Rental Car Roulette

Here in San Diego I get a rental car to get myself to and from work, and other places in my off hours. It’s all pretty sweet, except for every 30 days we need to turn our car in and get another one. We are always booked to get compact cars, but the rental companies generally treat us pretty good and give us bigger cars. So I picked up my third car and it has been a mixed bag so far.

The first one was a Dodge Nitro, an ugly blue boxy SUV thing. For those of you familiar with southern California, having a big vehicle is not necessarily a good thing. The lanes are narrow, and the parking spaces are designed with enough room to park a scooter provided that nobody parks on either side of you. It was made worse by the fact that it had New Mexico license plates. So even though I’m an outsider here, I don’t like to advertise that fact. That and I didn’t like the idea of people thinking that I picked this thing on purpose to drive. So needless to say I was happy to get rid of one and hoped for something better.

Round two was much better, a red Pontiac G6. Decent car, good power, and it had California license plates. Yeah!

On to round three. I was hoping for the Nissan Z that was there, but no luck. Instead it’s a gold Chevy HHR. To make matters worse it has Oklahoma license plates. So once again I’m in an ugly, car and color, vehicle from out of state. It is not a big vehicle, wouldn’t even consider it a small SUV, its more of a large sedan. It is not that high off the ground either, but it has step boards. Huh? Is this in case Jiminy Cricket needs a ride and nobody wants to help him in? Overall not a big fan, maybe if it had some power it would make up for it, but alas no.

It’s only for a month, but who’s counting….

Flat Tires and Owwiee Fingers

Last week as we came back from grocery shopping I noticed that the rear passenger tire on the car was flat. Since we hadn’t driven the car for about a week and a half, it was probably flat for a while. Since there wasn’t anybody parked next to us I decided the put on the spare. Having never used the spare tire on the car, I had bad thoughts that it would be flat as well. Much to my relief the spare was in perfect condition. So I swapped tires and loaded the flat one in the truck. Because of work getting the tire fixed would have to wait till the next morning. Bright and early we headed out to a tire shop to get the flat fixed. The guys at the tire shop were really cool. They pulled the big nail out and patched the hole. After about 1/2 hour we were on our way again with all the tires inflated and all located where they were supposed to be.
Side note: Being in California right now, there is a ballot proposition to (Prop 8) define marriage as between and man and woman only. There are lots of radio and TV commercials for both sides, and it has gotten pretty ugly. I’m all for passing Prop 8, but not being a resident of the state I can’t vote here.
Back to my original story, the tire shop had a yes on Prop 8 sticker on the counter, so I felt good about supporting their business. That and they did a good job on fixing my tire.

In our apartment the electrical box is in the hallway, just out side of our bedroom. I turned off the lights in the living room and was heading toward the bedroom in the dark. Sometimes I’ll run my hand along the wall, just so I don’t run into anything. This time is wasn’t such a good plan. My fingernail caught under the electrical panel door and bent the nail from about half way down all the way back. It hurt a lot, blood oozed out from under the nail. Now that it’s been a couple of day I can touch it without it hurting, so it probably won’t need to be amputated.

Working Tourist

Currently I am working swing shift here in San Diego, so that means the mornings are mine to do as I please before having to head to work. I get to be a working-tourist. There are several things I have learned about people and events I’ve witnessed so here goes:

1) Things that are free rarely are, there is always, or almost always, a catch. Every Tuesday a different museum in Balboa Park is free, whoo hoo! free is good. While there is no monetary cost associated with visiting the museum there is a crowd/people cost. Most of the crowd consists of school age children on a field trip. While I understand it makes sense for schools to save their budgets and allow the kids a meaningful experience it makes things crowded and loud for the rest of us cheap people.

2) Signs and rules apply to everyone else. One of the free museums was the Museum of Photographic Arts. One would think, even without a sign, that taking pictures of the pictures would be frowned upon. Not for certain individuals, click click click. Just makes you want to go and lick their camera lens and then read sign to them.

3) The San Diego Zoo is big. While you can navigate the entire zoo in one day, its better to be able to enjoy it over the course of several months, which is why we have memberships. For those of you lucky enough to be in San Diego the first part of October, the zoo is free on the first Monday. That freeness comes with a cost though …

4) Regardless of where you are there is always a chance that you’ll bump into someone you know, or they’ll bump into you. We saw my brother-in-laws brother and wife (not sure what that makes us, but that’s a quandary for another day), at Disneyland. Its funny how our random paths through life often intersect.

5) Its really only cool to wear Mickey ears at Disneyland. So if you’re one of those Disney dorks out there, sorry. That’s why I’ll only don my mouse ears in the seclusion of my own living room and at Disneyland.