Somebody chopped up my day

This is one of the days when I’d like to have a mulligan.  I just kept hitting little messes all day long.

First, T called me at work just after eight o’clock to say that Piet had a flat, and how does she change the tire.  I couldn’t manage to explain to her by phone how to work the jack, so in the end I had to leave the Empire and dash back to town from Circulith to change it for her.  It turned out to be a sidewall blowout on the right rear, and I’m still of two minds whether this was caused by age (the tire is eleven years old) or the Mad Tire Slasher.  Once I get the wheel back with the new tire on, I’ll ask the guys at Goodyear what they think.

As I came back to the Empire, I noticed that the local bloodmobile was set up in the parking lot.  Since I was eligible to donate today, I gobbled a very hurried lunch and went out to donate.  That turned out to be a series of muddles; first the tech who was taking histories had a long go-round with me about whether my nasal polyps were a disqualifying condition (they aren’t), and finally had to call the blood bank to get a second opinion.  Then she kept coming back to me while I was in the chair and the canteen, with questions she should have asked but forgot.  I wasn’t very impressed with her swooftness, time she was done.

Then once they had me in the chair, the phlebotomist couldn’t manage to hit my vein.  I have big, easily located median cubital veins, but after 7½ gallons’ worth of donations I’m getting enough scar tissue built up that it’s harder to hit them first time out.  This poor girl couldn’t manage to chase down my right median vein to save her life.  She said it kept “flattening out” on her when she tried to get into it, so she went fishing for a while but never succeeded.  Finally she called her partner over, who slapped a BP cuff on me to puff up the vein, and bang, she had the needle in and running right away.  After that I put on one of my “fill the bag in five minutes” performances and was able to get back to work, only fifteen minutes late back from lunch.

The next bit of excitement came after work, when I took Quinn* over to CarMax to ask for some warranty work on its transmission.  Something seems to be wrong with the gear synchronizers, and when shifting up from second to third gear it grinds unless you take the shift very slowly and carefully, letting the engine wind down before trying the move to third.  This is not how a car with six thousand miles on it should be behaving.

I’d stopped by CarMax yesterday to make an appointment with the service department and they were to arrange a loaner car for me, but when I got there today it was to be told that they were out of loaners.  This, for obvious reasons (four of us going in four different directions), wouldn’t work, and I said so.  The head service writer chewed over this, and considered that, and called about the other, and finally he asked me if I could drive a stick shift(!).  I pointed to Quinn and said, “That is a stick shift.”  He brightened up, made a couple more calls, and I drove off a few minutes later in this hulking (by my standards) 2001 Mazda B-3000 cab-plus pickup, which I don’t like at all.  The clutch feels weird and the gearing is uncomfortably low.  I hope the Ford dealership that CarMax is farming the work to gets done soon.  I don’t wanna keep this hulk any longer than I must. 

* This name feels like it might stick, but I still haven’t decided whether it’s a male or female car.  At first I thought it was female, à la Daria’s narcissistic little sister, but then L quoted Dylan at me about Eskimos.  So I dunno.

The invoice for the prisoner’s uniform is assumed to be spherical.  Fnord.