Miscellany of a Cheshire Cat

I left Maine at 7:30 a.m.

I arrived in Drexel Hill, PA at 3:00 p.m.

I love my car.

My car is mostly unpacked, my office air conditioner is on, and the next order of business is to switch from sneakers to sandals.

There will be a fuller accounting later.

tags: driving, road trip, travel

Components to a good day:

• Beautiful weather
• Not getting caught speeding on the way to the airport (rental Subaru + no traffic = fun… it was an accident, I swear)
• Free wireless Internet at the Providence airport (FREE!)
• An e-mail from the new yurt guy (we should be able to get a new yurt for Pennsic!)
• An on-time departure of my flight (remarkable!)
• A rather exciting, high-speed landing… also on-time
• Finding my car in the parking garage with no trouble
• Popcorn for dinner (shhhhh! don’t tell!)
• Dairy Queen for dessert
• Home

Bonus round:
Indicator #31 that summer has arrived: the soft, smoky smell of questionable substances wafting across the street from the group of teens hanging out on the church steps.

tags: airplanes, cars, dairy queen, random, travel, weather, yurt

Don’t tell my Subaru, but…

Yesterday we went out test-driving.

Our first stop was the Toyota dealership where Priuses… Prii are going like hot cakes and they didn’t have one on the lot to look at. The nice sales dude did take us to the warehouse for “already sold” cars (on the third floor!!!) to sit in the only Prius they had around. The Fop mostly fits. I still think it’s too light on highways (it gets blown around a lot) but I might get used to that. It gets 20 more miles per gallon than my current car, but I worry about the stability, especially in extreme weather, given how light it is.

Our second, rather fateful stop was at the Mini dealership. The Clubman is adorable. I didn’t like it all until I saw it in person. The only stick shift they had available to test drive was a turbo version. Oops. That was fun! Too fun probably. Now I’m comparing horsepower between the turbo and the non-turbo and cross-referencing against my current car. I’m going to go back for a longer test drive during the week and one out onto the highway. I’m doomed, I think. Even the turbo gets 10 mpg more than my current car. Bonus feature of the Mini: No new car smell. Drawback: Rear visibility limited but mostly mitigated by side mirrors.

Our last stop was at the Subaru dealership. Foresters got huge at some point in the past few years. I tested out a Forester (automatic… *yawn*) and a Legacy (stick shift, more fun but not exciting by any means). Alas I still dislike what they’ve done to the Impreza with the latest redesign. I like the “baby wagon” look of my 1998 Impreza. Now the Impreza looks like every other hatch-back. And the Forester looks more and more like every other small SUV. Ultimately, this is a drawback for me. I like my car NOT to look like every other car in the lot. I suppose I could get flames painted on… The Subarus are all-wheel drive and handle well, but they don’t get significantly better gas mileage now than they did 10 years ago. Another drawback: Intense new car smell. Ew. Bonus: Subaru actually has cars in stock.

The Prius is back-ordered 6-10 weeks. The Clubman is back-ordered 3 months or more. But I could have walked out with a Subaru yesterday. (The only annoying moment of “I hate salesmen” yesterday was at the Subaru dealership when the sales manager swung by to be all sales-y at us about wanting to make a deal on the L.L. Bean edition we were poking at so he could get it out of his showroom. The sales guy who was helping us was pretty annoyed by this too.) Luckily, my time line for purchasing is like 6 months. I think I’ll need to replace my car this year - it’s got a few more good trips in it, but I think ultimately it’s getting to the point where I should stop taking long road trips up and down the Eastern seaboard with it. It’s 10 1/2 years old after all!

At this point, I’ve narrowed my choices down to the Prius and the Clubman - the Clubman with a strong lead. I have a few friends who are Mini and Prius owners. I’ll be asking them how their cars handle in the winter and on highways. I’m still taking suggestions. I’m looking for a medium-sized car that gets over 30 mpg, doesn’t look like every other car in its class and is a stable, reliable vehicle. I’m not a fan of trunks.

tags: car shopping, cars, clubman, mini, prius, subaru, test drives

I shall survive this week!

Monday night, after a long day of meetingness, I headed down to Mike’s house for dinner with his fabulous wife Lise and the superheroes. Lise is an secret super hero because she makes kick-butt guacamole. The little superheroes are really quite endearing. And clearly too smart for their parents’ own good. It was fun hanging out with children and adults - I could have easily stayed chatting far to late and ended up sleep deprived for tomorrow morning. While chatting, we saw two raccoons in their backyard. On my way back to the highway I saw 2 opossums and 4 white tailed deer, all does, all big. Well, big in the sense that they were taller and heavier than the little runt deer we usually see in the Philly area. Certainly more than match for the little Prius I’m renting this year.

The Prius is a cool little car but it feels a bit like a toy. I’ve put a lot of miles on it so far - enough that I had to put gas in it tonight. *gasp* I could definitely see buying one if I drove more… and I think I’ll be researching it a bit anyway.

Last night I went out with Ann and Andy to a fabulous Italian place in Providence called Siena. The wait was considerably longer than quoted but the comps and food definitely made up for it. The food was divine. The company was fabulous. The evening rocked.

Tonight we had dinner somewhat as a team. More Italian food which was tasty enough for delivery/catering food. After, I gave Andy a ride home, he, Ann and I sat in their gazebo for a bit talking. It’s so nice to sit and chat about randomness. I’ve done a lot of that this week and I have apparently missed doing it more. I’m not going to think about that all that much. Over-analysis leads to melancholy!

The all-afternoon team meetings have been bigger than I expected with a lot more people from external teams than I envisioned but mostly useful all the same. ;) We have 3 new people on the team I hadn’t met before this week so it’s been good to meet them.

I am all checked in for my flight tomorrow. It’s been a fun week filled with fun people so far - my fingers are crossed for the rest of the week to finish out just as well.

tags: adventures, dining, fun, meetings, people, travel, work

Fixed: I noticed earlier today that Monster Cat was showing up crappily in Windows IE. (Because it’s been so long since I cared that I’d forgotten that it’s taboo just to resize images on the fly despite the fact that they look fine when you do that on the Mac…) So I re-exported and fixed that little problem tonight. The latest (2008) episodes should all display clearly and legibly now.

Suggestions? If you notice any other weirdness, feel free to comment. Also, I am not a comic artist so if you see something I could do better, please mention it!

Monster Cat! This will be week 3 of doing Monster Cat on Monday-Wednesday-Friday. I wonder how long I can keep that up. I already have 2 for next week and plan to build the 3rd before I leave for CT on Sunday.

Travel: Oh yeah, I’m going to be up in Connecticut Sunday evening through Thursday afternoon next week. Save me some snow, folks!

My car! Because what random, “late”-night post is complete without me gushing about my car? My Subaru turns 10 years old this week! Happy birthday, Green Hornet! Still under 155,000 miles, only 12,000 of which I’ve put on it in the last 5 years. Yeah, that tells you something about how radically my driving habits changed when I moved to Pennsylvania.

tags: car, monster cat, random, travel

It’s Tuesday, I’m in Connecticut and I’m wearing polka-dot socks. I have training this morning and most of tomorrow and meeting most of the rest of the time. I’m not sure when I’m going to get actual work done this week. Yes, I’m still tired. I started waking up at 2:40 this morning and then woke periodically, about every hour, until the alarm went off at 6. I would really like my body to get used to this new allergy medicine because it’s doing lovely things for my actual allergies… I don’t want to have to choose between sleeping and breathing!

It’s cold out there! YAY! Not too cold, chilly is a better word. I do wish I’d brought gloves. The steering wheel of my pumpkin-mobile is cold! (Yes, it’s a pumpkin. I got an orange Saturn Vue from the rental place this week. It’s really quite cute and festive.)

tags: allergies, cars, random, socks, training, weather, work

I just got off the phone with the Philadelphia Parking Authority people. I received a notice that I hadn’t paid a ticket I got for an expired inspection except I never got that ticket.

We’ll ignore the fact that my inspection is indeed expired at this moment (it expired after the ticket was issued though and my car is sleeping over at the mechanic’s tonight to get a sticker). We’ll also ignore the fact that I often make a habit of going a month or two before re-inspecting my car because I either flake or get lazy. We can even ignore the fact that in the past I have indeed received the exact same citation. I just don’t go into Philly anymore and I have barely driven my car since the knock sensor issue was identified in July.

I checked the date on the ticket against my calendars and blog, and at the time the ticket was issued I was posting the notice about the Fop getting an LJ account… so… really totally not me. (Hey, I wouldn’t put it past me to completely forget a trip into the city on an errand or something.)

Now, for those of you who have never experienced the joys of Philadelphia, the Parking Authority has a bit of a reputation for being difficult to deal with and impossible to resolve issues with unless you go down there in person… and even in person, it is hard to resolve issues to your satisfaction. A good tactic is to bring a bottle of pain killers, preferably prescription-strength. Is a $61 ticket wondering worth my time to try to fix it or should I just pay it?

I decided to try calling the “pay by phone” number to see if I could get to a real person. The auto-answer menu was either deliberately designed to confuse the caller or just poorly setup. The 2nd level of the menu sounded something like this:

Press 1 … to pay a ticket by phone … press 2 … to get the status of a ticket … to [do something else] press 3 … press 4 … to dispute a ticket … press 5.

Guess what I pressed? 5. And it worked.

After a few moments, I was talking to a real person. A nice person who was able to look up the ticket number and listened to my confusion about getting a ticket when I was neither in the city nor out of inspection. Then she was able pull up a scan of the original ticket to determine that the license plate number was a typo. Well, duh, of course it was a typo but it’s always nice when people agree with me on that kind of thing. She updated the ticket, gave me a confirmation number, and the whole call took less than 10 minutes. I am amazed. I honestly expected to have to provide proof, in person, during business hours (which would have taken me 2-3+ hours round trip and displaced my workday). Hurray for being able to fix typos over the phone!

In other car news, the little Green Hornet is getting all its bits fixed at the new mechanic today and tomorrow. See, the Hornet started to roar a couple weeks ago… now I know that can mean the catalytic converter is dead. The new mechanic gave me reasonable estimates for both exhaust work and the knock sensor, less than 2 car payments if I were to buy a new car right now. Then I looked at the blue book value of the car again. At this point I might as well drive it at least another winter. I’m an expert procrastinator. Besides, Subaru doesn’t have any greens in its color options for 2008.

You know why replacing a catalytic converter is so expensive? At least in part because platinum is used as a catalyst to convert carbon monoxide to carbon dioxide. This is what I learned from NPR and the Nobel Prize committee today.

tags: car, catalytic converter, parking, parking tickets, philadelphia parking authority, state inspection

Last week I was up in Connecticut for work. It was a pretty good week despite a general lack of sleep, a pesky sinus badness and the craziness that comes from being around my coworkers. Well, the craziness isn’t exactly a drawback - that part is kind of fun. My boss was in town too and it was good to see her for a change. Things around/above me have just become rather fraught with politics, intrigue and all that lovely BS. Maybe I’m just noticing it now because I was onsite. I got back the first week of October to play more in the dark waters. For some reason, while I usually hate this, I’m vaguely amused and actually contemplating which cards to play when and to whom. This scares me.

I got home Thursday night. The flight actually arrived in PHL early. Freaky, I know! Friday I drove to an appointment and discovered that my car has completely lost all engine power and has become very very loud. I’ll be calling my mechanic back, haggling a bit probably, and also getting another quote on the repair. I also have a friend who could conceivably do the replacement for me, but if I can get it done nearby for cheaper, I don’t have to have him go out of his way. And if there’s something else wrong… well, I can re-evalute. For a while it looks like I am going to be without a vehicle. Handily, I don’t use my car much anyway so it’s only a minor pain.

I should go test drive new Subarus and Minis.

tags: car, connecticut, mini, subaru, travel, work, work politics

The good news is:

• I am over my post-Pennsic cold.
• I have been exercising regularly since I could breathe again.
• I’m actually eating like an adult lately.
• Work hasn’t exploded. In fact, there have been just enough crazy moments to keep me entertained this month.
• I have rediscovered the glory of teatime.
• Threadless T-shirts is having their $10 sale. For those unfamiliar, Threadless produces small runs of amusing and random shirts such as Emo Bear, Diabolical Hot dog and, my personal favorite, the Loch Ness Imposter. I find their shirts run a little small, so if you want to be carefree and use your dryer on them, order a size up.

The bad news is

• I have a case of the blahs.
• My car is still in need of a knock sensor (but it’s not like I drive it much).
• Pennsic Laundry still haunts me.
• I really need the upcoming long weekend.

Good out-numbers bad, I’m stopping here.

tags: blah, car, food, laundry, random, sick, teatime, threadless, work

I decided to sew for Pennsic. I made this decision Monday. Monday night, I ventured out to the horrible, giant JoAnn’s Fabrics and bought some cotton. Tuesday, I washed and pressed it. (More about the goddess of irons later…) Yesterday I cut out 4 tunics and a zillion-gore skirt. One tunic is contstructed (except for trim) and the skirt has 4 seams left to sew… of course, one is the hem. I may be crazy and not even close to packed, but I haven’t done any sewing in a couple years so this is kind of fun. I should contemplate packing.

Work is crazy. I’m trying to build a project schedule for a massive suite of projects. Hence while I’m taking a break to shake the craziness out of my head. The first half of the week involved chasing people to prep their program for a big status meeting. Fun, in some ways, but not relaxing for any of us. I’m very happy to be coming up on vacation. And it sounds like I will actually be able to take the vacation properly this year! No checking in daily!

So, in car news, my dad has learned that there’s 1 bolt that holds on the knock sensor and that it’s fairly accessible at the back of the engine. It is actually cheaper for me to fly my father, his tools and a part (which he can get wholesale) down from Maine to Philadelphia than it is to pay my mechanic to do this work. I find this obnoxious. And I’m seriously considering it. I also wonder if I could just buy the right tools and do it myself. Fixing this would make further car-buying procrastination totally viable.

More things are blooming out on the porch, including yet another plant that I’ve had for years but never seen bloom. (And it’s a serious bloom… I need to take a photo of it later.) My african violet is blossoming gleefully as well. One of my once-tiny oyster plants (Rhoeo spathacea I think) has also decided to take off and bloom. I need to do a little planting and rearranging before we leave to make the plants easier for M to water while we’re gone. But now, back to work on the Schedule of Doom.

tags: cars, flowers, indoor gardening, knock sensor, pennsic, sewing, work