Thursday, July 06, 2006

And Now a Word from Our Sponsor

[Thursday night 6/29.—ed.]

This weekend’s packing and moving process is brought to you by the Cooperstown Brewing Company’s "Benchwarmer Porter." Benchwarmer Porter: taking the sting out of having to pack and move since 2006!

Tasty too. Dusky, almost chocolatey low register & a nice substantial texture.

The best part about drinking beer while you’re packing up is that you realize, Hey, This is totally something I can do like tomorrow or early Saturday. And so shall it be.

Speaking of actual benchwarmers, my week-long streak of ignoring the Pirates ended today at the gym, where the TVs set to ESPN were showing highlights of their day game against the White Sox. Freddy Sanchez won the game with a walk-off homer, after the Bucs blew a late lead. Apparently this was the end of a 13-game losing streak. I knew that no longer paying attention to the Pirates was a good thing – and I really mean that, it’s been a noticeable weight off my shoulders – but I had no idea it was this much better than the alternative.

Strange behavior from the Green Car tonight: the battery appeared to die when I tried to start it this evening, but while I was sitting in the car weighing my options (see below), the interior lights came back on. So I tried to start it again, and again it failed; but the third time I waited for about 10 minutes after the lights reappeared, and it started just fine. Is this battery behavior? I would have thought the battery would just die once & be done with it.

I spent the 10-minute wait replying to a text message from a friend. This is the first text message I’ve ever tried to write on my cell phone, and it went something like this:

[One sentence conveying substance of text message.] Please disregard following mistyped characters I dont know how to delete. 7Jgh

I know how to insert the right characters but not how to get rid of the wrong ones. Also, since I don’t have text messaging on my plan, text messages cost me something like 10 cents each. Due to the vagaries of mental accounting, this is disproportionately annoying.

I might also add that tapping out the phrase "Please disregard following mistyped characters I dont know how to delete" takes about 3 minutes. Text messaging blows.

Anyway, the salient Green Car options are: (1) Call cab for ride home, remove license plates, and disavow knowledge of Green Car; (2) Call tow truck; (3) Ignore situation until it improves. As usual, I started with option (3), and this time it actually paid off.

The real options I’m trying to figure out are (1) Leave Green Car at home in Pittsburgh this weekend; (2) Keep Green Car, as Dad has generously offered. Since the Green Car has been misbehaving more and more frequently of late, I’m worried that option (2) will just lead to a Money Pit situation; and I don’t have the financial will or wherewithal to deal with even a small Money Pit situation. And unlike fictionalized Money Pit situations, I wouldn’t be able to just watch this once on Comedy Central sometime during the mid-’90s and then forget about it.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home