Drive

It was past time that I got the oil changed on both of our cars, and luckily I can just drop them off at a garage near my office and then walk to work. There is no need to make an appointment or wait for the car to be finished. It’s a perfect setup and I can’t imagine anyone not doing the same thing. But nearly every time I need to take the car in, the same thing happens. One of the women I work with will see me walking down the street and express a ridiculous amount of concern. They ask “Did I see you walking down the sidewalk this morning?” in the same tone of voice you would use to ask “Was that you I saw digging through the garbage this morning?” It takes some effort to assure them that everything is all right. I guess since it would take a series of calamities to get them to walk a few blocks, they assume that I’ve had some serious misfortune. They invariably offer to drive me the next time. What bugs me the most is how deeply ingrained and reflexive this lazy attitude is - "If there is any way I can avoid expending the effort and time required to walk somewhere, I should take it, obvious to the other costs involved." So I got the oil changed in the Saturn on Wednesday with no problem. Yesterday, I was walking back to the garage to pick up the Ford and sure enough I got busted. A co-worker calls from her van, asking if I want a ride. I decline and she insists that it’s on her way, not understanding at all. How come it is the walking of two blocks that seems like the waste?

From today's Buffalo News on the growing trend of families with three or more cars: "The trend, mirrored nationwide, is most prominent in the region’s growing suburbs, such as Clarence. Affluent and purposely designed to mostly keep people and places distant from each other, Clarence has dealt with the subsequent need to drive everywhere by accumulating the county’s largest percentage of households — about one of every four — with three or more vehicles." I used to live in New Jersey, and I'm reminded of it everytime I drive down Transit. The good life!

Dennise had on one of the music channels that we get through the TV and it was playing “Rehab,” but it was the Jay Z “remix.” It sounded for a few seconds like the DJ had his mic open and he was just yelling and talking over the music. I thought “What the hell?” Then it broke into the “rap” part of the song where Jay Z shows what a super talent he is. He is such a super talent that he waited for Amy Winehouse to write a hit song so that he could add a rap verse in the middle of it and then release it four months later. Kick ass.

Expect to keep seeing a lot of Michael Vick jerseys this year. If people went out and bought OJ jerseys after the double homicide, they are certainly going to keep the Vick jerseys they already bought.

I replaced the mechanism in the upstairs toilet tank on Wednesday. One of the main problems with our house is that there is no way to completely turn off the water anywhere. I can’t turn the water off at any of the sinks or the commodes because there are no valves. When I turn off the water in the basement, I still get a pretty decent trickle. There were a few minutes when I thought I was going to flood the house, especially after I cracked the old fill valve and there was no turning back. I was home alone with Drew, who of course started screaming from his crib. I had to set him up in a seat in the hallway, where he watched me while I knelt down in a puddle of water and tried to figure out the instructions. Everything turned out perfectly, except I had to dirty many more towels than I was hoping to.