Tuesdays make me feel funny…for lack of a better title.

June 22, 2004

I assumed that since turning the key in the ignition of my car disables the factory alarm system that I could sit there with the key in the ACC position and it would arm, but sadly I discovered that wasn’t the case when I got gas yesterday. There’s got to be some wsy to disable the alrm when I’m sitting in the damn car, some way top let it know that yes, there’s still a person in the car, don’t start honking when someone closes the glove compartment. I’m definitely asking the dealer how to deal with that thing.

On a brighter note, I was able to calculate my gas mileage from my second tank of gas: 29.789 miles per gallon. 269 miles driven, 9.03 gallons filled. That’s quite good, and it’s definitely at least 100% more than the Mustang. I still miss that car from time to time, but driving home from work yesterday I decided that now that it’s summertime, I don’t miss the interior. There’s just something unflattering about showing up somewhere in your car with a giant sweat stain down your back. I started keeping a towl in the car and draping it over the driver’s seat so that my back didn’t heat up as much, but over long driving periods it really didn’t help much. There’s just soemthing about red vinyl, apparently, that heats up my body. That and it was impossible to rest my arm on the rolled down window for the first five or ten minutes of driving because the metal got so incredibly hot to the touch. I burned myself on numerous occasions just casually resting my arm there while driving. I still gingerly put my arm up on the rolled down window now just out of habit, but then again, most of the time I get in my car I also reach down beside the seat to grab the seatbelt out of habit as well. I’ve even found myself reaching for where the parking brake used to be on more than one occasion. Well, it’s not like the car is gone, just not readily accessible to me. I do need to retrieve a couple of items from it, so one of these times I’m over at my Dad’s I need to get inside it.

The heat towel, of course, went rigth along with the wet towel that was kept on the floor. Actually, the heat towel would usually just end up being the wet towel. See, the Mustang had a leak in it, and over the course of six years neither my Dad nor I nor a slew of mechanics could figure out where the hell it was coming in. The water would drip down from where ever it was coming in and end up on the floor of the passenger side mat. If I put a towel down, it would catch the water for the most part and prevent it from getting underneath the rubber mat and into the carpeting. I couldn’t stop it all, of course, and even using the cover didn’t solve the problem. So I had a leaky car with no way to fix it. I definitely don’t miss that. No matter how much trouble I may have with the factory anti-theft device in my ZX2, it can’t possibly be worse than burned arms, sweaty backs, and leaking…well, whatever was leaking. And 100% better gas mileage also takes a bite off the sting.

I went to the store yesterday under the guise of buying more milk and cereal for here at work, and I ended up just going grocery shopping for myself. I walked out of the store carrying only cereal, milk, soup, sliced turkey (not fresh from the deli), Diet Coke, and a bottle of shampoo, and I spent $60. Ouch! How’d that happen? I guess maybe I overdid it with the cereal since I bought about seven boxes or so. One was definitely coming to work, though, since I finished up my box of corn flakes yesterday, and I also brought a half-gallon jug of skim milk to go along with it. I never know if I’m going to have cereal or whether I’ll crave something else, and since I’m only eating one meal a day here it’s better to use a half gallon size. Recently, however, I’ve started eating breakfast here, as well, since I’m never hungry right after I wake up and I’m usually not interested in eating right after exercising in the morning, either. I don’t typically get hungry until about 8 AM, and that’s right as I’m getting going on my day. It’s just easier to eat then, so I’ll see if that necessitates buying the gallon size, instead.

Speaking of work, I had a good idea today that I may have to ask permission to do. My office sits under a set of standard office lighting, and I was thinking today that it might be more interesting if I brought in my floor lamp from my Mom’s house, the floor lamp that my sister isn’t suing anymore, and maybe the lamp that’s on my dresser and used those instead of the overhead lighting. The room is already fairly bright without the overheads on due to natural light coming in from the front windows, and having soft white lighting my office would just be so much less stressful. I have to make sure that A) I have enough room in here, B) I have enough plugs in here, and C) it’s allowed, though, before I haul all that stuff over here. I like how at the apartment I don’t have an overhead light in my room and instead I use a lamp when natural light isn’t enough, and I was thinking back to a my freshmen year of high school when one of my teachers had his whole classroom lit that way. I wouldn’t mind having that sort of look in here, even though his room was always a bit dark. The floor lamps paired with natural sunlight ought to be enough, methinks.

On a completely random and unrelated note, are you all aware of the expression “a lie isn’t a lie if you believe it”? Do you think that refers only to facts or could it extend to emotional things, as well? I don’t know why I bring it up, just something I’ve ben thinking about.

My Mom told me yesterday that when she drove down to Corvallis to go to a funeral, she ran into the mother of a girl I used to date. I haven’t heard from her in many years, though I had my suspicions of how she was doing. Sure enough, this girl is married. I always knew she’d get married pretty much as quickly as possible because she wanted a wedding. On some level I always suspected that it wouldn’t really matter to WHO, just as long as she got one. The real question is, does she want another one? It’s a bit odd and unnerving, though, to know that an ex-girlfriend of mine is married. I suppose that’s one of those things that comes with growing up. It’s not that big of a deal, just odd to think of.

Eh, so you’ll also notice that I finally enabled the link on the left going to an index of the pages of pictures I got completed last summer before I stopped/lost interest/moved on to other things. The pages with pictures themselves have some bugs, but all the ones that are done are there. Pretty much all I have to do now is finish up the pictures from college and I won’t feel as guilty about not doing the pictures from my trip from Beloit to Portland with my Dad a year ago. So enjoy the ones that are there for now.

Now I’m going to finish up my lunch hour by sipping this giant liter bottle of Diet Coke and trying to figure out what to do for the rest of the day. I have a callback to make, and I’ve heard rumors of something that’s getting reassigned to me, but until I see something I’ll pretend I don’t know anything. Until later.

Posted in Beloit, General