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Been an unusual week, that's for sure. With only three workdays, the third typically being a getaway day, it's usually pretty quiet. So I guess the noise had to come from someplace.
My car's remote lock/unlock settings have been weird for weeks. Usually, pushing the lock button on the fob causes JARVIS's headlights to blink and his horn to beep. Since this weirdness started, though, the headlights blink twice and the horn beeps not at all- except when it doesn't do that and goes back to the way it usually works. This was annoying (especially when using the horn to find the car in a crowded parking lot- finding a Smart car is a sea of white Silverados and grey Toyotas is not the easiest thing, yo), but not that big a deal, until yesterday. That's when I heard a car alarm going off out in our office car park, and made my usual under-my-breath grumbles about assholes who hit the panic button by mistake.... until the office manager came in and said, "Ray, did you park out front? I think your alarm's going off."
I ran out to shut it off, somewhat embarrassed. My keys had been in my pocket; had I hit the red button by accident, despite all the obvious warnings?
Ever trying to be helpful, I took my keys out of said pocket. Not five minutes later, the damn thing went off again. This time, I went over to check the car for damage, put something in the trunk to see if that hadn't been shut properly, and had a safe remainder of the afternoon and evening.
All of this was getting into weird territory- but one other thing took it from Ludicrous to Plaid in the way of weirdness. Last weekend, Emily called me a couple of times, to ask if I'd ever had a problem with Kermit the Hybrid's alarm spontaneously going off. No, never did for me- but it did for her, just that day- and it KEPT going off. AAA came and couldn't diagnose it, and until she can get it into the dealer, the only solution is to disconnect the battery every time she parks so she doesn't have the neighbors going all Torches and Pitchforks on her. Then, just to complete the trilogy of weird, a friend of my sister's saw my Facebook post about this odd coincidence. She reported that Donna's computer has started a constant beeping every time she turns it on. I'm not surprised- it's an ancient tower running XP I got for her probably five years ago, that is running with no support for preventing malware or other nasties. (There's probably a pre-Christmas visit in my plans- probably with Pepper in tow this time to see how she does on a 400 mile round trip.) Still, though- having this come up just as two cars, of different makes, six model years and 700 miles apart, came down with the same defect?
My only thought is that Mom's decided to start haunting us.
----
Speaking of Pepper.... I considered taking her with me on the Turkey Trot this morning. It's pretty dog-friendly, although I'd have been kept out of the afterparty and would have had to carpool to have cars on both ends of the route; but none of my usual run buds were going this year, and besides, COLD!!!! It wasn't expected to get much above 20F, and we decided that was just too cold for even a hardy pup to be out in for over an hour.
I'd walked her at her usual time yesterday, but she had some different expectations after I got home after work yesterday. A friend from Rochester planned to come over to record something off of local TV, and we made plans to go out for wings after that; Scott was here last year on the day that the local tourism people announced the Buffalo Wing Trail, and avoiding the obvious choices, we wound up that year at a place near UB I'd somehow never been to. This time, we stayed even closer to home- a tavern in the village nearest to here that I'd been to before, but never for their signature trail mix of Sicilian wings. What makes them Sicilian? Not little guns that shoot at you, but a very different mix of garlic and parmesan cheese in the wing sauce.
Needless to say, we went to this minus the third wheel (paw?) dog, who would've devoured every bit of food and every heart in the place. But she saw Daddy putting on his hoodie and his outer coat, and he was even going with this really cool guy who smells like a really cool dog himself. So she snitted- didn't sleep with me last night for the first time in ages. Fortunately, dogs have big hearts and short memories, and by this afternoon's post-Trot nap, she was back where she usually is- hogging way more of the damn bed than you'd think a 50-pound body would be able to.
----
As for that Trot:
After walking the bed-absent dog round 8 this morning, I gauged the outside temperature (cold), forecast (sunny) and wind (not much), and made the last-minute racetime decision to bib up and go. It took 20 minutes- everything here takes 20 minutes- and got an onstreet parking space barely a block north of the YMCA that sponsors the event. I fobbed my car shut, started walking toward Delaware Avenue, and damn if the alarm didn't go off again. After shutting it off, I simply prayed- that I wouldn't return three hours later to an empty space, to an angry mob, or to a windshield full of nasty notes and axes.
None of it happened, though (far as I can tell). I did the warmup weave to the starting chute, passing the usual collection of roaming dinosaurs and black knights and knightettes-
- and started my loneliness of the not-so-long distance runner by going through the start chute at about 9:20.
My phone misbehaved most of the way- I thought, and apparently it thought, that it had drained way too quickly, but I'm pretty sure that was just the 20F temperature making it too cold to operate properly. I did get this one shot of the guy who, far as I'm concerned, won the race no matter what his time was-
My feet and shins started acting up pretty badly before the halfway point; my goal is always to try to finish the five miles in under an hour- hey, I can run 5 mph on a treadmill with no problem. Inside. With no wind.- but unless I'd pulled a Rosie Ruiz on the final mile, that wasn't happening. I ended up at just under 1:09 by my stopwatch (which seemed to die literally the second after snapping the pic of the time), about three minutes longer than it took last year. But I'm older, and other than those inside treadmills didn't do a stitch of training for the thing, so I'll take it.
The bus ride back gave my calves a chance to join the pity party, and it's mostly been taking it easy today. (Eleanor, not so much- she's been repainting the living room ceiling, and it's turning out beautifully.) We have low-key food plans for tonight, she works tomorrow, I don't, and then it's on to a full week of fun in various courts for me.
None of which, hopefully, will alarm the damn car too much.
My car's remote lock/unlock settings have been weird for weeks. Usually, pushing the lock button on the fob causes JARVIS's headlights to blink and his horn to beep. Since this weirdness started, though, the headlights blink twice and the horn beeps not at all- except when it doesn't do that and goes back to the way it usually works. This was annoying (especially when using the horn to find the car in a crowded parking lot- finding a Smart car is a sea of white Silverados and grey Toyotas is not the easiest thing, yo), but not that big a deal, until yesterday. That's when I heard a car alarm going off out in our office car park, and made my usual under-my-breath grumbles about assholes who hit the panic button by mistake.... until the office manager came in and said, "Ray, did you park out front? I think your alarm's going off."
I ran out to shut it off, somewhat embarrassed. My keys had been in my pocket; had I hit the red button by accident, despite all the obvious warnings?
Ever trying to be helpful, I took my keys out of said pocket. Not five minutes later, the damn thing went off again. This time, I went over to check the car for damage, put something in the trunk to see if that hadn't been shut properly, and had a safe remainder of the afternoon and evening.
All of this was getting into weird territory- but one other thing took it from Ludicrous to Plaid in the way of weirdness. Last weekend, Emily called me a couple of times, to ask if I'd ever had a problem with Kermit the Hybrid's alarm spontaneously going off. No, never did for me- but it did for her, just that day- and it KEPT going off. AAA came and couldn't diagnose it, and until she can get it into the dealer, the only solution is to disconnect the battery every time she parks so she doesn't have the neighbors going all Torches and Pitchforks on her. Then, just to complete the trilogy of weird, a friend of my sister's saw my Facebook post about this odd coincidence. She reported that Donna's computer has started a constant beeping every time she turns it on. I'm not surprised- it's an ancient tower running XP I got for her probably five years ago, that is running with no support for preventing malware or other nasties. (There's probably a pre-Christmas visit in my plans- probably with Pepper in tow this time to see how she does on a 400 mile round trip.) Still, though- having this come up just as two cars, of different makes, six model years and 700 miles apart, came down with the same defect?
My only thought is that Mom's decided to start haunting us.
----
Speaking of Pepper.... I considered taking her with me on the Turkey Trot this morning. It's pretty dog-friendly, although I'd have been kept out of the afterparty and would have had to carpool to have cars on both ends of the route; but none of my usual run buds were going this year, and besides, COLD!!!! It wasn't expected to get much above 20F, and we decided that was just too cold for even a hardy pup to be out in for over an hour.
I'd walked her at her usual time yesterday, but she had some different expectations after I got home after work yesterday. A friend from Rochester planned to come over to record something off of local TV, and we made plans to go out for wings after that; Scott was here last year on the day that the local tourism people announced the Buffalo Wing Trail, and avoiding the obvious choices, we wound up that year at a place near UB I'd somehow never been to. This time, we stayed even closer to home- a tavern in the village nearest to here that I'd been to before, but never for their signature trail mix of Sicilian wings. What makes them Sicilian? Not little guns that shoot at you, but a very different mix of garlic and parmesan cheese in the wing sauce.
Needless to say, we went to this minus the third wheel (paw?) dog, who would've devoured every bit of food and every heart in the place. But she saw Daddy putting on his hoodie and his outer coat, and he was even going with this really cool guy who smells like a really cool dog himself. So she snitted- didn't sleep with me last night for the first time in ages. Fortunately, dogs have big hearts and short memories, and by this afternoon's post-Trot nap, she was back where she usually is- hogging way more of the damn bed than you'd think a 50-pound body would be able to.
----
As for that Trot:
After walking the bed-absent dog round 8 this morning, I gauged the outside temperature (cold), forecast (sunny) and wind (not much), and made the last-minute racetime decision to bib up and go. It took 20 minutes- everything here takes 20 minutes- and got an onstreet parking space barely a block north of the YMCA that sponsors the event. I fobbed my car shut, started walking toward Delaware Avenue, and damn if the alarm didn't go off again. After shutting it off, I simply prayed- that I wouldn't return three hours later to an empty space, to an angry mob, or to a windshield full of nasty notes and axes.
None of it happened, though (far as I can tell). I did the warmup weave to the starting chute, passing the usual collection of roaming dinosaurs and black knights and knightettes-
- and started my loneliness of the not-so-long distance runner by going through the start chute at about 9:20.My phone misbehaved most of the way- I thought, and apparently it thought, that it had drained way too quickly, but I'm pretty sure that was just the 20F temperature making it too cold to operate properly. I did get this one shot of the guy who, far as I'm concerned, won the race no matter what his time was-
My feet and shins started acting up pretty badly before the halfway point; my goal is always to try to finish the five miles in under an hour- hey, I can run 5 mph on a treadmill with no problem. Inside. With no wind.- but unless I'd pulled a Rosie Ruiz on the final mile, that wasn't happening. I ended up at just under 1:09 by my stopwatch (which seemed to die literally the second after snapping the pic of the time), about three minutes longer than it took last year. But I'm older, and other than those inside treadmills didn't do a stitch of training for the thing, so I'll take it.
The bus ride back gave my calves a chance to join the pity party, and it's mostly been taking it easy today. (Eleanor, not so much- she's been repainting the living room ceiling, and it's turning out beautifully.) We have low-key food plans for tonight, she works tomorrow, I don't, and then it's on to a full week of fun in various courts for me.
None of which, hopefully, will alarm the damn car too much.