More Wastage

I own a variant on a Toyota Corolla, the Chevy Prizm, and like the car quite a bit except for one flaw: it guzzles oil. In fact, I think it does more than that with it - what, I'm not sure. I changed the oil somewhere around 50,000 miles and expected to be able to change it somewhere around 53,000, only to have it grumbling and grinding around 51.5. So I checked the oil, and there seemed to be enough - only problem was that I forgot to wipe the dip stick clean before I checked it. I thought of this a few days later after more grumbling, and checked it again. No oil. So I added some one cold morning when I was late to work, and it worked, for a few days. The grumbling picked up again over the next few days, so I checked it again. It was low, and what was there was black. I threw up my hands and brought it in to Jiffy Lube for a change.

The oil change, plus the transmission fluid cleaning and change, plus some other procedure they said I needed (backed up by a nifty graphic generated by my account), sucked away an hour and a half of my life - actually more, depending on how many hours of my life $199.00 represents. I could've been grading, but who wants to grade in a Jiffy Lube, with all those Sports Illustrateds one never gets to read sitting around?

So then I went home to a knackwurst, pickles (not just cucumber: zucchini and garlic are essential to any good pickle stash) (which reminds me to bleg: if you know where to get Runoland brand garlic pickled in red pepper sauce anywhere in the Midwest, let me know in the comments section - we used to pick it up at a local Polish deli that no longer sells that brand, and most of the others are simply inferior, either in flavor or consistency (should be crisp)), pretzels, and beer. It was the beer that did me in. One beer, when one is sitting alone, or when one ought to be grading, is enough to stimulate a nap. A nap, when one has come home at 7 and eaten by 8:30, is usually enough to end one's night. It was last night, and so I did none of the things I planned to avoid: homework and reading about subjects controversial in my life.

Today I was going to work out a daily schedule, but look: I'm blogging! I know when I am doing wrong, but far too often I ignore that knowledge and just keep on keepin' on.