Feb. 8, 1839 - When the poetic frenzy seizes us, we run and scratch with our pen, delighting, like the cock, in the dust we make, but do not detect where the jewel lies which we have in the mean time cast to a distance, or quite covered up again. -- Henry D. Thoreau

Journal of a Sabbatical

February 8, 1999

brakes and senility

I got lost taking my car to the Honda Barn this morning. How senile is that? How many senior moments before breakfast?

I set the alarm for 7:00 AM, not an unreasonable time, and got up at about 7:55. The rental car guy was to meet me at the Honda Barn at 8:15 so I knew I was running a little late. I put on clothes and began driving - no breakfast, no coffee. The sun was in my eyes. The windshield was dirty. I was still asleep. I woke up with a headache. I drove right past the turn for 28 off 125. Oops. OK, so I'll take Ballardvale Rd.

Twenty minutes later I was still driving in leisurely circles through parts of Wilmington I've never seen before. Eventually I realize I am back in Andover and considerably further along 28 in the opposite direction. At least I was finally on the right road.

The rental car guy was standing there calmly - after all it's his job to be polite and serve the customer. Somehow, the Honda Barn and the rental car guy managed to parallel process me so the were both done at the same time and off I drove in this large red GrandAM.

No amount of coffee seemed to wake me up. Even after a large dark roast with a shot of espresso in it at Perfecto's, I managed to forget to put money in the parking meter at Andover Bookstore. Sigh. I was only in there a few minutes but got a nice orange parking ticket, which clashes terribly with the bright red car.

Back at the home/office, e-mail from Zsolt reports a strange error message from Windows-98 with the implication that I somehow induced it when I fixed his account with large popular e-mail provider on Friday. The headache I woke up with intensifies. Further examination - an eternal hour at giant monopolistic software company's knowledge base - reveals it's a known bug and there's a workaround. I knew I didn't cause it. Every day I become more amazed that the vast majority of computer users are willing to put up with this level of bugginess and obscure error messages. I scratch my head in puzzlement.

The phone rings. Honda Barn reports it is not only the rear brakes causing the Auntmobile's trouble. Front brakes too. Big bucks. I feel the Antarctica fund eroding... The stock better stay at its record heights for awhile. I authorize repairs and spend a few minutes irrationally worrying about money. The headache I woke up with intensifies.

The phone rings. Martha is sick and wants me to run the Purrfect Companions meeting tonight in her place. The phone rings again as soon as I hang up. Somebody from WBUR wanting money. What am I, made of money? And time?

Retrieved car with new brakes front and rear. They even washed it for me.

Drove directly to Salisbury for meeting. Conducted same. Took copious notes. Petted Jaguar. Headache lifted briefly. Realized I had forgotten to retrieve laundry and laundromat is now closed. Headache returns.

My original plan for today was to drive into Boston to use FC Search at the public library. The FC Search software makes it a matter of minutes rather than days to sort through all the foundations and find the ones that might be appropriate for us. I tried just reading every entry in The Foundation Center on the web, but it is tedious to the extreme. Anyway, the hard part about using FC Search is it costs too much for us to buy for ourselves so the alternative is to use it a one of the "associated collections" in libraries. Luckily enough it's available in Boston, Worcester, and Providence. I just haven't been in the mood to drive to any of those places today.

I actually feel even lousier than I've described so far. If I had my druthers, I'd just stay in bed for a couple of days. It seems a shame to be feeling yucky on a warm clear day when I could be outdoors, but them's the breaks as they say. Or the brakes - all $583 of them.