Dear J-
I got new tires just before Thanksgiving and I now feel a need to extend an apology to all the people who’ve ridden with me or driven near me in the past few years: I hadn’t realized how out-of-balance my tires had gotten before replacing them. I just naturally assumed that the car was getting out of alignment and the massive hopping I got around seventy was part of the punishment I get for driving such an old car. In fact, I was so enamored of the smooth acceleration that I did all kinds of stupid passing tricks this morning driving in to work* at reckless speeds, no longer bothered by strange vibrations.
After a while, though, I realized what I was doing: SPEEDING to get to WORK and away from the family I’ve grown fond of these past ten days. So I backed down — the speed’s there if I need it, and the tires squeal remarkably less than the old ones in corners (to be honest, I can’t remember the last time I changed them and that’s not a good sign; new ones are Bridgestone Potenza RE960-AS and from what I can tell from this first hundred miles, are pretty great), but let’s face it, who actually wants to get to work faster?
It reminds me of figgy, who’s spent the past couple of days at full bore until mid-afternoon, when she crashes tremendously and naps for several hours; I feel the same way about the start of a day lately: there’s so much going on, and so much to be caught up on that inevitably, my eyes start to glaze over and I shut down some hours later. If we all hurled ourselves at our tasks as enthusiastically, though, I’m sure we’d get them all done faster and more stylishly, besides.
Mike
* This is a story of itself, but basically it boils down to this: I reached an agreement with my boss where I go in one day a week and work the rest of the time from home for these three weeks. The computer I signed out requires a special Virtual Private Network (VPN) program in order to log in to email and work programs; when I got it home I couldn’t find the VPN program, even though the computer techs swore that they’d installed it. So I made the decision to go in today, which was my first day back (ostensibly) to work, headed straight over to where I picked the machine up, and the guy there was an object lesson in poor customer service (all those stories you hear about contemptuous tech support came true): first he sighed and told me to turn on the computer to show me where the program was, asking if I’d called the help desk first — “You can’t just come over like this” even though the area was deserted. Then, when he couldn’t find the program either he did some rapid clicking, and then, grudgingly, “We forgot to install it. If you’d called the help desk you still would have had to come in to get us to install VPN because you don’t have admin rights. But you still should have called them and not surprised us like this!” Um, for what, asking you to do your job? When you’re not busy?
Dear J- 