Bad Advertising

I don't own a Chevy, but Eddie does, yet after our experience with the good folks over at Bical charging me a gazillion dollars for maintainance without first running it by me, we're not looking to do further business with them.  Instead of sending information to Eddie, they sent me this:

Then using some cross between Comic Sans and Mufferaw typeface, the sales manager typed on the back saying he was using his Son's drawing to illustrate how I could expect to win with them.  They are willing to give me $6740 for my 2002 Saturn.  They treat their customers like champions.  Then there's an another black and white line drawing at the bottom of a mom, dad, sister, brother, ungendered baby, two dogs, and two cats.

You know, my worst nightmare.

So a few things:

1. Why is son capitalized? Did he name his son Son?

2. How old is his son?  Either he's a five-year-old artistic genius or a thirteen-year-old who probably doesn't want his drawing from the refrigerator sent out to the public.

3. I don't like children, so why is a child's drawing supposed to make me buy a car?

4. I don't watch baseball, so why is a drawing of baseball going to entice me to buy a car?

5. What the hell does baseball have to do with cars?

6. Font that looks like handwriting shouldn't be in professional correspondence; I don't need another company telling me that we're family (listen up, Sprint!).

7. I own a Toyota, having traded in the Saturn when it almost exploded. Would you have paid me 6 grand for a car on the verge of exploding?  I don't think so.

A kind suggestion to Bical--nothing you do is right, so stop it.  Thank you.

Safelite, Repair? Safelite, Replace!

After a day-long trip upstate and back, I found that Yolanda, the cute little Yaris that I was slowly coming to like, cannot go uphill. Small hills of Long Island and downstate New York are fine. The real hills that emerge as soon as you hit central state provide a challenge. As we headed uphill at the speed limit, the car seemed to stop and then slowly inch towards the top. Foot to the floor, cars whizzing by, I patted the steering wheel, Come on, Yolanda, you can do it! She's the little engine who simply could not. While I could not bring myself to give her back because of something as silly as the cup holders being in front of the vents (who DOES that? how can the cup holders be directly in front of the vents?), I told Eddie, I think we found a reason to give her back and not buy her out. He concurred, offering, Yeah, how are we supposed to travel when the car won't go uphill? Because, you know, we have a lot of mountain driving in our future.

It's decided. Now that I have some time and it's not a rush to get rid of an almost non-functioning car, I can research cars and buy something without leasing it first to see how it goes.

As soon as that decision became firm, I drove to work through a road work zone with debris coming at me from every angle. When I got back in my car at the end of the day, I saw a glimmering from my windshield as I sat behind the wheel. I leaned in. It was. A. Crack. A small inch-long crack.

Now we all know how I react when car problems arise, so my reaction should not be surprising: I gasped so hard that I almost passed out in my seat. What might be surprising is that I did not automatically think my car was going to explode as is the common outcome of any light coming on. Instead, I thought my windshield was going to cave in on me as soon as I turned the key.

I am happy to report that it did not cave in on me. It did not spider-web out as I drove home. It simply remained an inch-long crack that reflected light. Quite pretty. Quite mesmerizing, which could cause an accident. Also accident-causing? My panic that it would grow and the windshield would come in on me with every exit on the highway.

I told Eddie about the crack as soon as I got home. I figured we would have to pay for it to be repaired. We went onto the Safelite website because it's the only company I know that deals in windshields. That's probably because it's the only glass company with a jingle. Go ahead and sing it. You know it. Now you can't stop singing it, can you? Heh heh.



The website has a place that you can put your insurance information down and they contact the insurance for you. Unless you have Geico. Then you have to go to Geico directly. I went onto that website. I typed in what happened. They scheduled an appointment with Safelite for me for the next day.

How's that for service?

By this time, the crack had grown to double its size. However, it was still around the length of a dollar bill. As I drove to yoga that night, I kept holding up a dollar bill against the glass at every red light. The drivers in front of me could have thought I was somehow propositioning them, but I didn't care. All I cared about was measuring the crack to ensure that it was still about the length of a dollar bill. At that length, it's reparable. I'm not sure what I would've done if it had grown past that length since measuring it obsessively does not impede it from growing.

The next day, I waited for Safelite. They emailed me a picture of the guy who was going to repair my windshield. He arrived after calling me to tell me he was fifteen minutes away. When he called, the caller ID said SAFELITE unlike so many other companies that have their workers use random cell numbers when they call.

I met him outside. We walked to my car. As we approached, he could see the crack from the inside since we were coming up behind it. Before we got to the front, he was like, nope, no good.

No good is not good!

He called the company and told them it had to be replaced. Then he handed me his cellphone: They want to talk to you.

They rescheduled the appointment right then and there. The woman wanted to get me in as soon as possible, but I didn't want to drive to the shop (because my car would obviously explode if I did that), so we rescheduled it for the next Friday.

The crack grew. The sunlight lashed through bright and harsh, but still beautiful. The crack stopped growing. Mid-week, I forgot that it was a hazard.

Friday came. Safelite called around 8:30. One man came to do the job. I asked, It's just you? He said, Yes, just me. I said, okay then. We walked around my car looking for dings and dents to ensure that I knew they were there. Really, all that walk accomplished was making me feel ashamed about how dirty my car was. I told him that I'd wanted to get it washed but didn't want to take it in with a crack in the windshield. He told me I couldn't get it washed for another three days with the new windshield in. Well, at least the windshield would be clean. Then I asked about my registration and inspection stickers. He said, We transfer them over.

Anyone who has had to remove and replace a registration sticker knows that it's not a simple transfer. It involves scraping with a razor and spraying to get the adhesive off. Maybe some cursing, too. Sometimes blood. However, he answered simply without hesitation, so I believed him and responded, Oh okay great magic.

He said he'd be an hour. I said I'd be upstairs. Of course, I went directly to the window from inside the house. In less than two minutes, my car had no windshield. Completely open in the front. Talk about mesmerizing.

In less than an hour--maybe 40 minutes--I had a new windshield AND he'd vacuumed out the front seats and dash AND he'd cleaned ALL the windows. He joked that at least my glass was clean when I yet again lamented, all ashamed, Now my windshield is the cleanest part.

He told me I could drive it in an hour, emailed me my receipt, and told me to call him on the cell if anything went wrong for the rest of the day.

The only thing that was unsettling was driving with that new windshield. It's invisible. So clean. Not even a scratch from the wipers. I drove half ducking behind the wheel. Safety first!

Does A Body Good

I won this.

A Literary Day: A Tale Of Two Jameses

After a very long day spent mostly in the car traveling to Liberty and back again for a wake, I was zombie-ish at work, which made my duty to be the go-to-point-person for getting the visiting poet on his way home my driving force to stay at work without falling asleep.  Arriving at the room for the reading after teaching my two morning classes, I found no set up for the reading.  So I stalked back and forth on the first floor, thinking I'd possibly find "someone who knew something."  In my third stalk, I found my office open and my office mate obviously just getting in, so instead of letting her settle, I pounced--there's no set up there's no set up!  Then I added, I know you just got here so feel free to settle in and not jump.  Used to my craze, she got up and started moving furniture with me. 

This is how you know the poet you've invited is also simply a nice human being.  He arrived with two other people on our committee and he started moving furniture with us.  Yeah, that's right.  Now that's someone I can get behind.  Also why I'm a huge fan now?  He didn't read.  He recited.  From memory.  Like said everything that was on the page without ever looking at the page.  He recited his own work and then, another sign of a great poet, he recited the work of other poets.  Yeah, that's right.  He's that kind of guy. 

His reading fell right into my schedule when I  need to eat since I eat every two hours and then sometimes in between.  So I sat in the back on a table next to some of my collegues and opened my salad.  Then I realized two things:

1. I had very loud lettuce.

2. I was in mirror-range, so everyone in front of me could see me eating in the reflection of the mirror that was behind the podium.

I had a choice to make.  I could eat, causing a ruckus both in vision and in audio, or I could not eat, causing a ruckus by passing out.  I already had the hunger shakes, so I decided to eat but chew only every seven seconds, and in chewing, I would take only very small bites.  I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, and I looked like a crazy person, so really, what I was improving in the sound department I was making worse in the visual field.

Nothing I did distracted James Arthur from his smiling delivery of poems.   The students really enjoyed his reading as well as us faculty.  At the end, he signed books and chatted with ease.  My colleague asked if I'd take care of getting him on his way home, and having finished my salad as slowly and awkwardly as possible, I was no longer at risk of passing out, so I said I'd take care of it. 

I offered a bit of praise to James, which he gracefully accepted.  Then I gave him the choice to take the train from the station close by which I would get lost going to and would be a longer ride, or he could take a twenty minute drive to a closer station that's in my home neighborhood.  He chose the latter, and so began The Car Ride of Babel.

To avoid any chance of an awkward silence, I did what I do best: I talked too much about myself, laughed at my own jokes, and asked probing questions that he probably already answered during Q&A while I'd been furiously finishing my loud lettuce salad.

Proving that he's the kind of human being the world needs more of, he answered questions, asked questions, and held the conversation all the way to the station.  I parked and walked him to the platform while informing him of the texting miracle of CooCoo to check train times.  As soon as I walked into the waiting room to see when the next train was, we saw it flash that it was coming in right now as we heard it above beeping to signal the doors would close.   He said, I think that's it.  I said, I think you're right.  So we ran outside, we hugged as if we were old friends (which, contrary to what it may seem, was the most natural and unawkward part of this whole thing), and he ran upstairs with me calling after him, If it's not the right one or you don't make it, just come back down!

Thankfully for both of us, he made it on the train.  Either that, or he disappeared into thin air.

Because Eddie and I had been driving upstate and back with his mom and aunt on the day that celebrated the anniversary of our "being an official couple" for three years, we'd not done anything to celebrate except announce it in the car so that his mom and aunt would say nice things to us.  We'd already had plans to go to Brooklyn a few days later for his cousin's book signing, so we turned that into a date.  Instead of eating too early at home, driving in traffic, just making it in time, and then starving because we'd eaten too early, we went in before dinner time so we could eat at a restaurant.  We went to where we'd had one of our first dates for some Italian food.  Italian restaurants are like old Italian people in that they give you way too much food.  I'd gotten capellini with chicken and crushed tomatoes and it came in a gigantic ceramic bowl bigger than my head.  Eddie got chicken francese and it came with about a pound of mini potatoes.

Eddie said we'd timed it out perfectly because he could see the time on the thermostat next to our table (and it took every ounce of willpower we had combined to not screw around with it during our meal).  When the dessert menu came, we figured we didn't have time, so we got the check and left.


Outside, we checked his phone for messages and saw that the clock on the thermostat was about a half hour off and we were way early.  That meant it was time to get dessert, so we went to the frozen yogurt place first for me and then to Carvel for him. This was shaping up to be my kind of date.  Froyo is amazing, especially when you can get Blueberry Acai flavor.  Yeah, that's right.  Antioxidant infused froyo!  I ordered a small.  When we walked out to go to Carvel, we both realized either it wasn't a small, or they must serve their large by handing over a gallon of the stuff.

It didn't matter. After Eddie got his vanilla softserve in a cone, we had no problem devouring our dessert.

And then we were off to The Bookmark Shoppe, a small independent bookstore that touts readings and book signings with the likes of Wendy Williams, Nia Vardalos, and James McAllen.

We were there to see James McAllen read from Split Rock Road. I'd read it (reviewed it on Goodreads, in fact). Eddie plans to read it. We arrived first because we're always the first to arrive everywhere. Not long after, lots of people arrived. I liked the story he read. I enjoyed his Q&A session; he talked mostly about the process of writing and creating. We got our book signed. Then we listened to a longer story from the collection, one that was a bit more depressing than the first, but that's the overall tone of the book, anyway, so it fit in nicely.

On the car ride home, I pointed out to Eddie that he accidentally took me on my kind of date: froyo followed by a literary event. He said I'm easy to make happy. Food and books. Yup, that's what got me through the day.

Ah, Friendship

Not too long ago, Eddie and I had a conversation about how making new friends is more difficult as you get older.  If we ever moved, we'd  have no friends.  Or maybe he would because he plays sports, so he'd meet people.  I'd be awkward and weird and people would shun me, I'm convinced.  We're not moving far away, so we have our friends that we've had, but now I think I might have a new one.

I got this in my work email today.

Hope you are doing great.
I believe you will like to make good and nice
friends from anywhere in the world. My is Virginia,
i am a beautiful and honest girl.
I want to be your friend after viewing your contact
while searching for a reliable friend
to mingle with, share some pictures and more.
If you care to know more about me.
I will tell you more as soon as i receive your reply.
Thanks, i wish you all the best...

Exciting, isn't it?

Times Square From A New Perspective

With the impending doom of an expiring voucher, S and I met up in the city to complete one of those do-it-yourself scavenger hunts. Unlike the Easter Bunny Living Social Scavenger Hunt / Marathon / Candid Camera Experiment, this kind has actual clues to go to certain places where you must solve new clues to get to new places. It's an actual scavenger hunt instead of a "do stupid things and get points for it" list on your phone that calls itself a hunt. Still fun, but not the same.

Upon trying to redeem the voucher, the company showed that the voucher was already redeemed. So there we were, on a corner in Times Square, calling the company and trying to get the voucher to go through on her phone while one of those guys who advertises for comedy shows was heckling people. As we sorted out the mysterious voucher situation, we walked to Rock Center to meet up quickly with her business partner. There, we got shooed away from an electrical outlet by security when we were trying to charge her phone, and then S took a picture of me in Starbucks, stating, The lighting makes you look like that famous painting of that woman in a chair. Whistler's Mother? I offered. Yes, that's the one, she said. So I look like an old lady? I asked. She said, No, but you knew the painting I meant.

So I kept my Old Lady Whistler ass in the seat as her phone searched for wifi and charged, having found an available outlet. This is irony: the place where the outlet is has very poor wifi reception. Ha-HA!

After finally finding the voucher on the phone and having it denied again, we finally got a better signal by walking to Cosi. We got someone on the phone who explained, Oh you used that voucher--the website that was telling you to use it isn't ours, and so they were reminding you because their system had no update that you used it.

So basically, there was no impending doom of the voucher expiring because we'd used it when we went on our Downtown Business District scavenger hunt.

Good thing I had another one from Groupon! Prepared like a Boy Scout! Or a Girl Boy Scout! Or, well, you know what I mean.

We began at the center of the theatre district with a clue about what playwright lived across from the Paramount Theatre in Times Square. That means we had to find the Paramount Theatre, cross the street, and find something that signified a playwright lived there. The sign would have his name and we would have to type it in.

Attention iAdventure: This is how a Scavenger Hunt works. Again, your thing was fun, but you should really call it something else.

The first playwright who popped into my mind was Eugene O'Neill and I was like, I bet there's a plaque on the wall of whatever building that says who the person is.

Who's. Better. Than. Me.



They weren't all so simple, but we did find everything pretty easy to navigate since it's one of the more familiar parts of the city for us. We knew were stuff was in general. Some of the other answers we knew without having to go, which was especially helpful towards the end when the wind really picked up and my face was about to fall off--clues like, What place is chilly and flowery? and we were like, Winter Garden Theatre NEXT!

One of the better places we wound up was the Toys R Us store. Fact: I had never been to that Toys R Us until then. Walked by it thousands of times. Peeked in. Never entered. Probably because it's filled with lots of little screaming germy children. However, as it was part of the mission, I went in, and though lots of screamy screamy germy germy things were happening, I was able to navigate my way around it, though there was a close call involving one child, a ball that was about my size, and it rolling at me at full speed. S's reaction? Walk away, turn around, and laugh at me.

We did take a detour in the store to find Willy Wonka's factory to check out the candy. That should be of no surprise.

After the detour, we headed out once more into the cold. We found the only statue of an actor in the district. Some woman asked me to take her picture with it, which I found odd since, well, it's not like he's the most famous actor of all time and it's not like you can tell who he is from the statue; plus, it was dark. So I guess she's a big fan and the leader of a cult following.

Come to think of it, there were more people than usual out and about taking pictures of everything. Like really more. Never had I seen as many tourists as I had on that night, which is saying a lot considering the number of times I've walked through that touristy part of town. You know--from Bubba Gump to the characters asking for tips. What's with those guys, anyway? Bring back the Naked Cowboy--at least he was original.

We wound up going to the M&M store for one of the clues. S chatted with some friends there and then explained that we were at the end of our scavenger hunt. One of them asked, well what do you get when you finish? We high-fived each other and cheered for ourselves. S's friend laughed at us. I suppose everyone's idea of a prize is different.

We ended up at another place I've passed a lot but have never gone to...on the big red bleacher steps. So while this whole adventure took place in one of the most familiar neighborhoods, it did invite me to see it in a different light, which is always a good thing.

Met, Mark, and Annette Taylor

Anthony and I were standing on line at The Met as I was figuring out how to politely ask for change when I handed over a 20 dollar bill when the suggested admission was even more.  A museum employee came over and announced to the line that we were on the credit card only line.  That's when my dilemma turned into how I was going to say Put five dollars on this please without sounding cheap.  However, I did just that and the cashier asked, For both of you?  I said, No, only me.  So I didn't appear as cheap as I could have!  Anthony didn't need to pay anything because of one of  his education passes.  Off we went to possibly find the exhibits we wanted to say. 

Getting around the Met, even with their map, is near impossible.  Usually I roam around and bump into cool stuff until I find myself in the Egyptian room and then find the exit from there.

We did manage to find the photography exhibits pretty quickly.  The world of photoshop was on display (not its official name, but I know it was something about manipulating photos).  But first, I found this little piece of wonder--a piece of art you're allowed to touch!

Okay, technically you're not supposed to touch the art.  You're supposed to touch the velvet drape to see the art being protected from the light behind it.  I wouldn't have known that until my brother picked it up and I was like, You can't touch anything!  And he was like, You're supposed to...what did you think...that was the art?  In my defense, I've seen a lot of crap called art, so a piece of velvet hanging on a wall could very well be art.

We then found another photography exhibit that I hadn't realized would be animated.  It was actually very neat.  The photographer took pictures from a cab with a camera that takes action photos and then strung them together and its all in a slo-mo video.  The drawback is that it's about an hour long.  We stood in the dark room and watched about ten minutes of it and then decided we'd had enough.  We couldn't see anyone standing there for a full hour.  I mean, you see one slo-mo person staring at the camera in wonderment, you'd seen them all. 

The Eggleston exhibit was nearby, so we went through that.  It was neat.  Then we found a container of bottle caps that's called art and figured it's something that either of us could do in our own homes and call it art.

We stumbled upon the contemporary art rooms.  I love it.  My brother thinks it's dumb because he knows 8-year-olds who can paint blocks of color on a canvas just as well.  As I always say to him and Eddie and anyone else who questions it: sure anyone can do it, but these artists did it first. The debate fell by the wayside as we rounded a corner and I was able to exclaim, Good God, it's a Lichetenstein! Not the piano, the painting!  (Weekend at Bernie's, anyone?).  Unfortunately, the interactive sculpture that you could step on a button and make it make noise and move was no longer available for us to interact with.

We went down the stairs, passing by a very scary Kiki Smith piece hanging off the wall.

It has, like, real eyeballs.  Seriously, go to the Met and look at its eyeballs.  It's freaky.

Anthony found Mao and I found an old guy's ass.

This is what museums are for.

And then we found Mark.  The cool thing about Mark is that it's a huge painting that looks like a photograph.  Actually, everything about Mark is cool.  Mark is our new friend.

After getting through the contemporary stuff, we decided we should find the American wing.  We backtracked through contemporary.  We got sidelined at India and Eastern art.

We backtracked through Eggleston and the photography rooms.  We found ourselves looking at a rattan and wicker exhibit.  We somehow got back to contemporary.  We tried following the map, but every time I tried to find a room, it wasn't on the map.  Like I would try to find 819, and on the map were 800 through 818 and then 820 to 900, but no 819 was there. 

We rode the glass elevator between floors and wound up on a weird halfway between floors floor.  We got back on the elevator and then found some stairs.  We found a third floor and then went down some other stairs.  We went through some Fashion of Impressionism exhibit that was packed.  Packed!  Who knew so many people wanted to look at frumpy dresses?

Then, we saw this:

Don't ask me how we'd found it.  I couldn't even get back to it if we tried.  We went through and saw that famous picture of George Washington crossing the Delaware. Then we pointed out faces of old men and named the Founding Father.  We found the exhibit for Women in Sports in America,which was half a wall large.  Finding the wing was more thrilling than what was actually in the wing.

Then we stumbled upon Egypt.  Meaning, it was time to go.

Once we got outside, we went to the park to eat and watch people ride bikes.  I told him about the time I got lost in the Ramble.  He agreed it was the worst part of the park to get lost in because it's actual park, like with trees and no pavement.  We decided to walk downtown and to the west side.  On the way, I figured I'd teach him something about the park because he'd never been to that place where the milk is.  I couldn't remember the name of it, so he kept asking if cows were involved. 

Then we found it.  It was the Dairy!  Of course, the Dairy.  See?  Milk is involved.

Also at that point, we found that we were zigzagging.  There's really no possible way to walk to where you want to go in the park.  If you want to go downtown, you can't also go across.  It's just impossible.  So by the time we got to the south end, we'd walked from east to west, but then back to the east, so once more, I had to go west so I could catch my line.  He came with to get to the 7, which apparently is the most convenient line ever, but first, one last stop in the park.

And while we waited for the subway, we listened to the soothing sounds of Annette Taylor.  As we'd gone through the museum, my brother asked, What are you writing in your book?  I told him that I write down titles and names that I would look up later.  As Annette Taylor sang, we took note because she had a great voice.  Unfortunately, that's not the part that was most memorable.  She was singing over a Whitney Houston CD.  However, she wasn't singing with the words.  She was more scatting over Whitney, and out-singing her if that's possible, but we couldn't tell which song it was because the CD was so low and she was so loud.  And between singing, she was plugging her website.  My brother was like You gonna write that down, too?  I was like, you  know what...and I did because I really needed to find out if she did more than scat over Whitney.  And here's what I found.