I didn't have time yesterday to write down my thoughts about the death of Osama bin Laden. My life is consumed with plant sales, plant lists, plant signs, etc. But before I embark on the last leg of my two week plant sale marathon, I should take a moment to reflect on this important event.

I'm not celebrating Bin Laden's death. I don't think anyone should. I believe in Karma which tells us that anything we send out into the world, comes back to us. Celebrating his death only risks inviting death into my life.

I also disagree with those who claim that justice has been served. There was no justice in his death. Justice is when you bring someone to court and try them in front of a jury. Bin Laden was assassinated, plain and simple. And that is wrong. Yes, he was killed while fighting the invading SEALs but that is not the point. The point is that the SEALs' mission was to kill him. Not capture him. Not bring him to justice. Kill him. And that goes against everything that we as Americans stand for.

Finally, I have a big, big problem with his burial at sea. I want to see his body. I want a chance to throw my shoes at him. It wasn't that long ago that when notorious criminals were killed in shootouts that their bodies were put on display for the public. Every American, especially the families of the people he killed, should have had a chance to see his body. A chance to finally see the person responsible for all their pain and loss.

It would have been even better if he had been captured alive and put on display. The Romans had the right idea. Captured enemies were forced to march in chains in triumphal parades through the streets of Rome. I would have loved to have seen Bin Laden doing the perp walk in shackles past the Pentagon and the former site of the World Trade Center.

Without a body, how can anyone be sure that he is dead? All we have is the word of the very few people who were there that he is dead and that the DNA evidence was actually from his dead body. There will always be a lingering doubt about what happened, who died and if Bin Laden is actually dead. He will become like Elvis. There will be sightings of him all over the world for years to come. Conspiracy theories will abound.

I understand that burying him at sea was supposed to prevent his grave becoming a shrine but Karma has a way of coming back and biting you in the ass. With no body, there will always be doubt about his death. He will assume mythic proportions in death that he didn't achieve in life. There is no justice in that.


 

Last week I covered for the regular dayshift guy who was helping out in one of our European offices. It's been seven years since I supported users and I had forgotten how much ˝fun˝ they are.

My favorite phone call was from a user who asked:

˝Are you have trouble with your Microsoft?"

All of our servers and desktops run on Microsoft operating systems, Microsoft Office is installed on all of the desktops and our mail is handled by a couple of Microsoft Exchange servers.

˝Can you be more specific?"

˝Well, my Outlook just says 'connecting'˝.

Great clue! At least I knew where to start. I stood up and yelled across a couple of cubicles:

˝Hey, Marty! Are we having problems with Outlook or email?"

He yelled back:

˝Yeah, the queues are building on the server. Tony is working on it."

Believe it or not, I understood that. I translated it into English for the anxious user on the phone:

˝Yes, we're having problems with email. Tony is working on it."

˝Tony˝ is a magic word in my company. Any time you mention his name, everyone relaxes confident that he can fix whatever is wrong. He is practically a legend having worked his way up from the mailroom to the head of the IT department.

I discovered that the users at my company are very spoiled by the regular dayshift guy. He literally does everything for them. A guy called ostensibly to ask how to set up his ˝Out of Office˝ message on his Outlook, but what he really wanted was for me to set up his message for him. Another guy called complaining that he couldn't open an Excel spreadsheet. Long story short, it was a spreadsheet sent by his son's coach that was created in Office 2010. The user had Office 2003 installed on his home computer and therefore couldn't open it. I had him forward it to me so I could convert it to Office 2003 for him and sent it back with a link to a converter on the Microsoft site so that he could open Office 2010 documents in the future.

I awarded the ˝Stupidest User˝ award to the guy who called and said that over the weekend, his (company) laptop had crashed and done a memory dump, but since it was working okay on Monday that meant that the laptop was okay, right? I took a deep breath and asked:

˝What were you doing before it crashed?"

˝I was on the Fox News site."

˝You have a virus. Run a virus scan."

I think I demonstrated admirable restraint by not telling him that I think Fox News is a virus.

One morning, I arrived to a blizzard of emails. An entire department was having a meltdown because their printer was out of toner. Their printer, by the way, sits in a room with half a dozen other printers, but apparently printing to another printer while yours is down is either a violation of some obscure policy or beyond their capabilities. I asked no questions, just tracked down the printer and fixed the problem.

What made this a particularly memorable event is that everyone in the department was emailing the guy in Europe expecting that he would somehow be able to fix their printer. I don't know if they expected him to hop a plane back to New Jersey or if they thought he could just wave a magic wand and the toner would be magically changed. I guess you could say that in a way, he was able to fix the problem long distance. He just copied me into the email conversation.

In reality, neither one of us was really needed. You don't need a degree in computer science to change a toner cartridge. You just open the top of the printer using the big blue button that says ˝open˝. Reach in and grasp the handle (it's the only handle in the ˝guts˝ of the printer) and pull. The cartridge slides right out. So where do you get new toner? It's in the cabinet below the printer with the big label that says TONER.

To insert a new toner cartridge you grasp the handle (bet you didn't see that coming, did you?) and slide the new cartridge into the gaping hole left by the old cartridge. You can't insert it wrong because the genius who designed the printer, designed it so that there is only one way to insert a toner cartridge. If you do it wrong, it won't go in. The last step is to close the top of the printer. One of two things will happen at this point. Either the printer will initialize and print everything in its queue or it will initialize and nothing will print, in which case you just resubmit all of your print jobs.

See? There was no reason for anyone to panic. And no reason for me to skip my morning coffee and sprint up a flight of stairs.

I keep reminding myself that if there were no users, stupid or otherwise, I wouldn't have a job.

 

(This was written last week. I kept meaning to post it, but life happens.)

I knew that there would be some big changes when I started working days. Rush hour traffic was a big one. I haven't had to deal with that for seven years. Scheduling appointments would become problematic, either evening appointments or take a day off from work. Shopping in the weekend crowds rather than the empty weekdays. What I didn't anticipate was the gym.

I started working out a few years ago. Dieting was no longer enough to keep my weight in check. I was also losing musculature at an alarming rate. My upper arms developed that ugly flap that swayed every time I moved them. My shoulders were hunched over like an old lady.

I started out at a Y in another town, working out twice a week and taking a yoga class once a week. I had joined with a friend. The idea was that we would be ˝workout buddies˝. Unfortunately, she and I held differing beliefs about exercise. I schedule my life around my workouts. She schedules her workouts around her life. We rarely ran into each other, either in the gym or in class. I decided to find a gym closer to my home.

Happily, the gym closest to me was clean, not over-priced, and had a variety of equipment and classes. I initially stuck to my twice a week workouts and once a week yoga class, but the class was held at an inconvenient time for me and I didn't care for the instructor's philosophy of ˝yoga as exercise˝ rather than the ˝yoga as spiritual experience that just happens to be good exercise˝ that had been my previous experience. I dropped the yoga class and increased my workouts first to three times a week and then to four times a week.

The members who used the gym during the day were a mix of retirees, stay at home moms (the gym offers childcare before noon) and middle-aged business people who came on their lunch hours. During school vacations, high school athletes joined us. It was a crowd that I felt comfortable in. The gym was never overly crowded. There was always parking available and no waits to use the equipment.

Then I switched to working days and working out at night. Talk about night and day!

The parking lot is so full at night that people park on the lawn and in the surrounding streets. To get a parking spot in the lot, you have to use the same strategy you use at the mall during the holiday season: wait for someone to exit the gym and then follow them to their car.

Parking is just the first step in your ordeal. Once inside the gym, it is wall to wall people. The heat and the smell literally assault your senses. Finding an empty locker to store your belongings is almost as impossible as finding an empty parking space. There are long waits and occasional altercations over the equipment. Most surprising for me was the fact that I suddenly was the oldest person in the building. The gym belongs to 20-somethings at night.

Finally the mystery of why middle-aged people used the gym on their lunch-hour instead of after work was solved. The ˝kids˝ make it very clear that ˝adults˝ are not welcome at night. Of course being me, I use my age to my advantage. Whenever I see a kid sitting on a piece of equipment that I want to use, texting instead of exercising, I march up to them, fix them with my very best ˝mom˝ glare and tell them ˝I'm tired of waiting. Use it or lose it." After the obligatory eyeroll, they move to another piece of equipment and continue to text rather than exercise.

One of the things that I had been looking forward to being able to do with on my new schedule was watching the President whenever he made a speech in the evening. Monday, I was quite excited that I would be able to actually hear him live when he spoke about Libya, rather than reading about it the next day in the newspaper. I left for the gym in plenty of time to get a workout in before the speech. That was the last time that anything went right that evening.

Parking was so impossible that night that there were lines of cars circling the parking lot waiting for people to exit the gym. I circled the lot fruitlessly for ten minutes before I was able to successfully follow someone to their car and claim their space. I say ˝successfully˝ because it was a competition amongst the 20-something drivers. They turned it into a sport, cutting the line or racing ahead of someone who was following people to their car.

They carried that same competitive spirit into the gym. It was a zoo. There were fights in the basketball courts and shoving over the equipment. The general mood in the gym was ugly. Eyeing the huge muscles on the guys, I decided not to take any chances and patiently waited for a turn on the equipment or skipped some machines altogether. My abbreviated workout still took longer than usual. Thanks to that extra time plus the time that I had spent battling for a parking space, I arrived home in time to hear the last five minutes of the president's speech.

I complained at the front desk about the mayhem. The twenty-somethings behind the desk performed the obligatory eyeroll and patiently explained to me, as if I were mentally challenged, that ALL gyms are busy on Monday nights. I replied in a manner that they would understand: I emitted a heavy sigh, spun around and rushed out the door, slamming it behind me.

I've been talking to other adults about their gyms. They assure me that they are no more crowded on Mondays than other nights of the week and that no matter what time of day you go, the members are a mix of ages and genders. I'm in the market for a new gym.

 

This happened to me a couple of weeks ago, but it's taken this long for me to calm down enough to write about it.

A friend of mine, let's call her ˝MAM˝ (those are her initials) asked me to team teach with her and another woman a class on herbs at Home Gardener's School. Home Gardener's School is a workshop on gardening offered by Rutgers University. I've attended it for years and now I was asked to be an instructor. I was beside myself with excitement even though I had never taught a class or used PowerPoint.

The class was on growing, harvesting and storing herbs. My portion of the lecture was to be on herb garden design and herb propagation. I don't know a lot about herb garden design, so I spent about two weeks doing research. Herb propagation is something I do every spring in preparation for the Rutgers Gardens big plant sale in May.

MAM offered to do the PowerPoint slides for everyone. I was so relieved because I don't know anything about PowerPoint. I sent her an outline and photos to illustrate my talk. All she needed to do was copy and paste the information onto the slides. Using that outline, I wrote out my entire talk and practiced it using dummy slides.

Home Gardener's School is held at Hickman Hall which has two floors of classrooms with an auditorium at each end of the building for larger lectures. When I agreed to teach this class, I envisioned one of the smaller classrooms with maybe twenty students. I didn't think that there would be as much interest in herbs as there are in the lawncare, pruning and landscape design classes. MAM called me frantically three days before to tell me that we were scheduled to be in one of the auditoriums because 120 people had signed up for the class. She wanted to know if I was okay with that. My reply was that it really didn't make much difference whether I made a fool of myself in front of 20 people or 120 people.

Be careful what you wish for.

I started getting nervous Saturday morning as I drove to Rutgers. The idea of standing in front of 120 people was suddenly seeming much more intimidating than it had three days before. I tried to assuage my nerves by telling myself that it was no different than any of the large events at Rutgers Gardens at which I've worked for years.

After I parked my car, I spotted MAM walking into the building and hailed her. She was making a face at me. When I was within talking distance, she sternly told me that she hadn't liked what I had sent her so she had re-written and rearranged my slides ˝so that they made more sense." Also, she had eliminated part of my presentation because she wanted JD (the other woman) to do that part of the talk. Fortunately I had brought a printout of my talk with me. I waved it in her face and told her that I needed my slides EXACTLY as I had sent them to her. That it didn't matter what made sense to her. That JD couldn't talk about where to buy herbs because that was an integral part of my presentation, the transition between herb garden design and herb propagation.

MAM replied that with only 45 minutes to the start of our class, there wasn't time to redo the PowerPoint so I was going to have to do it her way. I dug in my heels and waved my printout some more. We reached a compromise. She would put my photos back in the order that corresponded to my talk. We found an empty classroom and frantically rearranged her slides into some semblance of what I wanted.

So there I was in a cavernous auditorium facing 120 people without my outline to guide me through my presentation. I had the printed copy of my speech but in the darkness required by the now-useless PowerPoint slides, I could barely see it. I stumbled through the presentation that I had so assiduously practiced, constantly losing my place and leaving out vital information. I was mortified.

As soon as the last question was asked, I fled the campus and took refuge in the Rutgers Gardens greenhouse. Fortunately, no one there knew that I had been ˝teaching˝ a class so I wasn't forced to relive the debacle. The repetitive tasks of seeding and transplanting soothed me. I even managed a giggle when I reached under a workbench to grab a tray and found the greenhouse cat sleeping on a stack of trays.

I keep telling myself that it wasn't a complete disaster. No one walked out. Everyone laughed at my jokes. And if they were asking questions, that meant that they were paying attention. But I learned a tough lesson: Never let someone else prepare your PowerPoint presentation.

 

I survived my first week on the dayshift. Getting up wasn't too much of a problem. Falling asleep was difficult. No matter how tired I was, my body thought that it was too early to go to sleep. I tossed and turned for hours. I'm hoping that I only have one more week of this. It took about two weeks for my body to switch over when I started working nights.

I was a little concerned about The Fur Patrol adjusting to my new hours. They had been accustomed to being served their dinner (canned food, they get dry food in the morning) in the afternoon before I left for work. Animals know what time it is and if I didn't show up on time to feed them I was afraid that they would get mad and start destroying things. Monday was hilarious. I always hand out treats to anyone who meets me at the door, so they showed up for their treats but then they realized that I should feed them so they ran to their bowls. Then they ran back for treats. Then back to the bowls. They ran back and forth several times because they didn't want to miss treats or dinner and couldn't figure out where they should be. In the end, everyone got treats and dinner. The rest of the week has been smoother. Everyone hits their mark for treats and then heads for the bowls.

 

For those of you who have been following The Great Hot Water Heater Caper, here is the latest update: it failed inspection. Oops, I probably should have had a better build-up. Here’s what happened.

The town plumbing inspector was supposed to show up between 10 am and 2 pm on Tuesday. Of course, he showed up at 12:30 pm so that I had no time to actually get any errands run or yardwork done before dashing off to work.

The one thing that did go right was that most of the water in my basement (courtesy of the latest deluge rainstorm had dried so my basement didn’t smell.

The inspector took one look at the hot water heater and demanded to know WHO HAD INSTALLED IT????? I assured him that it had been installed by a licensed plumber.

He hemmed and he hawed and he hemmed and he hawed. Then he said “pretty good, pretty good”. So I figured it was okay. Wouldn’t you?

Nope.

He claims that it needs a “drop leg” whatever that is. Something about catching dirt so that it doesn’t get in my gas line. I refrained from sarcastically asking him just exactly how dirt can get into a closed pipe and instead meekly accepted blame for hiring an inept plumber. He slapped a big red FAILED sticker with some scribbles on it to remind himself why he had failed it and stomped up the stairs and out the door.

I immediately put a call into the plumber with the bad news.

He still hasn’t called me back.

 

In preparation for my move to dayshift, I have been “practicing” getting up early. I have been so successful in turning my body around to being awake in the morning that I am now falling asleep at my desk by midnight. Even worse (from my point of view) is that I am too tired in the evenings to write. Evenings have been my time to write for a couple of years now.

I have been able to prepare a lecture on herbs for a class that I am team teaching this coming weekend. Since I had a hand in the design of the new herb garden at Rutgers Gardens and grow out and sell the herbs for their big plant sale, my part of the class is on herb garden design and growing herbs. It also gives me an opportunity to use some of my photos to illustrate garden design.

I’ve never taught a class or used Power Point, so I plan on having an interesting 15 minutes of fame. I’ll let you know how it all comes out.

I also finished my blog posts on the NJ flower show. Good thing, because I went to the flower show in Philadelphia last week. I haven’t uploaded those photos yet to Flickr because 800+ will take a few hours. Here are the links to my blog posts:

The photo competition  
My review of the show   - very short, I hated it
My snarky comments about the judging  

I called that last one “You Be the Judge” because I used to post photos of the flower arrangements and ask readers to guess which one the judges gave first place. It was never one that any normal person would choose. Rather, it was usually the arrangement with the strangest materials and fewest flowers. This year when I was photographing the arrangements, I noticed that the ribbons were visible in all the pictures so I had to change my format but I kept the title.

My boss has informed me that despite the fact that he still hasn’t found a suitable for replacement for me, that I can start working days next week. Hmmm…I have less than a week to convince my body to wake up earlier than 8 am.


 

I take back everything I said about the outcome of The Great Hot Water Heater Caper.

My first clue that my world was about to be rocked was when the plumber showed up early. Let me repeat that: the plumber showed up early. On a Saturday morning.

We descended into the bowels of my humble abode and contemplated the ancient, non-working hot water heater.

Plumber: American Home Shield will only pay for a new tank, no extras.

Me: I know.

Plumber: You need new ductwork. There’s a new code. They won’t pay for that.

Me: I know.

Plumber: It needs to be grounded here (pointing at two adjacent pipes). They won’t pay for that either.

Me: I know.

Plumber: It’ll be $150 for both. On top of the $95.

Me: No problem. [thinking to myself: he’s not going to charge extra for coming on a weekend?!]

Plumber: I can leave the old tank here.

Me: Please don’t.

Plumber: If you want me to remove it, it’ll be another $150.

Me: No problem. [thinking to myself: Hee, hee! PSE&G wanted to charge me $900 plus more for the “extras”. I’m getting it all done for $395! Sweet.]

Plumber: Okay. I gotta call ‘em.

He went out to his truck and called American Home Shield. It’s routine. Contractors have to call to make sure whatever repair or replacement they are doing is covered. When he returned, he rocked my world.

Plumber: It’s your lucky day. They’re gonna pay for everything. You just gotta pay me the $95.

He could have lied to me. He could have told me that the extras weren’t covered and pocketed the $300. I would never have known that he lied to me. An honest plumber. I didn’t know that they existed.

Two hours later, I was the proud owner of a brand new $95 hot water heater. Oh, and he asked for a rag so that he could clean my kitchen floor where he had dirtied it when he dragged the old, dripping hot water heater out of the house.

After he left, I went downstairs to check out my new appliance and discovered that he had neatly folded the old insulation and stacked all of the old ducts and parts that needed to be discarded on top of it.

At this point, I was looking for hidden cameras. This had to be some kind of stunt, right? No plumber charges an honest rate and cleans up after himself.

Now I am dealing with permit issues. I’m allowed to replace my hot water heater on an emergency basis as long as I get a permit afterwards and have it inspected. I picked up the paperwork yesterday for a permit and express mailed it to the plumber today. I almost didn’t do the overnight mailing. It was $13.50 each way. I had to remind myself that so far, I had only spent $95 instead of $900+, so it’s okay to spend extra on express mail.

I’ll still miss the 72 hour deadline, but even with a fine, I’ll be ahead of the game.

Of course, I’ll plead crazy work hours and try to get out of paying a fine

 

Friday, February 25

The weather was predicted to be windy and rainy today, so I was expecting a wet basement. And though it was not nearly as windy and rainy as expected, my basement did get a good soaking.

I awoke to the strangest sound I had ever heard. Kind of a hissing, watery, something is wrong with the plumbing sound. Everything seemed fine in the bathroom. The toilet flushed okay. Everything looked fine in the kitchen also. The furnace turned on when I adjusted the thermostat to warm up the house.

The sound grew louder as I approached the basement. My heart was in my throat as I descended the stairs. What would I find? What could possibly be making that awful sound?

A geyser was shooting out of the top of the hot water heater. Water was everywhere. I didn’t know how to turn off the water to just the tank, so I turned off the water to the entire house. I placed the obligatory call to PSE&G with whom I have a service contract and then made some breakfast for myself and the Fur Patrol as I waited for service.

It was only after I called PSE&G that I remembered that I had purchased a home warranty for my house when I put it on the market. At the time it was a marketing ploy, a way to encourage buyers to buy my house because they wouldn’t have to pay for things like hot water heaters if they broke. Now it was my opportunity to take advantage of the contract and get a new hot water heater for free. PSE&G wanted to charge me a minimum of $900 for a new one.

You get what you pay for.

PSE&G assured me that if I placed an order for a new hot water heater with them before 1 pm, they could install it same day. American Home Shield thought they could get a plumber to my house by maybe Monday, more probably Tuesday. They consider doing without hot water an inconvenience, not an emergency.

Five days without hot water? This is not some pathetically backward third world nation. This is the United States of America. This is the 21st century. Hot water is not optional.

Thus began an entire day of increasingly hysterical phone calls that ended in my cubicle at work when American Home Shield finally found a plumber who could make it to my house within two hours. Great. Just great. After an entire day at home fruitlessly calling and waiting, I had thrown in the towel and gone to work.

More hold time. Okay, they found another plumber who could come tomorrow morning. Where were all these plumbers when I was at home? Why did they suddenly come crawling out of the woodwork as soon as I was not available to let them into my house? I agreed to an appointment on Saturday morning before noon.

Surprisingly, the plumber called shortly thereafter to confirm the appointment, asked for information on the existing hot water heater, explained the permit process to me and told me upfront that while American Home Shield would pay to replace my hot water heater, they would not pay for any upgrades such as the larger ductwork that is now required and the missing electrical thingy that the PSE&G guy had pointed out to me nor would they pay for disposal of the old hot water heater.

When all is said and done, this will probably end up costing me almost as much as PSE&G was going to charge me. And I could have showered and washed my dishes today instead of tomorrow.
 

Last week I finally dropped my car off at the body shop to be repaired. Both accidents happened in December, but between the insurance companies’ dragging their heels getting their estimates done and my crazy work schedule due to the severe weather during the month of January, I wasn’t able to get my poor car in for repairs until now.

The owner of the body shop offered to keep my car for five days and do the repairs for both accidents at once. The insurance companies had no problem covering all five days of the rental. They even assured me that I would be provided with a comparable vehicle. I called Enterprise the week before I was to bring my car in to reserve a car. A comparable car. I knew it wouldn’t be another Camry. Rental fleets tend to consist of American cars. I could live with that.

Monday morning rolled around. I dropped off my car and called Enterprise to pick me up. They showed up promptly. In a Hyundai Accent. I asked if this was the car I would be renting. The reply was that this was all that was left. I asked what happened to my reservation? The reply was that they had been swamped. My retort was that that was the exactly the reason I had called ahead of time; to make sure that I could rent a decent car. Silence was the only answer.

As a single woman, I am accustomed to getting the shaft in most transactions. Ignoring my reservation and forcing me to drive an econobox like an Accent was just another example of the second class treatment that is forced on women, especially women without a man to stand up for them, in our supposedly advanced society.

I inspected for dents and scratches, signed and initialed the paperwork and then checked to see which side of the car the gas cap was located. Because, not surprisingly, the car had no gas in it. I barely made it to the nearest gas station. Where I realized just how spoiled I’ve become driving my Camry. The Accent had no power anything. I actually had to crank a handle to lower the window to hand my credit card to the attendant and ask him to fill the tank. (For those of you who have never been to New Jersey, self-serve is illegal.)

While I waited for the tank to fill, I decided that this was a good time to adjust all my mirrors. By hand. Back and forth, back and forth. I never did get the mirror on the passenger side adjusted to my liking. I missed the power mirrors on my Camry.

I also missed the acceleration. Exiting the gas station and merging into traffic was a real eye opener. I stepped on the gas and accelerated seemingly in slow motion. Not a good idea in New Jersey traffic.

By far the worst part of driving a car without power accessories were the car locks. I actually had to stick the key in the door to lock and unlock it. I hadn’t had to do that since my 1988 Volvo. First thing in the morning when I was still not completely awake, I would find myself pointing the key at the car wondering why nothing was happening.

It took me two days to realize that whereas in my old Volvo, locking and unlocking the driver side door also locked and unlocked all the doors at the same time, in the Accent, the key only works on one door at a time. I had been carefully remembering to lock the door with a key each time I exited the car without realizing that the other three doors were all unlocked. Not much of a theft deterrent.

Friends envied me the wonderful gas mileage I was getting. Or that they thought I was getting. It cost me just as much in gas to drive the Accent for a week as it does my Camry. The biggest difference? The Accent has a gas tank the size of a pea. I was at the gas station three times filling that blasted tank. The Camry only needs to fill up once a week.

I cried on Friday when I called the body shop about my car only to be told that a part was on back order. Hopefully, it would be in on Monday. I had a busy weekend planned and didn’t want to spend it in the dreadful Accent, especially grocery shopping. Mind you, I only shop for one person, but my few grocery bags filled the tiny trunk. I also had to pick up my photos on Sunday from the flower show. I knew that I would lose the car in the gazillions of others that would be parked in the massive lots outside the convention center. And I couldn’t find it easily by “beeping” it because, repeat after me, NO POWER LOCKS.

Adversity is something I’ve grown accustomed to, so I managed to survive another two days in the Accent. I cried again when Enterprise dropped me off at the body shop on Monday. There she was, my baby, all shiny and new, like nothing had ever happened to her. I drove her home, promising to never again force her to drive in miserable road conditions and to park well away from other cars. I oversteered most of the way because I had grown accustomed to the stiff “power” steering of the Accent.

My baby is back and I am so happy.