Tag Mountain Dew

Super blue moon mercury retrograde car repairs

Angel Ackerman 1 Comment

I bought my 2015 VW Jetta turbo in November of 2019. She had about 25,000 miles on her and I bought her for about $15,000 from my local Kia dealership.

She has been good to me– and even with my occasional road trips I only drive about 8,000 miles a year. And then my daughter’s car died, so for the last year she’s been more or less using my car full-time.

She’s put almost 20,000 miles on it. I used to take her in for service, an oil change and inspection every August and not think about her again until the next year. Not so now. Two oil changes this year. The kid blew one of my new tires hitting a curb.

Yesterday, I arrived at the garage at 8:15 a.m. for my 8:30 appointment. I had a large Panera iced coffee and a clif bar (brownie flavored) and brought one poetry book and my laptop intending to pound out a rough draft of my profiles of Milou Mackenzie and Miriam Sabih.

Which I did.

At 10:30 a.m., I received the video regarding the results from my inspection (all good) and the service coordinator came over to discuss which preventative maintenance would be best before Atlanta.

I knew going in my car needed a daytime running lamp and two new tires. We also opted for the complete tune-up since according to all my service records it had never had one and we now have more than 75,000 miles and I’m heading to Atlanta in two weeks.

When we get our next oil change, we’ll do the coolant and transmission fluid flushes.

At noon, the guy who supervises the actual technicians stopped by. They had replaced three of my four spark plugs. The last one was stuck. He said I could take the car home and return after my trip to finish the job. Great, I thought, I’m getting really hungry and would like to go home and have a real meal.

At 12:30, the service coordinator returned. He gave me a bottle of cold water. Which was great because all I had to drink so far was coffee. He wanted to get the car fixed before Atlanta, and preferably he didn’t want me driving it. So, after some looking at scheduling, they opted to keep the car with the promise to get it to me today or get me a loaner for Wednesday.

And they said they could have the shuttle take me home. The shuttle returned at 1 p.m. and disappeared before offering me a ride. Eva got down with her lunch clients and offered to come get me a little after 1:30 p.m. She arrives– and I kid you not– an old man with a walker lumbers up the ramp and takes up the door. After almost six hours in the room, I could not get out the door.

When we got home, the frazzled energies continued: my eggs were frozen, I burnt my toast, and the cat we are fostering tried to steal the bacon out of my sandwich (he did, but I wrestled it away from him) and then I sat down to watch TV and my Netflix account wouldn’t load, but Eva’s did. I watched hers.

And everyone kept talking about a blue supermoon and I was so confused because a blue moon is the second full moon in the month and it’s the middle of the month. Then Eva explained, “no, Mom, it’s literally blue.”

“Then they should say the blue-COLORED moon,” the editor in me replied.

The dealership called a little after three. There were two Ackermans in service that day. The person who handed me my paperwork gave me the wrong set. I almost signed for the wrong car!

I got my car back. Adjusted the seat because I have little legs and cringed at the fact that somebody put the country station on in my car. I drove over to Wawa for happy hour to treat myself to a cafe con leche because it’s been a long day. (Though I did do a draft of my Sex Down South slide show!) The young man doing the barista work burned my milk. Bought Eva some Mountain Dew because CVS has no Adderall.

And came home.

Friends, food and fun

Angel Ackerman 2 Comments

The last two days— when not paying bills, shoveling snow, fighting pain and surviving work at the Bizzy Hizzy— has been a blend of chores and silliness.

I took Teenager #1 for a drive yesterday to navigate city streets made narrow by snow and drive in whatever slop we could find so she could experience driving on snow and ice in a controlled manner.

She asked for something from McDonalds so I got her an iced coffee, and I wanted to go to Dunkin across the street for my iced coffee.

I ordered the coffee on the McDonalds app and no lie— it took 45 minutes to make it through the drive through. At Dunkin, I got a cold brew with cream, the coconut flavor shot and one pump of the pink velvet syrup.

Yes, they have the pink velvet syrup in things other than the pricey pink velvet macchiato.

At work in the Stitch Fix warehouse, I tried to get a picture of the inflatable Valentine’s dinosaur…

And I got assigned to QC. I assembled 89 fixes and was very grateful when my Tylenol and ibuprofen managed to numb the pain in my spine. I listed to two IT innovation podcasts featuring data science, algorithms and Stitch Fix.

After taking Minerva of the Roman Pride to FURR’s cat adoption event at Petsmart, teenager #1 and I went to Wegmans across the street. Now, we are expecting snow again tomorrow AND it’s the Super Bowl so of course, it was crazy.

But it sure made this generic bologna sandwich taste amazing.

A social worker friend and I discussed budget tactics, loan amortization and the influence of white privilege in the disability sphere.

Then our neighbor and our favorite little dog stopped by. We finalized dinner plans to go to our favorite local diner— and wow was it lively tonight.

Not only did we have the brand new waiter (whom they hired instead of teenager #1), but there was one guy who looked like his mask came out of a BDSM scene and a sweet little old lady wearing fingerless gloves who sent back her omelette so many times they ran out of egg whites.

The poor new waiter dropped food on the floor and broke at least one plate, didn’t have any grasp of the menu, was slow as molasses, and could not keep track of the condiments. But don’t worry, we were patient.

Apparently my request for a tuna melt on rye confused him, because he had to return to the table to confirm that I didn’t want a tuna melt and an order of rye toast.

And during one of our trips today, we fished the Yuengling out of the yard that teenager #1 tried to throw to the neighbor as he was snow-blowing.

After all that, and much trademark cackling, we finally did the soda taste test video we’ve had planned: Weird Sodas (Ramuné in melon and strawberry, Major Melon Mountain Dew and A-Treat Pumpkin.

That’s some real pandemic excitement.