Tire Ordeal and Christmas Stuff

The whole tire changing process was not the ordeal I thought it was going to be. For one, I asked one of the guys here at work to come over (sometimes it really pays to live ultra-close to work) and change it. He was more than willing and even wrangled another guy to help as well. They got it changed toot sweet (sorry, no clue how to spell it correctly in French). I didn't even have to change clothes!!! Thanks, Rick and Mike!!!!

I got the tire to Belle Tire and why they looked at it, McCoy and I went for lunch. If you live around here, do NOT waste your time at Kowloon Chinese Restaurant. This was the second time the food I got from there was just tasteless. Maybe they do okay with meat dishes, but the vegetarian are not worth the effort. After lunch we walked over to Westborn as it took less than 30 minutes for lunch and we had a full hour to wait for the tire. When we got back to Belle Tire I found out that the tire was unsalvageable, but that I had very smartly bought the warranty when I got the four tires last year, so my brand new tire only cost me $6.36! Woohoo!!! I did the Happy Dance, let me tell you! No crying over that flat tire at all!

And it was all taken care of in time for me to get McCoy to the airport on time. I then dropped the car off at the garage (needs rear brakes, and front brakes as I found out today due to some hard spots on the pads or some such thing – even though the pads were only 80% used, they made this grinding noise) and walked home in the drizzling rain. It was colder out there than I had thought it was. Now I'm trying to decide if I leave my car at the garage until the snow stops (supposed to start snowing tomorrow and get anywhere from 4-10" – depending on freezing rain), so that I don't have to shovel the street again in order to move my car. I'll probably pick it up today when they call and just deal with the street shoveling when necessary.

The Christmas break was not bad, although getting a cold and bronchitis was really not my idea of fun. Not to say that it wasn't expected, as I seem to get sick every Christmas break. I prefer to get sick when I can call in sick to work, but it's just not to be…at least not now. I'm sure I'll get sick again. Of course, last year I got bronchitis on Good Friday, so once again I was sick when I had a holiday break. This is pissing me off. ;-)

Another thing that pisses me off is that when you go to the diaryland page to log in the cursor doesn't automatically go to the log-in area. WTF!!! What a PITA that is. Instead of just typing in my log-in name and password, I have to take my fingers off the keyboard and find the freaking mouse and click in the box. Why is that? Is it just to annoy me? I think so. Just like the bureaucracy here at work. I'm ready to bang my head against the wall from all the runaround I've had today to do a couple of simple things. And if I send you a request and you're no longer the correct person, instead of just replying to me and saying, "I have moved to a different job. You now need to contact John Doe" perhaps it would make sense to copy John Doe on the friggin' e-mail!!!! What a concept! Geez, people a little forethought is a beautiful thing. Of course, the fact that John Doe wasn't the right person after all is completely beside the point I'm making right now (that's an entirely different rant).

The Christmas Gift Exchange with the group of friends went fabulously well, I thought. Thanks to Julie for organizing it and thanks to her and Glen for hosting the party. It was fun and I wish I could have stayed longer. I LOVED my Audrey Hepburn DVD boxset and the latest Christopher Hilton Senna book. In fact, I was barely able to hold back tears when I saw the book, but then again, just the thought of him makes me cry for with his death came the end of Formula 1 as a competitive, interesting racing series. I mourn his loss still, over ten years later. I like to think that he'd have given Michael Schumacher a driving lesson or two and I'd be a lot happier over the state of F1, but as it is, I can barely be bothered to watch. So sad.