electric troubles with the current car so mostly it just made me sigh, rather than freak out and panic like the first few times my "check engine" light has come on. The engine didn't seem to be doing anything weird, so I kept an eye on the light to make sure it didn't start flashing and continued home.

But my car's been making some really funky noises ever since the last snow storm. At first I thought it was just ice in the wheel-well since the noises seemed to come up mostly when I was turning. Then, as the snow thawed and the possibility of my having missed a chunk of ice somewhere melted, I remembered the last time I was having similar noises. This was again after a big snow storm, the rock shield below my car had been knocked partially loose (which may or may not have been because I parked at a 45 degree angle when the rest of the lot was full) and was grinding on something. I made a note to call Bill (my mechanic) to see if it could wait, but kept forgetting about it.

Only then the noises started occurring randomly, occasionally but not necessarily in connection with turning. Sometimes it started making weird whirring noises when I was accelerating. Sometimes when I was slowing down, and sometimes when I wasn't doing anything at all. Weirder still, my car started deciding to rev up the engine and knock around for no apparent reason when I first started the car and was idling while I put my seat belt.

So all in all my car has been extremely unhappy lately, and definitely due for a doctor's visit. I've just been hoping it could hold out till the next oil change because, seriously, the mechanic is 40 minutes away and I JUST got it serviced. Annoying.

It couldn't. My car STARTED just fine when I went to go to Youngstown this afternoon, unfortunately it immediately turned itself right back off. Several times. And just to add insult to injury I was flustered enough that I then locked my keys in the car which is just brilliant. On the other hand, this is the first time I've locked my keys in my car, so at least it was a time when the car was not running, and furthermore, wasn't going anywhere anyway. So bright side to everything, right?

Flights of Crappy

I hate flying.

I realize that's fairly common, but I'm not really afraid of flying, and I do it so frequently that I'm more than used to it. I've been flying on my own since I was thirteen, multiple times a year since I was sixteen, so I ought to be. Actually I lied, there is some fear involved in my dislike, but I recognize that it's irrational (most fears are). I know that the odds of being in a plane wreck are incredibly low, but then I think, by flying as often as I do I'm surely upping those odds at least a little. Then there's the fear that comes from looking out those tiny little windows and seeing the wing bounce all over the place. Sure sure, I know that for physics sake it's better that it do that, but I can't help but think it's about to break off at any moment. Or that one of those puny feeling plastic windows is just going to break. Or that the laws of physics are going to let us down (ha!) and decide to just drop us out of the sky. There are any number of perfectly natural, if irrational, reasons to be afraid of flying.

In spite of all that, the fear is pretty low on the radar. What really bugs me about flying is the extreme discomfort. In some ways flying with Matt is much nicer, because traveling with someone makes the trip easier. There is one key difference that makes it worse however: Matt is six foot four, and as such, gets automatic dibs on the aisle seat. Bastard.

When I was a kid I loved the window, but as I got older I preferred the aisle. It's not that I need the leg room, it's just that it allows me some freedom. Stuck in the middle, I inevitably need to use the bathroom pretty much incessantly, simply because my brain is perverse and wants me to suffer. Even if I do make Matt move so I can use the bathroom I pretty much need to use it again immediately as soon as I sit down because I'm STUCK AGAIN. And of course in the middle you're fighting two people for arm wrests instead of just one. At least because I know Matt I can lean on him, or feel less guilty about growling while fighting over the middle space (strangers look at you strangely and hit the call button if you so much as bare your teeth at them), but no matter what, the middle seat sucks.

It's nice when airlines take a little trouble to make flying more comfortable. There's not much they can do about the side to side room, so the middle person probably forever be screwed, but the last time I flew Continental on an international flight I saw an interesting solution to the upright problem. To fit as many people in as possible, seats are far too close together for comfort and that extra two inches you can get by putting your seat back doesn't really do much beyond pissing off the person behind you. On the continental flight however, the seats physically swung forward as you put your seat back, allowing your seatback to recline another several inches. It's AMAZING what a difference that made. Suddenly you can actually lean your head back, without fighting gravity. Brilliant. You don't really lose much leg room, unless you've got something stowed beneath the seat in front of you. These days I usually travel with my laptop stuffed down there and my backpack up above, which worked well since my laptop doesn't take much vertical space. I wish more airlines would do this, but I get the feeling that airlines just don't care.

I know airlines are losing money around the board, and can't give quite the luxuries that they used to, but there are so many things they could do that wouldn't cost them any money at all. Running on time would be a nice step. We flew USAir this trip and it was dreadful. The only reason we didn't miss any flights (we had three) on the way to Oregon is because ALL our flights were late. There was no weird weather outside to justify it, they were just late. On our final flight we had a plane waiting outside and the pilot waiting by the desk. I went to ask when our expected arrival would be (since we were already running about an hour late at that point, and I'd just arrived from my flight which landed two hours late) and the pilot looked a bit shifty. "Well," he admitted, "I'm not sure where my crew is, so that depends." Ridiculous.

And if they're going to be late, the least they could do is try to be helpful along the way. Remember when they used to list during landing, all the connecting flights of people on the plane? Why on earth did they stop doing that? It doesn't cost them a dime and it would up my opinion of their customer service. It also would have been helpful, on those constantly late flights, not to have to stop and find out what gate we needed to run to. On the one really late flight, where Matt and I ought to have had about ten minutes to get to our gate (that's the one with the missing crew though so we really had an hour) it would have been nice too if they might have announced that our plane was delayed so we could have waited and let those with tighter connections go. They might also have mentioned those who had already missed their flights (about a quarter of the plane) so those people also didn't have to clog up the aisles. Sheesh.

It's not fear that's hurting airlines, fear of flying, fear of terrorism, fear of crowds or any other kind of fear. It's lousy planning and thoughtlessness. Honestly, put in a little effort, and those of us who have to fly will at least dread it a little less.

Snowed In

Since this is the first weekend of my break, and the first weekend that Matt was through with his SANS test, we had all sorts of social plans.

We started out by having dim sum with Amy, William and Doug at Tommy's Sea Food Restaurant, our favorite place for dim sum, which was lots of fun, if not lots of healthy. Actually I'm not sure how healthy dim sum is, it's mostly steamed, but it just doesn't seem possible that it's good for you. It is tasty, and we haven't had it in a while, so it was worth a bit of a health cost.

After dim sum we went over to get some bubble tea at Superior Pho (which is where we went to have pho last week, excellent pho and the best bubble tea in town). Matt and I had planned to hang out at a coffee house in town before socializing with some friends in the evening, but at about this time the radio started giving dire warnings of the sky falling, and the sky itself started hinting that it might be ready to do so.

So instead we went to borders to grab my car, where we'd left it before Amy's concert last night. We thought we'd beat the worst of the weather then come back up to Cleveland in a single car, but by the time we made it down, a normally 40 minute drive taking more than an hour, we both realized that with the weather getting worse we'd probably better plan on sticking inside for the day. * So instead of heading back to Cleveland we went to the grocery store to stock up for the weekend, guessing we'd probably be stuck for a while. We even picked up supplies for a nice breakfast tomorrow (Matt makes the best fried tomatoes ever). We're supposed to meet some friends for a game day tomorrow afternoon, and more friends at Barnes & Noble for coffee in the evening, but if the weather lives up to the radio's promises we may not make either.

Gee, what a shame, stuck all weekend inside, alone with my fiance. We made ourselves an elegant dinner of frozen ravioli (but good frozen ravioli) spinach salad and bread with olive oil and an herb mix we picked up from the Holden Arboretum's fall garden show. Later tonight we'll curl up and watch the special addition of Serenity, which we've been wanting to see for a while but haven't had time. After that I'll let you use your imaginations or not as you like.Needless to say, as much as I was looking forward to a "fun" weekend I'm not really lamenting its loss. If we get out tomorrow great, either way I know we'll have a nice relaxing weekend, which we've needed for some time.

* All but the last picture came from flickr and link back to their poster.

Say a Gway?

It's Friday night and I'm not in the mood for blogging, so instead I'll leave you with a picture of an elderly man, in a church, on a Segway.
And he's got a jaunty hat too!