random thoughts – Day 1,277 – (Friday) – issues

This day had issues. They began overnight with neighbors talking in the street. Loudly. An hour later, a different neighbor was in the street in the midst of a long and chatty goodbye. A couple hours later, a third unrequested wakeup call had no apparent reason.

Suddenly, it was 5:50 a.m. and the first waking thought was worry about the black shirt I hadn’t been able to find earlier in the week that I wanted for dress rehearsal tonight and the performance on Saturday.

There was no point laying in bed until the alarm at 6:15 and the latest search for the wayward shirt commenced. It was finally located under a slew of hip scarves and crop tops and a veil after carefully picking though the sequin covered storage bin of dance things. Whew!

The costume necklace had already gone into the dance bag with the 25-yard skirt, the costume belt and top, and the black overshirt with the long sleeves with hanging pointy pieces that remind me of Stevie Nicks, which would be fine if I actually liked Steve Nicks.

It was chilly, and in case the weather got wet and windy, it was decided to close the storm windows on the porch. This requires the three-pronged garden tool to get the release lever things to budge to lower the windows. Of the eight windows across the front of the porch, half of them had at least five dead wasps in the space between the two windows. Apparently, there is some sort of wasp issue. Ugh. At least they were deceased and not flying in my face or into the house.

Oh goody, low tire pressure.

A few minutes later, as in leaving late for work, the car was started and the dashboard lit up with a blaze of red, an angry red indicator at the driver side front tire, and the low tire pressure warning. With past tire warnings, the warning dominates the dashboard display until the tires are properly inflated and it is most annoying. 

Halfway to work on the newly underinflated tires, I realized I had forgotten to grab half the jewelry for the costume. It was too late to turn back. At work, there is a stupid number of projects still in a holding pattern and other things beyond my control but with which I must deal were just annoying. I ended up leaving work late and had to rush to get to dress rehearsal. Yes, there was swearing.

Near the dress rehearsal site is a Haffner’s station, but a car was parked in front of the air machine so I bailed and kept going. Closer to the rehearsal space a Mobil service station had an accessible air machine. The caps were removed from the valve stems, which involved standing in a puddle at the right front tire. The card reader didn’t work and I had to go inside to get $2 in quarters.

Oddly, during the drive, the pressure in two tires had increased, one to 250, another to 260. The machine “recalibrated the tires” and either added or released air, displaying “END” when the tire was at 35 pounds of pressure. When the car was restarted, the tire pressure was correct and the diagram went away. Too much time was spent standing in the puddle during the process.

Trial mix bars!

Rehearsal was great, and an hour later we were done. Upon starting the car again, the tire pressure warning came back on because two of the tires were suddenly low again. Grumble, grumble. Is it the temperature? A leak? In two tires? Of course, this tire issue nonsense would happen on a weekend when I need to be somewhere at 9:30 Saturday morning. What in the actual hell.

On the way home, there was a stop at Market Basket. Included in the cart were fresh vegetables and cheese. In the cereal aisle, there was a shelf tag declaring "Trial Mix Fruit & Nut 7.4 oz 2/$4." It was amusing, partly because the trial wasn't even near the right product. Without too much of an issue, the correct and on trial Fruit and Nut bars were located so that 12 future mornings can start with a nutritional trial.