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News

My automotively adventurous(?) weekend

Technically the Weasley car, but, could've been my car on the 101 last Thursday.
Technically the Weasley car, but, could’ve been my car on the 101 last Thursday.

So last Thursday, my brakes went *poof* on me, while I was on the 101. I pressed the brake pedal to the floor, but no response. Yay? Thank Hyundai for hand brakes! Using what I’m guessing was only ever supposed to be used as a parking brake, I made it off the freeway, up the hill to Universal, and into a parking space in the Jurassic garage. (There was no way I was going to let a little brake failure keep me from Harry Potter preview night!)

Me, in line for the Castle Ride at Wizarding World
Me, in line for the Castle Ride at Wizarding World

After my totally awesome evening at Wizarding World in Universal Park, I got back to my car and found the brakes were working again, so I drove to my mechanic in Hollywood (with my hand on the hand-brake the whole time) and left my poor broken car while I took a $40 taxi ride home.

Friday, Miss Emily kindly drove me through the rain back to Hollywood. I hung around until they finished working on it, playing with their adorable garage kitty, Tiger Tail, then left for home at 6pm, into the heart of rush hour. It wasn’t long before I noticed that the car SQUEALED IN PAIN every time I stepped on the gas, and that the temperature gauge was spiking every time the car was in motion. ALL VERY WRONG. So I took the car back on Saturday.

Tiger Tail was a big fan of my yarn. I even got a leg-full of claws at one point. (Totally my own fault, of course.)
Tiger Tail was a big fan of my yarn. I even got a leg-full of claws at one point. (Totally my own fault, of course.)

An hour later they told me it was the water pump, which would take five hours, which meant they couldn’t work on it until Monday. Oh yay, a weekend with no car.

Miss Jane came from Glendale to pick me up and drop me in West L.A., after which she returned home. Seriously, she should be nominated for sainthood!

And then I had no car for the rest of Saturday.

Or Sunday.

Monday morning, Miss Ahree picked me up to drive me to work, where I stayed until 3:45, when Miss Molly drove me to Hollywood on her way home. (Saints, all of them!) I’d called the garage earlier to check on the car, and they said it should be ready by 6pm.

Should.

It wasn’t.

After replacing the water pump, the temp gauge was still spiking and they didn’t know why. ARGH! I was starting to run out of people to call for rides, so I got myself a shiny rental instead. It’s a shiny blue 2015 Hyundai Accent, and it’s adorable, although I can’t see the hood, like, at all, which is less good. And the brakes are either on or off, no in-between, so I’ve been throwing myself against my seat belt a lot. But, CAR! YAY CAR!

My shiny blue rental. She's so purty!
My shiny blue rental. She’s so purty!

So of course this morning the garage called to say it was all fixed–the thermometer they’d replaced on Friday had been defective. Well, tough cookies, garage, I got this rental for two days and I’m going to drive her for two days, so there! Also I’m swamped, and the only reason I took time out to write this post was to test the excerpt field and the featured image, and to see if they appear in the subscribed email. 😀

Anyway, that was my Adventures in Car-Owning for this week. Hopefully for the year, too.

ETA: Well phooey, this theme doesn’t have a featured image option. DAMMIT.

Categories
Miscellaneous News

A 2014 Year in Review

Matt Inman (The Oatmeal) holding my handcuffs for a pic at Denver Comic-Con, June 2014
Matt Inman (The Oatmeal) holding my handcuffs for a pic at Denver Comic-Con, June 2014
Wow. I have not been here in a gazillion years. I wasn’t even sure I’d remember how to log in, but fortunately my browser remembered my password, even though I didn’t.

So, no posts for the entirety of 2014. How pathetic. Here’s a quick rundown of what I did in 2014:

Things kind of went to hell at work, through no fault of my boss or anyone in my department, but I definitely don’t harbor any fluffy feelings for the H.R. department. It led to a craptastic summer depression that segued into horrible weight gain, and I still haven’t bounced back from that. Yay? I have, however, revamped my professional website (pmcarlson.com). And possibly my resume.

The sis and brother-in-law finally bought a house, and I spent much time flying out there to hang out in it. It’s a large 100-year-old Victorian that’s currently getting pummeled with snow and ice, with a large backyard, a garage, and my own bedroom. It’s pretty sweet.

I didn’t go to any professional conferences in 2014, but I did fly out to Denver for their Comic-Con and for my friend Jacqui’s 40th birthday. The weekend had its ups and downs, but overall it was a good time–plus I got the Oatmeal to hold my handcuffs for a pic. 😀

National Champions!
National Champions!

My 8-ball team won first place in the Vegas tournament! We are officially the National 8-ball Women’s Team Champions….in the trophy division. That’s kind of like the kiddy-pool of divisions. However, we got awesome trophies that say FIRST PLACE, and really cool leather jackets with National Champions stitched on them, along with our names. It was pretty awesome.

Kayaking on some river in New Hampshire, Labor Day Weekend 2014
Kayaking on some river in New Hampshire, Labor Day Weekend 2014

Laugh Factory marquee
Let’s see, there was also kayaking in New Hampshire, going out onto the ice after a Kings/Bruins game, new glasses, a visit to the mantis shrimp in Monterey, a new GoPro (won it at the department holiday party), a visit to Nerd HQ, a new niece!, and a one-time foray into speed-dating.

And also, my stepbrother died, last March. Which sucked.

So, that was 2014. Some good, some bad, and totally over. Hopefully I can be better about posting in 2015.

Categories
100 Words Current Events News Work

Yesterday

So, yesterday was 9/11. A somber day, even 12 years later. But it was also the thirteenth anniversary of the day I started at my current workplace. Today I am officially at my place of employment longer than I was in public school back in Massachusetts. Go team me!

Yesterday was also the day I finally called my orthodontist back and made an appointment to get my braces installed. Onto my teeth. At age 44. To say I’m not looking forward to this would be a monumental understatement, but, it needs to be done before my jaw disappears. Yay.

[100 words]

Categories
News Whining

Knock knock at 10pm is NEVER GOOD

I don’t know why I rush home after work, considering how insanely bored I get when I’m sitting on my couch. I finished all the eps of “Lost Girl” and now I’m stuck watching week to week like everyone else, and at the moment nothing else on Netflix is the least bit tempting. I feel stalled in my painting. None of my books are calling out to me, and I can’t knit right now ’cause it bothers my shoulder. Which is to say, by the time dinner has been ingested, I’m wondering if it’s too early to go to bed–at 7:30pm.

So tonight I decided I’d take a bath and maybe read a chapter of my book on basic pool techniques. I really want to be a bath person, ’cause it sounds so relaxing, but as I proved yet again, I’m totally not. I get overheated and yes, bored to tears, within minutes of getting into a hot bath. This time I lasted less than ten minutes before giving up, but at least I did feel a little more relaxed.

Relaxed, that is, until the building manager came knocking on my door at 10pm. ?! Turns out the rush of draining water from my first-ever bath in this apartment was too much for the pipes to handle, and all that soapy, me-marinated water soaked through to the building foyer below.

Ugh.

So there I am, in my Happy Bunny pajamas, surrounded by the dry goods from my last grocery trip that I was too lazy to put away, having to let the hottie building manager into my end-of-the-week-slovenly-and-disgusting apartment to check out the totally innocent-looking, still-blue-stained-from-my-last-hair-dye-session bathtub.

Fuck my life, yo. And fuck Valentine’s Day too.

Anyway, he’s gone now, the dry goods are put away, the dirty clothes are in the hamper, and the rest of the cleaning can wait until morning, hopefully before the plumbers arrive. At least I’m not bored anymore.

Categories
News Whining Work

Wigglebutt, wigglebutt!

This post has little to nothing to do with wigglebutts, but that’s what we like to call my nephew sometimes, so it seemed like a nice random post title for today.

This “posting every day” thing really isn’t working out too well, is it? Well, the year is still young, hopefully my posting ethic will mature right along with it.

Today’s WW meeting was good, in that I lost about a pound and a half–that’s over five pounds lost now, woo! Five pounds in a month is a tad slower than I’d like, but every loss is a good loss, so whatevs. I really need to get me some mason jars, though, as I think this idea is awesome and would help to motivate me, especially now that I can immediately put five buttons/chips/marbles/etc. into the “Pounds Lost” jar. (I, too, originally saw this idea on Pinterest, but I’m too lazy to find the original source.)

My plan for the rest of today is to work on updating a client’s website, replacing most of the Flash objects with javascript/html5 scripts–yet more evidence that Flash is indeed on its way out. That makes me sad, ’cause I’m pretty good at hand-coding in Actionscript 3, and not so good at all at coding in javascript. Time to update that skill set, I guess.

And once that’s done (the client site, not the skill set upgrade), I have two eps of Lost Girl left, which is DEVASTATING to me, ’cause I can’t find the current season eps anywhere online–not Hulu, not Amazon, not even Syfy’s website. NO FAIRS! Not everyone has cable, Syfy! WTF?!

So, that’s my day. I’d hoped to work on my bear, but once again I forgot to print out any copies of the original, and my freehand bears really really suck, so, no bear for me.

Happy Saturday to y’all!