post-vacay letdowns
February 19, 2018, 7:03 P.M.

I wish I felt up to writing more about my vacation. Suffice it to say that I had a good time, right up till it was time to come home.

That's not a joke--Thursday and Friday, I was sick as a dog with an intestinal issue, and that didn't make the ordeal of flying into O'Hare any less awful, I can tell you. (I dosed hard on Immodium so I could make it home, but the next day it was back with a vengeance.) It was an effing long day--got dropped at PHX at 10:30 their time, and my flight didn't get in till 5:00 our time. Which meant rush-hour traffic all the way home, and then I had to get dropped off at the mechanics to pick up my car, which had just had $1700.00 worth of repairs, and didn't get home till after 7:00 pm.

I spent Friday doing laundry, in between bouts of violent illness. There was a shitload of it, and not just from my trip--Spouse hadn't done much while I was gone, plus I had rugs and my winter coat that needed doing up, as well--in addition to spending a good chunk of time doing the shopping that Spouse had also let slide.

Please note--I drove the newly repaired Impala around town on Saturday, and everything seemed great. No issues, improved steering, did just fine. This is important later on.

I felt so bad, and had so much wash to do, that I ended up finishing it Saturday, in addition to tackling the backlog of housework. I hope Spouse enjoyed his "time off", too, because he certainly didn't do jack around the house.

Saturday evening, we had plans to go out for a steak dinner, as a sort of A"date night", since we don't get much chance with his current schedule. So Spouse came home from work, freshened up, and we jumped in the Impala and drove to The Village Supper Club in Pleasant Prairie.

AND. Just as we turned into the lot, the temperature guage on the car dropped to the bottom, and we had a DIC message come up on the dash reading "engine hot/ac off". Cue Spouse's panic attack. He freaked out, and threw the car into reverse, pulled out, and went straight back home. (While I called the restaurant and cancelled our reservation.)

Now. Everything we could Google about this made it clear we had a bad or disconnected heat sensor, or a broken thermostat--and that this was minor and didn't actually affect the car's ability to function. But it scared him so bad that he didn't feel that it was safe to drive.

Well, okay--but what can you do about that, after 6:00 pm on a Saturday? You can't rent a car in Kenosha on a Sunday. You can't contact the mechanic on a Sunday. What's to do?

Well, in our case, have anxiety attacks and don't get any sleep Saturday night was our first response.

The second was for me to get up at 4:00 am on Sunday and go to work with Spouse, and then when the airport rental agencies opened at 7:30, go rent me a car. Fortunately he gets very good courtesy discounts, and I got a lovely Nissan Maxima to drive. I also got to see where Spouse works, meet some of his co-workers, and I got to take advantage of the empty airplane hangar to have my morning walk in comfort.

Unfortunately, it still cost $165.00 for the rental, and I fell down and screwed up my sacro on the way into the Enterprise/National booth.

But I got all that dealt with, plus I picked up some breakfast at McD's, on the way home, and I was still back home before 9:00 am.

And I didn't do another productive thing the rest of the day. Just lounged around the house (and took a nice nap under the electric blanket) until Spouse came home. Then he took the Impala back over to the mechanic, and dropped the keys and a note through the door slot. I picked him up and we went and got some fried chicken for dinner, and came home. The rest of the evening was just prepping for my return to the hellish grind on Monday morning.

It was actually pretty quiet at work today. I had acres of emails to wade through, and my usual list of Monday tasks to accomplish. But morning traffic was good, and I wasn't pestered to death with issues and requests. Maybe because it was Presidents Day--one of those holidays that seem to always occur for other people, but not for me. Well, whatever. I'll take it.

Spouse called me about lunch time to let me know that it was (as I suspected) a bad thermostat, and that Frank was kicking himself for not just replacing it when he had the car torn apart.

That's the problem with Frank. He's TOO honest sometimes. He's so damn conscientious that he is terrified of doing anything that might turn out to be unnecessary and cost you money, but he doesn't look at the big picture and realize that once it's torn down, you might as well replace anything you can and get it out of the way.

Well, anyway--the car will be done tomorrow. And Spouse & Niece are returning the rental tomorrow, as they are both off. Both of those problems solved. (I did look into seeing if I could return the rental at the Kenosha location on Tuesday, but they wanted ANOTHER $100 for that privelige, so it's going back to the airport.