Locked, Didn’t think it would happen again
I thought I would drop an entry in here despite there being one day remaining on my three day weekend. On Saturday morning I was out at the coop early. Early enough that I had to take the hens off their perch. I had a list prepared the night before and I wanted to start working on it. After doing chicken chores and the weeding Cindy and I headed out for errands. The first stop on our journey was Dunkin Donuts.
We placed a to go order as we always do. You place your order on the app a few miles away and by the time you get there it should be ready to go, you just walk in and grab it. So I parked the truck and Cindy walked in to get it like she always does but there was an issue, the door was locked. There was a long line of cars at the drive thru and staff inside working yet the front door was locked. There was no sign on the front doors explaining it either. The staff appeared to ignore Cindy at the door so we instead had to enter the drive thru line to get our stuff.
When we got to the window we asked why the door was locked. “Short staffed” was the only explanation. Huh? In the thousands of trips I have made to DD in my life, never has a location decided the way to handle someone calling in sick was to lock the front door. It was utterly ridiculous. When we went on Sunday it was the same deal, door locked. That time Cindy stayed at the door with other confused/angry patrons until our order was brought out to us. Initially she was given a dismissive hand signal to indicate we should get in the drive thru line which was literally at least 15 cars deep. I complained on the DD Twitter account about the lack of common sense. Today, the lobby was open.
After the DD debacle Saturday we went to my office, I needed to do some network work that took about an hour. It gives Cindy a chance to clean my office and Elsa for some reason LOVES running around in there, it’s very cute. After finishing up we made a Tractor Supply stop and then ate lunch outdoors at Burger Fi, one of the very few times we have patronized restaurants in the last 10 months.
During the afternoon I worked on more list items including washing the Tesla and the Tacoma while Cindy was at Katie’s place. She returned with the Prius so I could do a job I hoped I never had to do again, replacing the headlights in the car. I had last done the task around three years ago when I put LED lights in because I was tired of having halogens burn out every few months. The low beams on one of the lights had gone bad so I figured I needed to replace them for safety. The job sucks plain and simple as it requires a lot of working blind as your hand is shoved inside the engine bay. Of course I shot a video which depicts how aggravating it was.
Doing the work confirmed what I had already warned Cindy and Katie about for 6 months or more, the Prius is on it’s last legs. After 238,000 miles the car has a multitude of problems, like worn tires, struts, flaky hybrid battery, and the ABS actuator is on it’s way to failure. None of those potential repairs make a lot of sense based on the age, mileage and worth of the car. The situation needs to be addressed sooner rather than later. Hopefully it happens proactively, I have been sounding the warning bells for a long time. By the time I came in from the work I was miserable. My hands were ripped up from jamming them into tight spaces and my back was killing me from leaning over the engine bay for way too long.
On Sunday I started off the day with yet another successful palm rat live trapping, my second in as many weeks. I try to keep them calm but most of the time by the time I release them into the remote area their noses are red and raw from trying to escape. The weather was overcast and cool all day long. I felt like I had a deep chill no matter what I did. The day was busy enough. Deb came over for a visit where we set up Cindy’s tabletop fire pit which the girls used to keep warm on the patio.
It just felt too chilly to ride but I did take some time and make a video regarding EUCs from a certain company catching on fire, not a good trend to have.
I did some more Prius work before Cindy returned it to Katie. I replaced all three wiper blades on the car. The front two were like rocks and the back blade was half torn off. I finished up by vacuuming the car out and giving it a speed wash. To me maintaining cars for your significant other is a reflex, I guess I am unique in that way compared to some.
Towards the end of the day I was beat and wanted to just unwind with a long session in WoW. I played until close to 11PM and enjoyed it. Today we already did our DD run. We had to do some extra chicken work as I gave Popcorn a “bath”, dunking her rear end in soapy water while Cindy tried to clean her up. It looks like she had an egg break on the way out and things were pretty messy back there.
I may ride more today, play some more WoW or 360 but I definitely would like to keep the day work free as best as I am able.