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Right, so I haven't been back here in ages. I'm still alive, but having a bad time of it at the moment.
My car's check engine light went on this past weekend, and the earliest my mechanic could look at it was Wednesday morning (this morning, really, although it is pretty much midnight or past here). That's not terrible, seeing as I'm biking to work right now so I don't have to drive it very much between then and now, so I foolishly think since the car sounds fine and works fine, it's probably something they can fix while I wait. I really need it fixed before the weekend, because my move-in date for the new place is Saturday (still renting, alas) and I need the car to start moving my stuff. Naturally, no, it's going to take a good chunk of the day to diagnose, because my mechanic has the amazing Yelp rating he deserves and thus now everyone and their (driving) dog knows about him, and because it's a fairly complicated problem (cylinder 1 misfiring is the main problem code).
Well, okay then. I can't afford to take that much vacation to get my car fixed (and I'm already hemorrhaging money at this point just to get the car fixed, not to mention paying double rent for a few weeks while I get moved), seeing as I need to be able to take days off in order to get myself and Carmen moved, so I hoof it back to my apartment. I should have packed the bike in the trunk and expected that it was going to take all day, but no, I was stupid. It's an hour's worth of walking back and I really can't afford to stop and catch Pokemon (go Team Mystic!), but I hatch a 5km egg from scratch, so at least that's something (if you're not counting the bit of sunburn on the back of my neck, anyway). I get home, hop on my bike, and roll my exhausted butt to work. The move by itself is stressing me out so much that I'm sleeping way worse than usual, and now with the car in the shop, I'm stressed enough that I'm nervous about eating. Except then I remember that my stomach is pretty good at locking things down, so I might as well eat something anyway. Naturally, because nobody else works someplace where they can't have their cell phones on them, they call my cell instead of my work number (I knew I should have crossed out my cell number on the form once I found out the car was going to stay in the shop), so I don't hear back about my car until it's the end of the day and I know they're going to close soon, and I call them to find out that it's going to take another day because I don't have the time between my almost solidly back-to-back meetings all day today to run down 20-odd labyrinthine hallways and like 3.5 flights of stairs to the locker where my cell phone is to check it. Ugh. (I wish I was kidding about how far away the lockers feel like they are.)
I start riding home, and in something that absolutely is what I would expect in a story written by a sitcom comedian (or maybe just a terribly predictable writer), halfway home a spoke on my rear wheel snaps and now my back wheel doesn't roll freely. Oh lovely. FML, Talaria is too young of a bike for this shit to be happening. On the plus side, Carmen was already on the way over because we have dinner together on Wednesdays, so I carried my now non-rolling bike down the path and over to the nearest parking lot (because trying to load a bike into a trunk on the corner of a busy street would be dangerous for all of us) and he came and got me and the bike. I call the only bike repair that I can find nearby that isn't closed yet and ask about repairing the spoke, and they can't do it until tomorrow. It requires a lot of steps and work (which means it probably won't be cheap, either), plus re-truing the wheel. Here's where I get stupid again, because I really should have still dropped the bike off with this shop so it could be worked on tomorrow morning, but I get dejected and we head straight back to my place to bring my bike back up to my apartment. (Whoever it is who keeps letting their dog pee in the elevator had let it happen again, joy.)
So here's the thing... I needed the bike to get to work and get to the mechanic to pick up my car. I need the car to get the bike to a bike shop to fix it. Seriously, I hate this day so much. Ironically, it's a friend from high school's birthday, so it feels kind of mean to be so angry at this day, but there you have it. I'm having a bad day, and it's made me mean.
Walking to work will take too long (that'd be like... a two or three hour walk), so I'll probably have to take public transportation, which will still take a long time, but I'll be less sweaty and sunburnt. Getting between work and the mechanic is trickier--I'm hoping Kerry or another coworker in my area will take pity on me and give me a lift. Once I have the car in working order, I can take the bike to a shop on the weekend (because I'll be too busy working extra hours to make up all this time I had to take off unexpectedly) and hopefully have that fixed by Monday. It all hinges on me having a fully operational deathstar car by Friday morning, so keep your fingers crossed, otherwise this month went from being really damn hard and super stressful to completely physically impossible and extremely costly. (Okay, fine, that's slightly over-dramatic. Carmen has a car, but I'm worried that's about to go, too, because his car is old and in the Extinct Car Club as well--he drives a Pontiac.)
My car's check engine light went on this past weekend, and the earliest my mechanic could look at it was Wednesday morning (this morning, really, although it is pretty much midnight or past here). That's not terrible, seeing as I'm biking to work right now so I don't have to drive it very much between then and now, so I foolishly think since the car sounds fine and works fine, it's probably something they can fix while I wait. I really need it fixed before the weekend, because my move-in date for the new place is Saturday (still renting, alas) and I need the car to start moving my stuff. Naturally, no, it's going to take a good chunk of the day to diagnose, because my mechanic has the amazing Yelp rating he deserves and thus now everyone and their (driving) dog knows about him, and because it's a fairly complicated problem (cylinder 1 misfiring is the main problem code).
Well, okay then. I can't afford to take that much vacation to get my car fixed (and I'm already hemorrhaging money at this point just to get the car fixed, not to mention paying double rent for a few weeks while I get moved), seeing as I need to be able to take days off in order to get myself and Carmen moved, so I hoof it back to my apartment. I should have packed the bike in the trunk and expected that it was going to take all day, but no, I was stupid. It's an hour's worth of walking back and I really can't afford to stop and catch Pokemon (go Team Mystic!), but I hatch a 5km egg from scratch, so at least that's something (if you're not counting the bit of sunburn on the back of my neck, anyway). I get home, hop on my bike, and roll my exhausted butt to work. The move by itself is stressing me out so much that I'm sleeping way worse than usual, and now with the car in the shop, I'm stressed enough that I'm nervous about eating. Except then I remember that my stomach is pretty good at locking things down, so I might as well eat something anyway. Naturally, because nobody else works someplace where they can't have their cell phones on them, they call my cell instead of my work number (I knew I should have crossed out my cell number on the form once I found out the car was going to stay in the shop), so I don't hear back about my car until it's the end of the day and I know they're going to close soon, and I call them to find out that it's going to take another day because I don't have the time between my almost solidly back-to-back meetings all day today to run down 20-odd labyrinthine hallways and like 3.5 flights of stairs to the locker where my cell phone is to check it. Ugh. (I wish I was kidding about how far away the lockers feel like they are.)
I start riding home, and in something that absolutely is what I would expect in a story written by a sitcom comedian (or maybe just a terribly predictable writer), halfway home a spoke on my rear wheel snaps and now my back wheel doesn't roll freely. Oh lovely. FML, Talaria is too young of a bike for this shit to be happening. On the plus side, Carmen was already on the way over because we have dinner together on Wednesdays, so I carried my now non-rolling bike down the path and over to the nearest parking lot (because trying to load a bike into a trunk on the corner of a busy street would be dangerous for all of us) and he came and got me and the bike. I call the only bike repair that I can find nearby that isn't closed yet and ask about repairing the spoke, and they can't do it until tomorrow. It requires a lot of steps and work (which means it probably won't be cheap, either), plus re-truing the wheel. Here's where I get stupid again, because I really should have still dropped the bike off with this shop so it could be worked on tomorrow morning, but I get dejected and we head straight back to my place to bring my bike back up to my apartment. (Whoever it is who keeps letting their dog pee in the elevator had let it happen again, joy.)
So here's the thing... I needed the bike to get to work and get to the mechanic to pick up my car. I need the car to get the bike to a bike shop to fix it. Seriously, I hate this day so much. Ironically, it's a friend from high school's birthday, so it feels kind of mean to be so angry at this day, but there you have it. I'm having a bad day, and it's made me mean.
Walking to work will take too long (that'd be like... a two or three hour walk), so I'll probably have to take public transportation, which will still take a long time, but I'll be less sweaty and sunburnt. Getting between work and the mechanic is trickier--I'm hoping Kerry or another coworker in my area will take pity on me and give me a lift. Once I have the car in working order, I can take the bike to a shop on the weekend (because I'll be too busy working extra hours to make up all this time I had to take off unexpectedly) and hopefully have that fixed by Monday. It all hinges on me having a fully operational deathstar car by Friday morning, so keep your fingers crossed, otherwise this month went from being really damn hard and super stressful to completely physically impossible and extremely costly. (Okay, fine, that's slightly over-dramatic. Carmen has a car, but I'm worried that's about to go, too, because his car is old and in the Extinct Car Club as well--he drives a Pontiac.)