I miss Daylight Saving Time

Outside our house this morning it was dark and the temperature was below 32 degrees. Neither one of those are good motivators for getting up out of a warm bed when your alarm goes off in the morning. At 5 pm, when I leave work, it is dark outside. Not a good motivator for going outside to work in the yard or get some exercise. Basically, I am blaming the DST change for the sour mood that I have been in this week.


On second thought, there are a few other reasons:


Karen’s car, a 2001 mazda 626 with 174,000 miles on it has been copping an attitude lately. Evidently it wanted to go visit its friends at the mazda dealer, as it lit up the check engine light. I pulled the codes with my scanner and it showed a transmission issue. I don’t mind attempting most auto repair tasks, but the transmission is one of the places where I draw the line. After two visits to the dealership, they said she was good to go. Karen doesn’t quit trust it now, so I am driving it. After work Monday night, I parked it in the driveway because I was going to head out to curling later. (see update below)


After dinner, I got into the car to drive to curling and the damn thing wouldn’t start. GRRRRR. To make matters worse, it was sitting in the driveway, blocking the Honda that was parked in the garage. I had to put the 626 in natural and roll it down the driveway enough so that Karen could maneuver the Honda around it and out of the garage. Now it is parked halfway down the driveway and I have to work on it outside. Great.


If I had parked it in the garage after work on Monday, instead of “saving” a couple openings of the garage door by parking in the driveway when I knew I was going back out, it would probably be fixed by now (or at least properly diagnosed). Unfortunately, it is now dark outside after work (see rant above) and it rained on Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday night’s effort to get the starter pulled out of the car was thwarted by:


a. A floor jack that wouldn’t lift the car like it is supposed to (You guessed it, something else to fix)
b. A bolt holding the starter to the engine/transmission that won’t come loose.
c. Outside temperatures near freezing with a cold wind thrown in for good measure. Neither of which are good for finger dexterity when working on a car.

As of right now, the 626 is still sitting motionless in the middle of our driveway. Any normal person would have called a tow truck by now, but not me… I’m bound and determined to fix it myself. Self-inflicted torture, I guess?


As for curling, we lost AGAIN. As you might guess, I am quite disgusted with (and tired of) losing. Next week, we are going to shake up the order in which we all throw to see if that helps things.

Amongst all of this bad crap, at least I have a vacation coming up (very soon) that I am looking forward to. I am going to have to focus on counting down the days in order to try to remain positive…  Sorry for the "downer" update.