Friday, July 25, 2008

Life's a joke, and the joke's on...

I drive a soft top Jeep. Basically that means I drive a giant Tonka Toy. I can remove the back windows, remove the roof, remove the back seat, remove the doors, pop the hood, and fold down the windshield (not kidding) without the need of the car key. Locking my car doors is only a source of amusement for me when my friends do so out of habit.
My favorite incident of this involved a childhood friend of mine. We had just returned to my car and after I put my bags behind my seat I climbed in. The whole time my friend had been speaking to me. When I looked over to the passenger seat I realized she had been speaking to me while standing next to the car. It was summer, the roof was off my car, and both front windows were rolled down. When I asked her why she was just standing there she told me she was waiting for me to unlock the car.
I paused. My brain simply couldn't compute what she said in the current circumstance. When I started laughing she asked me what was funny. Once I calmed down a bit I pointed out there was no roof or windows! All she had to do was stick her arm inside the car, which I never lock, and open the silly door. I think she was bright red for a good half hour.
The point of this is that I have no way of preventing people from getting into my car. To counteract this I have a club that locks the steering wheel and a removable face plate on my radio. I also buy cheap radios. Investing in a high quality one seems to be an exercise in frustration. Two or three thefts and one death by water balloon (long story) only confirm this. So I wasn't surprised that after two years only half the buttons on the latest model worked at all, those when they wanted to, and even then didn't always do what they were labeled.
Previously my radio used to bring up a number of different options if you press a series of buttons in the correct order. If I were more of a music snob I could have made the radio do all sorts of nifty things. Most of these nifty things were discovered recently when I pressed the button for station two and saw gibberish appear on the screen. Half the time the on button worked when it was good and ready to and not before. Getting the face plate to go on had become a challenge, and removing then replacing it only made the on button crankier. Switching between radio and CD often resulted in switching between FM and AM. Just so you know, AM doesn't work well in the very hilly area of Seattle in which I now live.
Fortunately since it always eventually turned on or did whatever other command I issued I didn't really care. Which is why it didn't really bother me to discover this morning that my radio no longer lived inside my dashboard. Someone had decided they wanted it more than I did and took it. Considering the radio's recent behavior I've decided the jokes on them.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Catching Up

First things first. I moved. Currently I live about three blocks uphill from my work. This is great right now and will really be annoying in the winter. I will try to track the number of bruises from slipping then. For now I enjoy seeing the beautiful sky on the way down hill to work, and I like working off my frustrations on the way up hill to home. Other than that the current draw back is no internet access at home. It likely won't get it set up for another month, maybe more.
Forth of July was nice, though I miss the fireworks in my favorite aunt's small town. A really good friend came up that weekend and it was nice to have a girlfriend around again. I did get to see fireworks, but it wasn't impressive.
I'm still working too much. My computer system at work has decided to go haywire. The day we discovered the scope of it I nearly cried. All the work I had done over the previous month, all the long hours and lost weekends, down the drain. I had manager after manager call and ask what had happened to the pricing. Finally the pricing manager sent out a message explaining what had gone kablewy. Sadly that was July 3. Not a great start to the holiday. On the flip side when I told my boss that I was taking a the afternoon off his only response was "me too, don't tell."
My boss is great. He got an iphone and was so impressed with himself when he finally downloaded a song that he announced it to everyone. He even walked from cube to cube to show us. It was cute.
I went camping this past weekend for the first time in a very long time. My favorite tour guide's entire extended family goes every year. That was interesting. For the most part I had fun just hanging out with him, and occasionally one of his cousins. His mother is still campaigning for a wedding, but she's getting better about being subtle. Largely I pretend I don't notice and try to chalk it up to her being nice.
There's more, but it will have to wait. The cafe I'm at is closing.