Carol's random babble

This morning didn't start out too bad. I knew ahead of time that someone was cranky about something that happened last night. Okay, a couple of somethings. One of the somethings was a missed deadline. I finished the task ahead of the deadline that is posted, but apparently behind the deadline that is not posted, that nobody else has to follow, and it's all my fault. I thought I was dealing with that pretty well, and then came the phone call. It was a personal call, on my cell phone. I had to take the phone into the office because the person on the other end wasn't listening to my point of view. In fact, my point of view was a "weak excuse" in his words. I had, apparently missed another deadline. This was a personal matter. I had agreed  to perform a certain task. I thought I still had time, but apparently although Person A said the person (Person B) for whom the task was to be performed would have things going on this week, I was supposed to do it anyway. An...

Okay, so I've had wheels for more than a week. I bought a car on Aug. 9. I got it as a used car place which I discovered is actually part of a dealership - apparently they funnel their lower-priced trade-ins over there. Or something. Anyway. It's a Pontiac Grand Prix, four-door. There's no radio, so I'm going to try to get the radio from the Camry to work, but the wiring is different. There are some wiring issues - the door locks don't always want to lock when I want them to lock so I either turn the car on and keep trying to lock them or go around and lock them all manually. One back window doesn't open. There's something missing in the trunk area to keep water from entering the trunk, so I need to get that fixed. But it runs and it gets me to work and places I need to go. And I'm thankful for that.

Okay, I don't actually have a kingdom, and I do actually have a car, only it's not well. On July 22, I picked Cayla up at camp and on the way home the car developed some problems. When I stopped at Harcourt (because it has a convenience store), I discovered that the oil cap was off. This is not good. We put a couple of quarts of oil in and continued back to Fort Dodge. After Cayla's practice (for her performance in a chamber music recital that evening) I got an oil change. We went to Walmart and headed home. Going through the woods on Otho Drive, the car's problems got much worse, to the point that I wasn't sure it would make it up the hill. Since I didn't want to try to turn it around or back down the curvy hill, I kept it going. The car died after reaching the crest of the hill. I managed to coast most of the way home, got it started and made it to my driveway. And it has sat there ever since. A friend of Kent's has looked at it and said it could b...