Remember: No Good Deed Ever Goes Unpunished

It’s not like life has handed me a driveway full of Lincolns.  In fact, we dispensed with my wife’s treasured `94 Town Car because it was leeching money faster than I could make it.  That made us a One Car Family.

Someone on my wife’s side of the bed woke up crying this morning because of nightmares.  The car was going to break, etc. etc.

In one of those amazing bits of irony/precognition/synchronicity, I got into our One Car to drive to work.  Halfway there I had noises I hadn’t heard before.  I pulled into a parking lot, which was apparently a good thing because I didn’t have any brakes and the car wasn’t steering well.

I got out and examined the situation.

I am a technician/troubleshooter at heart.  I’m told when I was two, I’d go to relatives’ houses and take apart their vacuums.  I’m further told that I put them back together, which was probably for the best.  I just need to know how most things work, be they guitars, computers, cars, or people.  As far as I know, I have never taken a people apart, nor do I ever feel the slightest desire.

So there I am, arms folded, circling the errant automobile, looking for all the world like a person who knows what’s wrong with his car.   Fortunately for me, the diagnosis was made quite simple by observing the passenger side wheel.  It was at a very awkward angle, not well suited at all for driving (or coasting).  Unfortunately for me, it looked like the mirror image of the issue with the driver’s side wheel about six months back.

By this point I had had absolutely enough of the man of the world certainty and got back into my car to consider my options (and to consider crying in a very unmanly way).

Normally I’d just call the wife, who would drive me to work and get the car towed.   Yes, I probably did mention that we’re a One Car Family now.  Ignoring the odd number of cars owned, I phoned the wife anyway, just as I remembered the commotion on her side of the bed this morning, plus her back torturing her.

True to form, I could not reach her on her cell phone.  I texted her to no avail.  Then I rang the landline.  Then I rang the landline again.  Then I discovered that ringing the landline incessantly, like a crazed stalker, was not going to rouse my wife from bed.

So I did the next best thing, which was to stare out into space, wondering what the solution could be.  All of the sudden, like manna from heaven, the phone rang!

It was an old coworker.  She was incessantly chipper and wanted to know if I was at my desk because she would like to come around and talk to me about being a job reference for her.  I advised her that I was at my desk, if by desk she meant about to launch my car into space.  Since I was pressed for time, she let me go after only fifteen or twenty minutes.

Back to ringing the landline and listening to our oh-so-pleasant outgoing greeting.

Now I was really in a bind.  Triple A requires you to be with your car if they tow it.  Do I have Triple A?  How the hell should I know? This is why I have a wife, dammit!  Do I call a cab?  Do I take the cab home or to work.  Will I be able to get a ride home?  And what about the broken car?

Finally I got through to my darling wife, who sounded much brighter than before I left (some might say because I left but I’m not going there now).  She had Triple A but had the misfortune(?) of not being with the car.  Her best advice was to call a tow truck.  And no, she didn’t remember the name of the one we used so much we should have them on retainer.  Perhaps I’d do better riding around in a tow truck.  I could save myself a lot of time and a middle man.

Thank you, Dear.

The car had a front end alignment last week, which made the break that much more confusing.  Shouldn’t they have noticed something?  And no, they don’t tow.   And why the hell don’t I get a front end alignment every now and then?

One call to the towing service produced a flatbed truck in no time.  This is obviously not Triple A, which would have taken the better part of the day.

If you have never watched the mechanics of putting a car on a flatbed, you really need to.  It was pure artistry with levers.

VERDICT

A few hours later the mechanic called.  He wished to inform me that this was, in fact, the exact mirror of the operation they did six months ago.  We could have it done for the bargain price of $850, just like last time!

Fairly soon there will be no old parts on this car to break and I’ll just get stuck when the new parts start breaking.

So I’m out a second day’s work and there’s no guarantee it will be completed in a day or two.

ONE CAR?

The aforementioned Lincoln was given to our nephew, whose friends were pitching in to get it working for him so he could get better employment.  It wound up costing a few hundred, which is great for him when it’s done.

Remember: no good deed ever goes unpunished.

Nephew arrives mid-afternoon.  He also did not have his cell phone on when the wife called him to tell him not to come over.  It must run in the family.

WORK

I work with a great crew.  One fellow drives a scooter, which obviously doesn’t behave in rain or snow, so I drive him in on those days.  True to form, he told me I was welcome to ride on the back of his scooter.  This frightens me only slightly more than driving a scooter (or any two-wheeled vehicle) in the first place. At least the snow has melted.

I hate asking people to drive me around so it’s another day off work.  It’s a good thing I’m almost never sick and don’t go on vacations.

Remember: no good deed ever goes unpunished.

LAPTOP

I guess I can use some of this `spare’ time to look at my laptop, which has sprouted a few interesting problems.  The original hard drive crapped out so I replaced it with a larger one within the last six months or so.  Now the new one is complaining about drive ready errors and linux wants to fsck it all the time (that’s chkdsk for Windows fans).  Some of the errors that are popping up are incomprehensible.

Good thing I’m a computer guy, right?

Dell is happy to replace a drive in-warranty but they’ll send you an emtpy, unformatted hard drive.  Since it will be smaller, it won’t solve my problems.  And since it’s Dell, I shudder to think of what’s next.  They still haven’t found all of the orders of ours they lost.

BACK

In case my wife is bored, her back is acting up, as I mentioned.  She can’t have your standard bad back, no sir.  She needs one that gives her all sorts of weird pains in weird places.  It induces additional agita which makes her appear to be a rubber ball.  She sits on the couch, can’t get comfortable, then goes upstairs to try the bed.  Ten minutes later she’s back down for a smoke, then up again.  Then back down to try the couch again.

This dance goes on for the better part of the day, which is especially entertaining while I’m telecommuting (or downloading porn).

CANINE/FELINE ASSISTANCE

But it’s not like I don’t get any assistance at all.  I have pets!  Helpful pets.  Pets who are increasingly helpful taking into consideration the distance between me and food.  That is to say they’re most helpful when I’m in the kitchen.  I have never seen such rapt attention from a dog and a cat before in my life.  The dog prevents anything from hitting the floor.  The cat lays in back of me in order to trip me if I move.

Since I did no cooking but lots of laptop work, I was on the couch a lot.  Marshall (the dog) has displayed an incredible talent for right-clicking.  We don’t know why.  He’ll sit down right next to me and put his paws on the laptop, always managing to right-click.  He doesn’t surf much and his incessant right-clicking doesn’t seem to serve any purpose other than annoying me.  This is when he isn’t between me and the laptop.

Anyone with a cat will tell you that they just walk on the keyboard, but that is not Satan’s only trick.  Today he discovered a few piles of important papers I was working on and jumped right up onto several of the piles, scattering all of my work.  I made it plain that I did not require his assistance at that moment.  He understood, and came back to do it over again five minutes later.

Remember: no good deed ever goes unpunished.