I am going to attempt to do shorter little postings. I seem to be getting too occupied or tired at night to blog. Maybe I can get more ‘regular’.
LIFE: Last week on April Fools Day, I went to get our car inspection. It snuck up on me, but fortunately my google calendar nagged me about it. I had those dreaded check everything lights flashing on my instrument panel again. I tried all the usual suspects: the gas cap, the fluids etc. and reset it. But, it was still on. I am due for servicing anyway but, I decided to go ahead and get rejected. I can go back and have it retested.
Country Auto is right down the street. As I handed Bob the registration I told him about the light that was on. He said it won’t pass. But, I’ll have 90 days to come back. Bob and I have a relationship going back to my Peugeot. I wrote him into my song of the same name. It wasn’t pretty. Let’s just say it was the wrong car; at the wrong garage; at the wrong time in my financial life. Having a replacement engine installed was a case of “extreme make-unders”. It ran better before. It just had some annoying ticking noises.*
So, I read a few magazine in their ‘lobby’, trying not to get any grease on my clothes. He came back in a few minutes later and asked for the fee and said I was all set. “So, there weren’t any lights on. Were you talking about another car?” I said “Really?” “Unless it was an April Fool joke.” I have a feeling when they connected the state computer to it it reset everything. So, the paranoid joke was on me.
* Eventually I did find a new mechanic that specialized in Peugeots. A friend of his walked in to the garage and said, “Hey! This is my old car!” It turned out he was a former hockey player with the Hartford Whalers. Fran, my mechanic came over. He implied that he would be a son-of-a-something-or-other. “That dent in the trunk is where I slammed the lid down on my gear and broke my stick.” And Fran said, “And remember that damn ticking noise? We never did figure out what that was!”