Lest you think I'm slacking on my prelims, let me tell you that doing academic writing for an entire day is not an easy task. After staring at my computer screen for about half an hour without any additional words appearing, I think my progress might benefit from a short blogging break.
The big news is that my car is finally in the shop to get repaired. This took longer than I had hoped, mostly because I was not going through my own insurance, but at least it's getting done. I took my car in this morning when the repair place opened, and someone from Enterprise picked me up and took me to go get the rental car that will get me through the rest of the week.
I have to say I already miss my Mazda. The rental car is a red Ford Focus, and it's just not quite the same. For one thing, it has no iPod hookup, which is not surprising but still sort of sad. And there are all sorts of little things that just don't feel right, like that the buttons on my clicker are arranged horizontally instead of vertically, and that the middle armrest just gets in the way of the parking brake whether it's raised or lowered, and that they key to the ignition goes in at a funny angle, and that the heat takes longer to get going and makes more noise in the process. I'm sure if it was actually my car I would get used to these things in time, just like when I got rid of the Civic I eventually got used to the fact that my Mazda didn't have a rear door that stuck, or a stain on the passenger side seatbelt, or sun blemishes on the roof, or a scratch across the windshield (though it wasn't until I hung the lei in my window about a year after I got the Mazda that it finally started having some actual personality). But a few days isn't going to be long enough to learn to love the little Ford.
The rental car also has Ohio license plates, which turns out to be an advantage in parking lots. We are close enough to the Ohio border that there are always a number of Ohio cars rolling around town, but they're still well out of proportion to Michigan plates. So since I am not mentally attuned to looking for a red Focus when I walk out of the store and to my car, I can just scan the license plates in the general vicinity of where I think I parked and look for the odd one out.
On the other hand, the Ohio plates and the new car were a disadvantage in the Institute parking lot, where I got "ticketed" with one of the orange slips of paper that our Institute director uses to try to encourage people not to park in the parking lot if they are not using the building. I am there all the time to study, so he knows my car and I no longer get orange slips. But a red Ford Focus with Ohio plates has never shown up before. It's okay, I got it cleared up when I told the secretary that I am driving a different car this week. "The missionaries backed into me a few weeks ago," I started explaining, and she said, "Oh, I heard about that!" Poor missionaries. The word spreads quickly. I'm sure I haven't been any help with that.
Anyway, now that I've gotten some slightly more entertaining writing out of my system I think I'll try to go back and be productive on my prelims again.
2 comments:
I was nose to nose with the lady missionaries at church on Sunday and as I got in my car and watched one missionary outside her car guiding the other missionary out of the parking space, I found myself laughing and cringing (even though there was little chance of them hitting my car from the front while backing up -- or so one would think). :-) By the way, rental cars are on earth to make us appreciate our own cars unless we're lucky enough to get a surprise upgrade to the hot Mustang or something like that!
Is the Focus new, or is it an older model? We had a focus in my last area in Virginia, and I loved it. That thing had more head room than any other small car I've been in.
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