Andrew and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day*
Yesterday will be a day I likely won't forget anytime soon. I'm documenting it now so when I think things look bleak in the future, I'll remember it's not that damn Friday in 2025. I might refine it into a tale told at parties about 'bad days' to set some perspective...
Resident trump has been in power for just over a week and his bull in a china shop effects are being felt immediately as a plane crashes into a Helicopter over DC due to short staffing of Air Traffic Controllers. It's the only news story (⇦), and every clip is of the orange one blaming Obama and Biden instead of the thousands of government employees he's recently fired with executive orders. What an incompetent asshole...
It's also my fifth day of a miserable but determined bout of the Flu. I'd taken off the previous two days to rest and heal, and this Friday was the first day I felt OK enough to leave the house. While the flu was on it's way out, I'm still blowing my nose very regularly all day long - my sinuses were raw from use. I didn't have the coughing of Covid, and this didn't feel like the last time I had it, so I was comfortable with my (armchair) diagnosis. This morning's primary task was catching up on some basic food shopping. I'd been hibernating, bingeing on TV, and needed to replenish.
I'm still partaking in my No Buy 2025 pledge I'd given myself last year. Since the Oligarchy runs things, they're no longer getting my spare dollars (even though I'm considered poor by U.S. standards). Still, a man's gotta eat, and I'd used my downtime to finally organize my shopping list in the order they appear when you walk through the grocery store, so no more cutting back to get something I missed. This shopping trip should be quick and painless, and I looked forward to testing my new system.
I hopped into the car and headed over to the nearest grocery store using the back-roads and stop signs vs. the usual main street and 5 different (poorly timed) stop lights way. As expected, with rain scheduled for later in the day, the supermarket is a little more packed than one would expect for this morning, but indeed, my plan worked and I found all my list items quickly and with one swoop. Good for me!
Pushing my shopping cart back to my car, my thought train was interrupted by the sight that my front right tire (passenger side) was almost flat! I hadn't noticed it before I drove here, but I happen to have an inflator in my glove box. I loaded my groceries in the trunk, then opened the passenger side-door to get the Chinese-manufactured bible-sized tire inflator from the glove box, attached it to the front tire, and plugged it into the cigarette lighter. I hit the yellow button to start it, and got nothing.
Right - no power without Keys. Lean in from the passenger side, put the keys in the ignition, (ding ding) we get power! Proceed to stand silently by for the next 10 minutes while this extremely loud pump slowly pushes 35 lbs. or air into the tire. It's tiny, but effective. Certainly much easier than a hand-pump.
When it's done, I unplugged it, unscrewed it from the tire, and tossed it in the passengers footwell (I'll pack it up later). I habitually lock the car door and shut it for my trip home. As I walk around the car feeling for my keys, it struck me.
The keys are still in the ignition, and I'm outside the car, and all the doors are locked. Shit!
Once the terror of locking myself out of the car subsided, I reasoned; No biggie. I got spare keys at home. This sucks, but it's survivable. I worry for the frozen goods now trapped in my trunk as I plodded home. Total (chilly) round trip by walking: 45 minutes. I'd gone out ready for a car ride, not a walk. Thankfully, the below zero temps we'd been experiencing for the last week had abated for a moment. The oncoming rain was pushing warmer air into our area, and I appreciated the temporary winter relief.
Trudging back to he car, I popped the car door open, pocketed the replacement keys, and hopped in the car, ready to head home. Car's still on from before. But, when I tried to start the car, it gave you that won't turn over sound. The battery was not completely dead, but didn't have enough charge to start the car.
Shit! First mistake was not 'running' the car while I was draining the battery by inflating the tire. Silly me. The only thing going for me now is that if I left a running car in the parking lot with the keys in the ignition, I'd return to find an empty parking spot and some broken glass. So there's that! Thankfully, I made one mistakes and saved me from a possible worse mistake? I think...
First things first, I check the car for jumper cables. None. Not only am I helpless, I'm coming empty handed. I looked around stupidly for a second, tried to start the car a few times with the same result. As I cursed myself, I also wondered why I hadn't considered this emergency before and didn't have jumper cables.
I couldn't think of one nearby friend with a car who could help me out. It's the first time I felt really powerless and helpless in a while. My brother's Tesla doesn't have a traditional battery. All my other friends live miles away and wouldn't drive this far for a job best left to AAA Tow Truck. I don't have a AAA membership (I don't drive that much to warrant it) and can't afford the $100 fee for a jump (I said I was poor).
Enough beating myself up about it, I popped the trunk and determined what I (had to) carry home some groceries this time. Frozen and fridge stuff was in the (reusable, recyclable) cardboard bankers box I use to shop, so I picked it up and walked home. I left the cat stuff, chips and cookies in the car for later. They're all shelf stable, and trunk stable, too! I locked up the car purposefully this time, and said goodbye to my car for the first time in years.
It took a bit longer to get home as I was saddled with a box of heavy groceries this time. Sweating, I stumbled back into the house and put what I could away. The weight of the box became evident when I found all the canned goods at the bottom of the box.
I had to make a plan on how I was gonna rescue my car by myself with what I had. I actually have spare 12 volt batteries around the house I can use to jump myself - solar systems use the same batteries as cars, and I have a smallish lead acid 12 volt battery I can carry back. I just have to figure out how to get it to my car. Batteries are fucking heavy, and I'd still need jumper cables.
Back To Work
As I blogged about before in my retirement notice last year, I only work Fridays on Audio Conversion work. I had a queue of 5 vinyl albums to convert to CD today, and I can't let the (shit) beginning of my day define the end of my day. I went to my office and proceeded to work for a few hours. The rain I'd been dreading all day long started around 2pm with warnings that it was due to rain for the next 12 hours. This discouraged any attempt to walk back and jump my car today; there's no reason (or desire) to do it in the cold rain! I hoped that they didn't sweep the parking lot overnight, and my car would be OK to stay for over 24 hours.
A little before 4pm, the lights in my office flickered at the same time I heard a loud popping noise. Odd. I never see power fluctuations like that, I thought. I peeked out my office door to see nothing out of the ordinary, but noticed that the internet service also went out right them too. Might be a downed line? Car hitting a pole out front?
I shrugged it off and I wrapped up the work I could finish (sans internet), and shut down my office by hand (No Google to turn off outlets by voice command!). Officially, I'm not 'done' the work I had to do until I uploaded some files to a public FTP site and notified customers that they are available. With no internet for the moment, I took my packages to be returned back to the house, and considered scheduling a post office visit in the near future (wait, no car...!)
Only when I came back to the front of my house did I identify the noise/disturbance: My entire urban city block was completely shut down to traffic, and there's a massive orange SEPTA truck with a elevator flatbed back diligently working on fixing the suspended wire in the middle of the street. With a DOA trolley sitting at the far end of the block, it looks like a snapped above-ground power line for the Trolley! The workmen look like real pros as they probably do this exact service all day all around the city. There's jacks and bits of replacement wire and a ton of huge hand tools that make this work look dangerous.
Of course, this also means that the internet isn't coming back online until they're done. An hour and half later, the SEPTA truck moves closer to the front of my house, to continue to repair the thick gauge wire supports. Rush hour traffic is gonna be pissed. A Transit police van sits diagonal up the block to stop idiots who try and sneak past the orange cones setup in the middle of the street. There's enough flashing yellow, red and blue lights to look like a 1970's disco on this block, and people still think they can just squeeze through!
In under two hours, they got it fixed, and traffic began moving again. Mad congratulations to the professionals at Septa's Trolley service team! Now all I'm out is internet... (and a car, too)
Writing it out now (ahh, therapy!), my day doesn't seem so terrible. My cars still fucked up, I still gotta walk back and forth (and probably buy a new set of jumper cables at the next-door Lowes first), and get the rest of my groceries home. I'll do it tomorrow, mostly to stop the flow of bad luck from today.
I'm not 100% healthy (getting there but not flu-free), I'm still hungry (all my good snacks are still in the car!), and I'm angry at myself for making so many thoughtless mistakes today. I've got no internet to distract myself with, and no car to escape this, either! I fumed...
Frustrated, I furiously write a first draft of this blog post (offline), then started to clean my house to keep occupied while I rue the events up until now.
As I passed hour four with no internet, after two hours of regular traffic on my main street had begun in earnest, and I'm beginning to worry. My own internet network is still barfing, and I can't even access local computers due to (what I think is) a dead router with no internet access loosing all internal routes. I head to the house network panel to find the entire rack with no power. Anywhere! All computers, NAS's, Routers & Switches are off. No wonder everything is DOA!
A bit of circuit tracing and routing, and I found the culprit: a decades old APC UPS had given the rest of it's useful life when the Trolley line snapped, and probably shorted/grounded/touched something (remember the light flickering and bang from hours before?) and this surge protector gave it's life and... protected! I put the fried junk in the electronics recycle bin with the typical corporate thanks of decades of service - thoughtless disposal! I have other UPS plans for the rack (I mentioned Solar, right?).
Once removed from the power chain, all my network devices roared to life and saturated the house with blistering wifi. Kicking myself for not checking the network panel hours ago, I texted my tenant the news of the internet fix and got back to resuming a low-key existence until this dreaded day was over. My nose and throat were raw and dry as the last bits of flu were being fought from my system. I still felt sick, but hoped tomorrow would be a little better.
I binged more Hollywood garbage and tried to settle my frayed nerves. My anxiety loomed, and well past my bedtime, I managed to finally sleep. Goodnight moon. Goodnight bad day.
Waking the next day to news of yet another plane crash (this time locally - right here in Philly!), only confirmed my hate of air travel in general, and doubled down on my sheer loathing for the Idiot-in-Chief. Seems like my 'bad day' was also someone else's last day. This morbid news doesn't comfort me, but silently consoles my bitching as what it really is: Life. It has it's ups and downs. The downs make better stories, but you know they're always an upside coming.
My fanciful tributary blog title was a classic book I recall from my own youth, and the message is the same as I proposed here. There's always tomorrow if today is not going your way and that attitude is everything when it comes to tackling frustrating obstacles. As I publish this, I am feeling better (still not completely over the flu), but each day is slightly better than the one before it. I need to reinforce and encourage this thought process!
My return trip with a (back-breakingly heavy) battery and a pricey purchase of the only in-stock jumper cables they had at the next-door Lowes left me with this disappointing video embed:
It's not the battery! Even a helpful jump from a nearby Yellow Cab (⇦) with my new cables gave me the same result. I texted the previous owner of the car for some troubleshooting advice, and consoled myself that at least one problem has been ruled out, but a million more have been possibly added. Now I'm out of a car for a week or more, and it's gonna cost me a couple hundred to fix. I'll have to swing by my car mechanic on Monday and see if he can diagnose, tow and repair my junker, and how much money this is gonna actually cost me ($30 so far!). I reluctantly grabbed another arm-load of groceries from the trunk, locked up my car, silently saying goodbye (again), and trudged home, determined to return another day...