Tag Archives: fukoladola

Yesterday I was downtown waiting to cross the street at a fairly busy intersection.

A giant fire truck came roaring up and everybody stopped and waited.

I have to say that in the bigger scheme of things, I’ve lost a lot of faith in mankind. Spend 5 seconds online and it’s hard not to conclude that the world is dominated by selfish and mean-spirited people.

And having said that, it’s little moments like this that restore my faith in people. All the cars stopped. All the pedestrians waited.

The fire truck paused at the intersection to make sure everyone was doing what they were supposed to be doing so it could go through. (I have to add that the driver looked like he was twelve.)

So here I was admiring my fellow man for being so cooperative and then a car making a left, seeing his opportunity since the pedestrians weren’t crossing, went to make his turn, just as the fire truck was making a giant left turn around all the cars.

For a few seconds it looked hairy.

Then the twelve year old laid on the horn and let me tell you, if you are standing a few feet away from a fire truck hitting the horn the sound will peel the paint off your chest.

Car stopped and truck went to save the day so I am not able to provide photos of a fire truck fender bender.

Bob and I went to see William Gibson at Powell’s this week. We’ve been to lots of popular readings here so we know the drill. We get there at least an hour early and take turns browsing while one of us saves the seats.

The crowd was total Portlandia and Bob wanted to take a picture of me writing in my notebook with a guy in a kilt in the background.

He took one and showed me the shot and said, “This turned out pretty good.”

Me: (as you read imagine the shrillest voice possible) OMIGOD! I have ten chins in that photo! Look at all those chins! Delete! Delete! Delete!

Him: Sheesh. I’m deleting. Relax already.

He then had to retry several variations while I casually posed with my chin(s) jutted out to minimize their numbers. This one is still a tad chinny but not bad.

Portlandia

Earlier this week I had a lunch date. I locked the office on my way out and noticed that my keychain looked weird. It seemed smaller. I kept looking at it trying to figure out what bauble had fallen off.

Oh. My car key.

I had a brief panic attack because OMG I lost my car key! What am I going to do?

When I got back to the office I cleaned everything out of my purse and backpack and shook them out. I checked all my pockets in my coat and all the folds of my clothes. I searched around the office but it was gone.

This happened once before. The top part of the key is plastic and the plastic broke. Only that time found out because the key was in my hand and the keychain at the bottom of my purse.

I knew we had spare keys at home but Bob was going to be home late. I left him a message to ask if might modify his plan to meet me at the park-n-ride with a key. Then I remembered that even if he couldn’t meet me, there’s a local bus that I could catch at the park-n-ride that would get me within reasonable walking distance of the house. All was not lost.

Then I remembered that two offices ago we had tandem parking so everyone had to keep an extra car key in a little dish by the door. I still have the little dish in the back of a drawer. I found it and it had an AAA battery, some gummy hard candy, a broken binder clip, and my spare key.

That solved the immediate problem. Once I got home I checked around and we had a total of 4 spare keys, but they were all valet keys. We could probably live with valet keys except the trunk latch in the car is cranky and won’t work about every 1 out of 3 times so it wasn’t a permanent solution.

I finally called Toyota. My car is a 2001 with 98K miles on it. It runs fine but it’s at the age where every time I bring it in there’s something. I’ll tell them, “That funny little handle is wiggly,” and they tell me they’ll check it out and then I get a call, “That funny little handle is what holds the car together, we need to fix it, $400.”

There was no reason to be optimistic about the key. I was sure they were going to tell me to just buy a new car or else get a crowbar for opening the trunk and after that use a bungee to keep it shut.

Turns out all you need is your VIN and $5. It took me longer to drive over there than to make the keys. (Of course I bought a bale of them.)