Matt and I went to Barnes & Noble to pick up his copy of Pacific Rim, Man, Machines and Monsters. While there, I saw a talking plush Dalek toy that I HAD to have for my cubicle at work. (I know several of the hourly staff who share the cubicle with me will also love it.) I also acquired a 10th Doctor's Sonic Screwdriver that has a UV light and a UV ink pen, as well as a black ink pen. Why? Well, because it's cool. And fun.
Been talking about cars with friends. I am a Ford fan, of course, because my brother Walt brainwashed me from an early age. He went on to become a Ford engineer, and only retired a few years ago. He knows his stuff. I love my current Ford, my 2002 Focus wagon. (Still less than 28,000 original miles on it.) It looks brand new.
The first car I drove was my Mom's old '62 Fairlane that Walt had used as a "parts car" for his Fairlane. It was driveable, but about worn out by the time I got it. Got 10 miles to the gallon, and the gas gauge was busted. You HAD to fill up every 100 miles, or it WOULD run out of gas and strand you. It had a radiator leak that took forever to find and fix, and therefore I carried a 5 gal. can of water and a pot holder so I could add water if needed. Also, the oil had to be checked frequently. I got rear-ended in that car in 1980, and that was the end of it. I then got a '75 Pinto station wagon with a V-6 engine. Definitely NOT one of Ford's "better ideas". That engine was crammed into that car, and with all the smog crap on it, it never did run right. Finally sold it when we got orders to Germany in 1989. In Germany, we drove an old Mercedes 123 retired taxi. It was great, but we had about the last four good years it had in it. When we got here, we bought a brand new Escort wagon. Great car. We ran all over the place in that thing. Hauled an unbelievable amount of stuff home in it, including a large weightlifting bench AND all the weights! I continued driving it to work after Matt bought a 2000 Taurus new that year. In 2002, the Escort went over 100 K miles, and I got a big raise at work, so we traded it in on the Focus. I have been VERY happy with the Focus. Matt traded in the Taurus on a Honda Civic hybrid when gas started getting really expensive. He has the longest drive to work, and the Civic gets over 50 mpg. (I get about 26mpg around town in the Focus wagon. I only fill up once a month, and it isn't even below a quarter tank then.) I don't drive a lot. Just between here and the library, here and the base, and here and my voice lesson. (Could walk to work if we had showers at work. Would take about 25 minutes, but I'd get sweaty in warm weather, and muddy in cold weather.) It takes me maybe 5 minutes to drive to work, if there's no train.
I had a sad duty at work today. I had to pull the last blue bins of books out of the short sort checkin machine. (We called it Shorty). I also shut down its computer, and turned off the power to the whole thing. Poor Shorty was never meant to live in a cupboard, but we made it live in one. It gave us trouble once in awhile, and some of us called ourselves the "Handmaidens of the Short Sorter" because it seemed we were the ones always emptying it and restarting the software when necessary. The reason Shorty had to be shut down is that we now have a new sorter. It has lots more than 2 bins, and it is in the work area where we can keep a watchful eye on it. It will never give us a "red light" to tell us it has to be emptied OR ELSE, and we should be able to keep most of the checkins moving on to be sorted on to carts and shelved much more quickly. I will miss the days of "Code Roxanne on the Short Sort" being called back to the work area. (We even had a little graphic of "Roxanne, the Red Light Fairy" based on the covers of those "whoever the whatever fairy" books the little girls are so enamored of.) Sigh. Shorty was the source of many headaches, yes, but we also had fun with it. I was one of the very first to 'babysit' Shorty and teach people how to check their books in with it. I was also one who had to restart it a lot. I will miss it, but mostly I will be glad not to have to haul myself out there and change the bins every 45 minutes, and spend an entire shift doing nothing but checking in and sorting the books from Shorty. (Also will no longer have to worry if the blouse I wore is too low cut to bend over and push the carts while still maintaining modesty. Some days it was not possible. Thankfully, nobody much notices me, they're too busy avoiding being run down by the bins I'm pushing.)
That's been my day, childish pleasures, automotive memories and melancholy over retired technology. Time marches on here in Moore, OK.
As Ever,
Katie
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