More than you wanted to know.

Ah, where to begin? New Mexico/Arizona? Falling at work, briefly dislocating jaw and bruising shoulder, butt and ego? Getting sick with an intestinal virus the day after the fall (I'm still convinced that's why I fell; I couldn't possibly be so clumsy as to fall sideways off a set of stairs with no provocation whatsoever, could I?)(I'm also convinced that I caught whatever it is I had from my flight home.)(What's the record for most parenthetical statements in a single sentence anyhow?)?

Being sick with fever for a week after falling? Recovering in time to fly to Omaha to spend the better part of four days on the road again? Returning from that trip with a head cold and a vow NEVER to travel on any plane where the median age is less than the number of strips on the American flag?

Decisions, decisions.

Cystitis: In the spirit of "share too much" allow me to note that about four days into our southwestern vacation I came down with a mild but painful case of cystitis. Unless I develop signs other than pain, I now pretty much just try to live through the bouts. Going to the doctor's for help elicits little more than instructions on how to wipe and an admonition to be more careful. Since I already know and practice proper wiping etiquette, since I've never been big on public humiliation, and since I further believe that culturing "free catch" urine is one of the biggest money-wasters in the medical profession, I'm content at this point to treat cystitis by simply leaning back, whimpering as needed, and being alert to any signs that indicate that I may actually have to bite the bullet and listen to yet another personal hygiene lecture in order to get antibiotics.

Carlsbad Caverns: We visited quite a few places in New Mexico (and even dipped into Arizona for a brief bit), but the one I'll wax poetic about here was Carlsbad Caverns. We hit Carlsbad during the height of cystitis season, and I'll admit that I was a little worried that the hour-and-a-half "Big Room" tour might challenge my bladder control a little bit too much. In that spirit, I made it a point to hit the ladies room situated just before the descent down to the cave entrance. As I came out to rejoin the others waiting for the little ranger orientation, the ranger noted that I alone had made an intelligent decision to use the facilities here, noting that it was at least a forty-minute walk until the next opportunity. I didn't bother explaining that I was thinking with my pain-receptors.

As it was, I had little to worry about. The 1.5 mile hike around the eight acre Big Room in 56° F conditions actually had me feeling pretty good. I did take pictures, and I might even try to add them to an update at some point, but for now you'll have to use your imagination when I tell you that some of the formations were incredible. I wish we'd had more time to take the guided tours into some of the less accessible rooms.

Perhaps my biggest surprise came when I encountered the underground cafeteria/souvenir shop/restrooms set tastefully next to the elevators that save tourists the walk back up the trail to the visitor's center. The cafeteria and souvenir shops were both basically set up in stark cave conditions, with raw cave wall, dim lighting and some larger formations simply left as-is.

The bathroom was the real eye-opener though. To get to them, one walks down a hallway that gradually segues from cave to tiled floor and walls. I expected to find some variation of the Porta-Potties that are so popular in National Park settings, but the bathroom itself was brightly illuminated, fully tiled, and complete with flush toilets and hot/cold running water. I actually considered taking a picture, but in retrospect that probably would have been considered tacky by the restroom’s other denizens.

The high point of Carlsbad Caverns for me came in the evening, when we returned to the mouth of the cave for the evening bat flight. The mouth of the cave is set down deep into a crater-like area, and just outside and above the cave is a small amphitheater that takes advantage of the bowl-like landscape and allows good visibility to the cave opening without being too obtrusive. I was anxious that we not miss the Mexican free-tail bats as they left the cave to stretch their wings and catch their evening meals. Six-thirty found Math Man and I in the slowly filling amphitheater, listening to a young and earnest park ranger asking who in the audience had been here to witness the evening bat show before.

The bats left the poor young and earnest park ranger out to dry, failing to show at the estimated 7:00 cave-exit time. Poor young and earnest park ranger had to wring nearly an hour's worth of small talk out of the ever growing audience while we watched dusk descend and waited for bats. During this period of time, the superior top-of-the-theater seats we'd picked out became little more than depreciating property as unattended children began to fidget, squirming behind, in front and over top of us. The formerly cute little Japanese baby in his mom's arms began to writhe and cry. I scanned the theater for any section that seemed to be toddler free.

Math Man and I resumed the bat vigil from a slightly less advantageous but far more civilized vantage point. Finally, as the sky was turning twilight red and orange, the first few bats appeared. The first appeared singly, but then they emerged in small groups, then dozens, then in uncountable crowds. The bowl in the landscape before us swarmed with bats, which spiraled around and around the front of the cave before finally setting off in a cloudy stream towards distant rivers and the promise of buggy food. The clouds of bats became denser and denser, and the periods between groups grew shorter and shorter. Finally, as it was becoming too dark to see, the bats exited in a steady, nonstop flow of motion.

People began to leave. It was getting dark, and they'd seen the bats.
Eventually there were no more than a dozen people in the amphitheater. It was then I became aware of the whisper of thousands of bat wings. Anticipating this event I'd imagined there'd be the sound of wings like hundreds of pigeons taking off from the sidewalk in the city. When the exodus finally began, I thought it was silent. But I'd been wrong twice.

The sound of bat wings is the sound of a distant brook, of a little water running quickly over stones long smoothed from long years of wear. Bat wings speak in whispers, and it was only when the whispers were multiplied by hundreds that they made any sound at all.

In the future, when I think of Carlsbad Caverns, the first thing I'll remember is the whisper of night wings.

Travel in the Age of Security: There was a time, decades ago, when flying was an adventure. I looked forward even to the inconvenience of the airport because it was the easy pain that preceded the payoff of new horizons and novel experiences. Decades ago I was a fool.

Now I'm still a fool, but at least I'm no longer a sucker for airports. Now I am a sucker for TSA. Does anyone really feel safer because they take off their shoes and jackets before passing through a metal detector? Is my nation truly more secure because TSA found a stash of medication in my carry-on luggage?

Mind you, I read up on the dos and don'ts of carry-on luggage before I flew. That's why I knew to bring the actual bottles that had my name and prescription information on them, and not just the loose pills. No, they didn't confiscate my medicine. Poor Math Man can't say the same.

Both MM and I got pulled into separate booths to have our bags searched. My little Medic Alert bracelet was enough for TSA to let me keep my tacrolimus. Math Man's stash of caffeine pills were apparently more dangerous than either of us realized though, because they were confiscated (although the TSA officer did allow MM to swallow two of them before taking them away forever).

On my return business flight from Omaha two weeks later, my checked luggage was "lost" and eventually returned to my doorstep at 3:00 in the morning. When I opened it I found a TSA note inside attesting to the fact that they had raided my dirty undies. Whatever. I also had several severely soiled sets of farm coveralls that I'd double bagged for everyone's protection. Hope they got a good whiff of those too.

After the Fall: So we flew back on a Thursday night, and bright and early Friday I appeared in work. Yeah, I’d had no sleep worth talking about, and yeah, it was stupid to go in for a one-day work week. But I’m flat out of vacation days, and I can’t afford the day-without-pay I’d have experienced by not showing up. Friday I survived. Monday was another matter.

I’d felt “off” all weekend, but put it down to coming back to a time zone two hours different than the one I’d spent the prior week in. “Off” came to a head mid-afternoon, when I was descending a four-step set of stairs in a heavy equipment area of where I work. I felt my left leg shoot out in front of me, but to this day I have no idea if I slipped or if I just missed the stair. What I do know is that without a left leg to support them, people tend to fall to their left.

I further know that if you are two stairs above the concrete floor, you fall further than if you were standing on said concrete floor. A final piece of knowledge, for those of you who can stand it: if you are falling further than usual to the side and your jaw hits a mounted motor, said jaw will tend to pop out of alignment.

Actually, I lied. There’s yet one more piece of wisdom I have to impart. After aforementioned jaw is popped out of alignment, one possible way of getting it quickly back into alignment is to scream in pain. It worked for me, anyhow.

I was lucky. Total damage: bruised shoulder, bruised ass, unhappy jaw hinge (no permanent damage), and shredded ego.

Whether or not it was related, Tuesday I woke up sick. I don’t mean sick as in “I really don’t feel like getting out of bed and going to work.” I mean sick as in “I’ve got a 103.6° fever and the shits and there’s no way I’m doing more than calling into work to let them know what the funeral arrangements are.” I stayed in bed solidly for two days.

On the third day I rose again from the dead, but apparently Sons of God are better at pulling that stuff off than I am. I showed up at work, lasted two hours, and went back home to bed.

Come Friday, I was feeling a bit better, with one exception. All that time in bed had made my old war wound act up. Three decades ago I had a serious disagreement with a horse. The horse won, and I spent a month in bed and six additional months in a special corset because of a severe back sprain. Off and on through the years the back has acted up, but for at least ten years now I’ve heard virtually nothing from the lumbar region. I forgot all about the fact that I had a “bad back”. I was reminded. I don’t know whether it was a delayed reaction from the fall, or simply a protest from the epaxial muscles that I’d been reclining too long. I do know that I spent another week on muscle relaxants trying to undo the damage, though.

The things I do to get attention. It’s really pathetic.

There’s more. But that should be enough of an update to hold anyone but the speediest of speed readers for now.

Off to the desert

I'm off to the land of sand and cacti.

Business Trip

Philadelphia to Green Bay via Chicago and then back again the next day makes for too much time in the airport, too much time in the air, and too much time hurrying up so you can wait. This was how I spent Thursday and Friday of this week. I arrived Thursday with two hours to spare before my 3:00 meeting began. I used the time to power nap. Down to the boardroom at 3:00, talk, talk, talk until six, dinner in the boardroom and then talk, talk, talk again. At about 10:00 that night we retired to the large patio out back overlooking the Fox River. It was cool, verdant, and mosquito-ridden. One of the guys produced a decade-old bottle of some spray-on mosquito deterrent that worked a little bit. Another of the guys produced two guitars, and we sang along to Credence Clearwater Revival and Pete Segar and Kenny Rogers and Johnny Cash. I managed to hang in there until 11:00, which was midnight in my own time zone. A hard-core group of singers remained down on the patio for some time after I left, beer in their hands and song on their lips.

There was yet more business the next morning, concluding at noon. My flight was scheduled to leave Green Bay at 5:45. Green Bay has a cute little airport, but I honestly didn’t want to cool my heels there for five hours. I immediately approached the ticketing desk and asked if there was an earlier plane I could switch to. A plane to Chicago was boarding right then, leaving half-an-hour late. She said if I hurried I might make stand-by. I hurried. I was the last one on the plane.

I’m not one for chatting people up on aircrafts. The majority of travelers have shields up against the world: books and magazines and Game Boys acting as brick walls to hold back the outside environment. The ones who do want to converse are usually full of stories about their bunions or their grandkids or their gall bladder surgery, none of which promotes the quick passage of time.

My own chosen shield is a book, and I wielded it to great effect during the trip. I was deeply engrossed in the latest Vernor Vinge when the expected “we are beginning our descent” speech came over the PA. The pilot didn’t stick to the usual script though.

“Uh, folks, I just wanted to remind you that the fasten seat belt sign is lit and that we’re beginning to start our descent into O’Hare International. Our wing flaps aren’t working as well as they should, and I should warn you that we’ll be landing a bit faster than you may be used to. We’ll be circling the airport for a bit to wait for the optimum conditions to land, but should be on the ground shortly. Some of you may notice the fire engines and other emergency equipment that may be following beside us during our landing. This is merely a precaution.”

The stewardess on our flight continued collecting the remaining drink cups and pretzel wrappers as though this were the most routine announcement in the world. The rest of us had put aside our books and MP3 players and were starting to look around the cabin. The two old farts behind me started up a conversation about bizarre landings they’d experienced or heard about during the Vietnam War. Most of the stories seemed to end with a totaled aircraft and a pilot walking away in humiliation.

“What did the pilot say?” asked the guy next to me in the window seat, belated looking up from a magazine.

“Flaps aren’t working, and we’re coming in hot,” said one of the two old farts behind me.

“Hot?” asked the lady across the aisle from me.

“We’ll be coming in pretty fast,” some other voice from somewhere behind me chimed in.

“Wing flaps?” said the lady across the aisle.

“I think they’re called ‘ailerons',’’ I heard slip from my lips. Figures. Even during a crisis I have to be the smartass full of useless information.

“At least it’s a clear day,” the guy next to me said. “This would have been a bitch if it had happened during yesterday’s thunderstorms.” I nearly added that it was still a bitch, but the stupid aileron comment had me holding my tongue. No use in pointing out what everybody already knew.

“It’s still a bitch,” said one of the two old farts behind me, and the other one chuckled. I laughed out loud, maybe a little harder than I should have. My seatmates probably thought it was nervous laughter.

Someone made a joke about recompensing us for this with additional mileage credits for the flight. Another person wondered if we’d get a free ticket out of this. I observed that we’d probably be charged extra for the “E-ticket” value of the flight. The lady beside me observed that Disney didn’t sell E-tickets any more. The cabin got silent.

I looked out the window. We were close enough that you could easily tell the difference between sedans and SUV’s on the roadways below. I wondered since I was on the plane as a last minute addition if it would make it more difficult to identify me. I wondered how fast we were moving relative to the ground. I wondered if the pilot had walked away from any crashes in Vietnam, and then realized he probably hadn’t even been born yet. We continued to circle the airport. It occurred to me that we were burning off excess fuel.

“How dangerous is this?” the woman across the aisle asked in a small voice.

“Well, I read that they tell you to put your head down to your knees if there’s a chance of a crash landing because it minimizes injury. They haven’t asked us to do that, so I imagine they think everything is going to be OK.” That was me again, with more useless knowledge. The lady smiled and thanked me. The ground was getting closer rapidly. We passed over the blue lights at the end of the runway, skimming just over the ground, and then we touched down.

“Here we go,” said on of the old farts.

“He did a nice job of slowing us down,” said the other old fart.

“Slow?” I thought to myself. The plane was hurtling down the runway, making slight jerks from left to right to left. “THIS is slow?”

“Yee HAW!” someone called from the front. I made a mental note regarding people who fly first class.

“Hey look! Fire trucks!” called an old fart. Sure enough, out my window, there were two yellow fire trucks racing along with us on a parallel runway, and two ambulances as well. We were going faster than they, and I watched as we pulled up even and then pulled ahead. I craned my neck around to watch them fall to the rear, belatedly realizing that if anything happened I was not in a particularly good, low-potential-for-injury position. I turned back around to sit square in my seat.

After about thirty seconds worth of forever, we came to a halt. The lady beside me broke out into applause. Perhaps half the cabin, including myself, joined her.

“Sorry folks,” the pilot said over the PA. “Even when we come in damaged we still have to wait in line to pull up to the gate. Bear with us, and we’ll have you back on the ground in about ten minutes.”

“So much for any extra frequent flier miles,” a voice in back piped up.

I realized that I was still clutching my book in my hands. I slipped it back into the pouch on my carry-on, and waited for us to come to a halt and deplane.

The pilot came out of the cockpit and stood by the door to greet us on our way off the plane. He looked tense, but he was exceptionally cordial to each person as they passed, shaking hands and accepting praise with equanimity. I shook his hand when my turn came to disembark. “Give ‘em hell,” I told him.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I intend to.”

It occurred to me that this would have been a good group of people to spend my last minutes with.

Why Wednesday wasn't a good day either

Why I like Tuesdays

Tuesday I got a late afternoon call from the dealership. They had not only already looked at my car (after assuring me that Thursday was the earliest possible time they could start on it), but they had fixed it. The on board computer needed an upgrade and some part that managed gas pressure in the lines required replacement. In all, the fix cost me less than $100, because the computer was under warranty. Hell, I’d spent more than that on towing it there. Double hell, I’d spent just as much at that center city auto repair shop for the car not to be fixed! But I digress. I’d made arrangements to pick the Prius up Wednesday morning (so I wouldn’t be charged for storing the car at the dealership – they like things to be picked up within a day or so of when the work is completed). That meant I could return the weird little Camry rental they’d given me and get my beloved Prius back.

The result was that Tuesday night I came home in a far better mood than I was in Monday night. I have come to regard Tuesday nights as my evenings. Mondays and Thursdays after work I spend the bulk of the evening checking over the shelter cats’ health. Wednesdays I get to line up with the other cows, weigh in, and then sit around talking about new ways to eat hay. Math Man’s current schedule has him teaching Monday through Thursday night classes, so I reserve Friday through Sunday nights for together time. That leaves Tuesday night as the period of time when I serve no master but myself.

This past Tuesday I decided what I needed was a nice fling in front of the television set. I wasn’t up for driving the weird little Camry to go out any where. Don’t get me wrong. The Camry I got was a brand new one, with a very sharp new design and nice acceleration. It was an automatic with a very weird shift though. The shift was on the floor, and designed to zigzag to get it from park to neutral to reverse to drive. Basically it was an automatic designed for standard shift wannabe’s. Adjusting the seat and steering wheel required an advanced degree, and I drove for about five miles like a ballerina en pointe until I figured out that the same button that moved the seat higher and lower also moved it forward and back if you pushed it differently. The Camry had a superior sound system with tiny tinny speakers that made everything sound like it had been rattled around in an aluminum can first. I was not about to relax by driving a car that was even stranger than I am. So I came home, slopped the cats, showered, put on the most comfy clothes I own and belly-flopped onto the sofa in front of the telly, with no idea what it was I was going to watch.

I clicked the remote, making the complete circuit twice before stumbling upon the opening sequence of the first episode of “Dead Like Me”. “Dead Like Me” had been a critically acclaimed hit on the Showtime network. I never got to see any of it because I refuse to pay out that much extra money a month to get a handful of “premium” stations on cable that I’d virtually never watch. I had no idea that the Sci Fi network had picked up “Dead like Me” for reruns, but finding it was like hitting the Loser’s Lottery. Maybe Monday had been the day from hell, and maybe Tuesday had been the day after the day from hell, but things were definitely looking up.

Why Tuesday Night Was a Disappointment

I watched the main character Georgia get up, argue with her mother, go to the first day of her first job, go out to lunch, get hit by a piece of the MIR space station when it re-entered earth, and talk with the grim reaper about what had just happened. She attended her own wake, and I was just starting to watch her watch her own autopsy. Based on the first half hour, I’d definitely recommend the show to anyone with a really black sense of humor. That’s about all I have to recommend the show on though, because at that point the power went out.

I had become so wrapped up in this show that I had somehow been oblivious to the fact that the winds outside were blowing as hard as I’ve even seen non-hurricane winds around here. I opened the doors to the deck and walked outside to see if the power loss was a local thing or if I had company in my misery. I live on a corner, and the people across the street in both directions had power. I figured it was just a really localized outage, and hung around outside to admire the sky, which was an unusual and eye-catching shade of grey-green. This explains why the first piece of hail I noticed hit me in the middle of the forehead. About the same time as the hail started, the winds blew even harder, and the pine trees by the road began to bend at an impossible angle. Cowardice being the largest part of self-preservation, I went back into the condo.

The back of my mind wondered if this were a tornado. I briefly thought about whether or not the cats and I should retreat to the basement. I realized that while it might not be a bad idea, I had no idea where the flashlights were, and less idea of where two of the four cats were. I decided to stay upstairs and search for a flashlight. Besides, the power would probably come back at any time.

The winds finally began to abate after about twenty minutes or so. That’s purely a guess on my part, since I couldn’t read any of the clocks that were working. The eerie green twilight was back, but was fading rapidly as night set in. I did the only thing I could think of. I gathered every candle holder I had (which is a fairly big number, since I really like candles), set them up on the hearth, and lit them. I then carried one of the lit candles upstairs, located my boom box and found out with a sinking heart that it required six D-cell batteries to operate. Against hope I checked the hall closet. There, in an opened plastic pack, were six remaining D cells. I popped them in, and returned to the living room.

Talk about ambience. Me, four cats (now that the storm had toned down, the two cowards had returned to the fold), several dozen candles, and the all-news-all-the-time station. And in all honesty, once I had confirmation that this was not The Rapture and that no hurricanes or atom bombs were in the forecast, I was free to relax and do nothing. What I wasn’t free to do was relax and do anything. Cook myself a meal? Forget it. Read by candle light? Amazing our founding fathers had any eyesight left. Fool around on the computer? Watch a DVD? Have a nice relaxing soak in the Jacuzzi? Tuesday night opened my eyes to how dependent we’ve become on the grid. And I’ve learned my lesson. From now on, I’ll make sure that we have plenty of battery-run entertainment devices in the house. You never know.

Math Man returned from his class early. He was forced to gather back the test he was administering before it was completed. I set the alarm on my cell phone and went to bed. He stayed up, devising a clever little system of mirrors, aluminum foil and candles to try to get enough candle power to read.


Unfortunately, the contraption didn’t work all that well, but it still stands as a testament to the ingenuity of mankind and his refusal to bow to circumstances or admit defeat.

Reclaiming the Prius

OK, this part is subtitled “Why the crap didn’t I just leave work early Tuesday and pick it up then?”

The phone alarm did not wake me up Wednesday morning. I was so concerned about whether the alarm would wake me up that I woke up every half-hour or so to check what time it was. Since the power was out, that required me to pick up the phone and hit the little button on the side that lit up the time. About a half-an-hour before the alarm was set to go off I gave sleep up as a lost cause and wandered downstairs to feed the cats before they started stalking each other. My handy-dandy boom box with its six D-cell batteries was happy to inform me that I had 360,000 other power company customers to keep me company in the dark. I started to make coffee, and then realized the futility of that endeavor, so I took the dregs of yesterday’s coffee from the pot and poured it into a mug to nuke. Only then did I realize how fruitless that endeavor would be as well. In the background the newscaster gleefully announced that my power company was saying that many homes would be without power for up to three days. I cast a baleful look at the quiet refrigerator. I’d just gone grocery shopping on Sunday. Most of what I’d bought had gone straight into the freezer.

Since the people across the street in both directions on my corner still had power, I figured my outage was a small, local thing. I went to work with minimal problems, and then I waited until rush hour traffic was mostly over. The all-news-all-the-time station was reporting terrible driving conditions, but my area of the world wasn’t even mentioned. Of course, we never lost power at work. Most of my coworkers live north and west of me, and they either never lost power, or only lost it for half an hour or so. I figured I could zip out of work for an hour, pick up the Prius, and get back before I missed too much time.

Apparently the power outage in my area was so bad that news wasn’t getting out of the zone about it. The houses to the front and side of me may have had power, but the miles and miles of houses behind me were dead, dead and dead. I drove ten miles through backed up traffic, no traffic lights, downed trees and fallen power lines. I saw police, firemen, and construction workers in orange vests trying to clear roads and direct traffic. What I didn’t see were any service trucks from the local power company. The all-news-all-the-time station explained that calls had gone out to neighboring states for assistance from their utility companies to help in the clean-up. All our service trucks were already dispatched to the areas most in need of emergency service. Apparently just-plain residential sections weren’t particularly high on the list.

The hour I thought it would take me to shoot out, pick up the Prius, and shoot back to work was spent sitting on Little Back Road With No Turn Offs. Many of the people I was sitting in traffic with did a U-turn and headed back the other direction. I sincerely doubted that anything was better on any other road that went where I needed to go, so I continued to sit. The car two behind me did a sixteen-point turn. A lady in a white sedan going the opposite direction from me stopped to let the moron jockey his car into her lane. The Jeep-like vehicle coming up behind her didn’t notice that traffic was stopped until too late. He swerved, missed the car next to me, went down the embankment into and through someone’s front yard, continued perpendicular across her driveway through the midst of a bunch of orange clad construction workers, drove on through the next two yards as well until the embankment shallowed out and he was able to pop back onto the roadway. The woman in the white sedan and I exchanged looks. She shook her head, rolled her eyes, and then drove off. It was the kind of day where a lot of head shaking and eye rolling occurred.

I did get my Prius. The process took nearly two hours. I wish I’d had my camera with me.

Dry Ice and White Collar Crime


I kept an ear to the radio to find out where my power company would be distributing dry ice. I learned from a similar disaster about ten years ago that one does not wait to get dry ice when the power is out. Get it early, stuff it in the freezer (the stuff in the refrigerator be damned – it costs far less to replace) and then DON’T OPEN THE DOOR AGAIN. About noon time the even more gleeful newscaster reported that the local power company had just announced that it was “not in the dry ice business” and that local governments would have to manage to acquire it on their own. Since the power company had always supplied dry ice before, there were no procedures in place to for local municipalites to get dry ice. Computers were down, in some cases phones were down, and town officials were S.O.L., which meant I was S.O.L. as well.

I was in better shape than some. I had internet and phone service so long as I was at work. And indeed, we use dry ice in some of our areas at work, so I tried there first. My employer wasn’t selling, though. Neither. it turned out, was anyone else in the area. So I did what any desperate person would do. I called in a favor from a friend in another department, and he stole fifty pounds of the stuff for me.

I’d only asked for ten pounds. I managed to cram twenty-five pounds frozen carbon dioxide into my freezer and refrigerator compartments when I got home. I then (dressed in winter coat and leather gloves in 99 degree weather) went door to door to my neighbors, giving away the left-overs. When I was done, I took the coldest (and therefore briefest) shower of my life.

As I was drying off in the bathroom, I heard voices downstairs. Panicked, I pulled on the closest clothes I could find, grabbed Math Man’s huge flashlight (he’d kept them hidden under the bed, unbeknownst to me) and snuck downstairs as quietly as I could. Keep in mind that the floorboards creak mercilessly in my place, so “quiet” here means little. I peered around the corner into the rec room. The television was on, and Scully and Muldar were arguing about something.

It's true what they say. Crime does not pay. Then again, I had dry ice to play with for days afterward.

The Day the Prius Died

Monday I had my annual appointment with Dr. Skin. Being on immunosuppressants has its negatives, one of which is a greatly increased chance of skin cancer. Along with accumulating a Dr. Liver and a Dr. Transplant and a Dr. Heart, my portfolio now also includes a Dr. Skin. Dr. Skin operates out of Big City Hospital where I had the transplant done. This is convenient because she has access to my rather massive files, thereby relieving me of having to run through my whole damned medical history each time I go. This is inconvenient in that I actually have to go downtown to Big City Hospital for the opportunity to strip in front of strangers while they investigate various parts of my anatomy for suspicious lesions. The ignominy ….

The doctor's appointment went well. I got there at 8:30 for a 9:10 appointment. They not only took me immediately, but they kicked somebody else out of the examination room and bumped me ahead of them. I should have known then and there that I had used up all my good fortune for the remainder of the year (possibly for the remainder of the decade).

I returned to my car about 9:15, well-pleased with the way events were going. I figured I could be at work shortly after ten, well ahead of the "no later than noon" that I had originally forecast. We’d had near-record-breaking heat the past weekend, and Monday was shaping up to be more of the same. The parking garage was already hot. Driving to Philly I had watched my temperature gauge go from 79 to 94 degrees, and it was without doubt hotter than that in the garage at that point.

I turned on my car. Immediately I got a message on the screen that "Outside temperature is above 100 degrees." Well, duh. I'd never seen the error message before, but it didn't worry me at all. After all, I've driven this car all around the Mojave in August, and it never even whimpered. I started down the parking garage ramp. The dashboard lit up like a Christmas tree. Heck, there were message codes on the screen that weren't even in the user's manual. I figured that maybe it was a good idea to find a place to pull over and let the car cool down a bit.

It may have been a good idea, but finding a quick place to pull over in center city is like finding diamonds in a Philthydelphia gutter. They might be there, but nobody's ever heard of them. The line of traffic I was committed to carried me over the South Street Bridge over the Expressway. By this time my little Prius is starting to hesitate. It would run fine for one minute, and then lose power the next. Losing power in my car on the South Street Bridge would have ensured that I'd be an item on the all-news all-the-time radio station’s traffic report for several hours. I stuck the car in neutral and let it glide down the last half of the bridge. Ahead South Street loomed, its sides an endless, unbroken string of parked cars. I saw my chance in the form of a right hand turn at the very end of the South Street Bridge and took it. Too late I realized that it was a one-way street. One-way the wrong way, I should add. As I went around the turn I saw another smaller street coming in alongside the bridge. I figured it was a service road, and took it. At least I wouldn't be blocking traffic there.

That's how I discovered Expressway Avenue. It's a little street lined with gated parking lots and empty buildings. And yes, even here in the middle of bloody nowhere, there were cars parked everywhere. I continued to drive, and in two blocks I used up any remaining luck I'll ever have in my life. I not only found a parking space, but it was a legal parking space and I had enough momentum to make a U-turn and pull into it with a minimum of effort. I turned the key to “off”, and the temperature inside the car immediately shot up to just below the point of molten steel.

I still wasn't convinced that this wasn't a situation where I couldn't just let the car cool down a bit and then be able to drive it home. The neighborhood didn't look great, so I sat with the windows up and doors locked. For ten minutes I stayed that way, until I couldn't stand the heat anymore. I turned the car back on. All the Christmas ornaments on the screen came back. I figured it was time to cry "uncle" and call Triple-A. (I just joined two weeks ago because of a traumatic incident with the 12V battery that is no longer worth relating because this current failure I’m writing about is far juicier.) I put the car into reverse, trying to tuck it in a little closer to the curb, and backed up a bit. Then I threw it into forward. The car wouldn't move. I threw it back into reverse and moved a couple of inches. I tried forward again. Nothing. Zilch. Nadda. I did the only thing I could do. I turned the car off again and said something that can’t be repeated within the earshot of anyone under the age of 21.

Then the unbelievable happened. A cop showed up when he was actually needed. As I sat in the car debating what to do next a police car drove past me and pulled into a garage about two blocks behind where I was parked. I grabbed everything of value I had in the car and dumped in a duffle that I just happened to have with me. Throwing the duffle over my shoulder, I trudged up the sidewalk in that direction, thinking the cop might be able to tell me where I could hole up safely in that neighborhood while I waited for AAA to arrive. What I found when I got to where the cop turned in was an office of the School Police for the District of Philadelphia. I never even heard of School Police before. That didn't stop me from walking in.

From the time I got out of the parking garage to the time I entered the police station about twenty minutes had elapsed. If I had realized that over seven hours remained to this ordeal I might have simplified things and just asked one of the cops to come out and shoot my Prius. Instead I walked into their cluttered, closet sized office and explained my dilemma. They were not only kind enough to let me use their phone to call Triple-A, but then they let me hang out in their postage-stamp sized waiting area.

I called AAA using the contact number on my card. They explained that I’d have to negotiate through the Philadelphia office and patched me through. The person who picked up the phone spoke broken English. After a five minute attempt to explain my need for a tow truck, I gave up and called again. In all, I called five times. The fifth time yielded a representative who spoke English. I gave her my street address, and she said she knew right where I was and would arrange for a tow truck.

I made myself at home as perhaps a dozen cops came in and out through the office. Philthydelphia’s schools were in summer school session, and a call came in that the school district would be closing at 11:00 because the schools were not outfitted with air-conditioning. The woman behind the desk informed me with a shake of her head that summer school only lasted nineteen days, which was hardly enough time to teach someone who had failed a course anything of importance. Losing this time wasn’t going to help any.

I spent the time bonding with the Officer Joann. She’d had gall bladder cancer some years back, which was successfully operated on. When I got my liver transplant I lost my gall bladder. Gall bladders don’t get to come along for the ride during transplants. Both of us being without gall bladders gave us more than adequate bonding material. This was a good thing, because we had more than adequate time to bond.

Triple-A said they'd show up no later than 11:00. They were about an hour and fifteen minutes later than that. Keep in mind that I have neither eaten nor gone to the bathroom in this time. Officer Joann did offer me some of her Lean Cuisine, but those things barely have enough for one person. Splitting it into two halves would have only left two people starving. I thanked her for her offer, and then told her I was going outside to make sure that I’d removed everything I needed from the car. That way she could eat in peace, guilt free, and I could salvage my reputation by finding something else to do other than sit there with saliva dribbling down my chin.

Thus it was that I was by my car when my cell phone rang. Apparently the English speaking AAA representative who knew exactly where I was didn’t have a clue where I was. She had directed my flatbed to an entirely different section of the city. The driver of aforementioned flatbed was calling to try and pinpoint where I could have possibly hidden in the residential district he was circling like a vulture looking for something dead. I explained that there were no residences anywhere within view of where I was, but that the old abandoned Dead President Vocation Training Center was directly across the street from where my car gasped its last, and that there was an intersection with Old Dead Queen Avenue about two blocks away. Fortunately the flatbed driver knew exactly where I was and promised to arrive within half an hour.

Meanwhile, I discovered a cache of about twenty Bookcrossing books in the trunk of the Prius. I’d been waiting to release at a local coffee house. It seemed fitting that I release them at the Police Station instead, as a sort-of thank-you for their hospitality. Unfortunately most of the books were of the bodice-ripping romance variety, abandoned in the basement of the condo I purchased from my sister. (I have literally hundreds of books down there that I’m in the process of dumping on an unsuspecting public, but that is yet another story for another time.) I gathered up said books and made my final trek back to the Police Station, thanking them for everything and apologizing that I didn’t have the best selection of books with me. Officer Joann seemed pleased enough with the selection, and I promised to return with some better quality books in the near future.

Triple A showed up with a flatbed. The driver was a certified mechanic, and whipped out his license to prove it. He was convinced that the Prius was probably fine by this point, since it had been resting for several hours. He spent half an hour working on it. The Prius remained not fine.
The driver then talked me into letting him tow it to his repair shop so that he can reset the computer. He was still sure there was nothing wrong with the car. This option being far cheaper than towing it seventeen miles to my dealer, I agreed, and we set out for parts of North Philthy that I had never previously known existed.

I sat at his shop for another two-and-a-half hours while the mechanics dickered with my car. The net result of above-mentioned dickering was that every error message the car is capable of producing kicked out from the computer, and the computer wouldn't reset itself. They couldn't fix it on the spot, but offered to work on it for me. I declined. My gut feeling was that something was wrong with the computer, which would still be covered under warranty. Realizing that I should have just had it towed to my dealer to begin with, I belatedly tell them that I want the car towed there for the work to be done. The little cash-saving maneuver of letting the local shop reset my computer has cost me $120 in towing and service charges, and three hours of time.

I then had to negotiate with AAA for a second tow. Everything seemed to be in order. My car was hoisted back onto the flatbed, and I was directed to climb into the cab of the truck. As we were preparing to set off, the nice kid from the service desk who’d been keeping me company ran out to catch me. Triple A was on the phone. Apparently they had no record of my calling to get the second tow. I had to get back out of the truck and renegotiate. I argue. Then the kid got back on the phone and argued. He'd witnessed me making the phone call. After we got off the phone, things were still unresolved. The kid behind the desk told me to go ahead, that he'd personally OK the tow. At this point I figured I'll deal with any fall-out later. I got back into the truck. I still have no idea how/if that got resolved.

Unlike my first driver (who was a nice South Philly native with eight kids, four of whom were in college), the new guy was a 450 pound bigot with a massive head cold. I anticipate showing symptoms by some time this weekend. The less said about that leg of my adventure, the better.
I arrived at my dealer’s at about 5:00. They regretted but couldn’t look at my car until Thursday at the earliest, with no promises. I got a rental and returned home about six o’clock Monday night.

I left out the parts about the cops running out of coffee and donuts at the station, the maniacal Pepsi machine in the auto repair place that bounced my diet Pepsi all over the place causing it to explode upon opening, the junk yard dog at the repair station that I gave a physical exam to while I waited because the owner thought it was sick, and the drive into Norristown with the aforementioned bigoted tow truck driver who regaled me with unrepeatable stories while snorking up the snot in his nose. If you stuck with the story this long, I imagine you’re thanking me. If you gave up before now then this tardy bit of succinctness makes no difference.

Coming to work looked pretty good Tuesday. Returning home Tuesday night was another matter. That’s when the Storm hit, killing power to about 360,000 homes in the area, including mine. But tales of rental cars with weird shifts, the white collar crime of stealing dry ice, and driving through devastation to reclaim my Prius are whole ‘nother stories for whole ‘nuther times.