An inspirational email is sent to my computer each day. It usually comes with a link to a video or an article that’s supposed to kick-start my get-go.
Each day’s email includes a motivational quote. A recent one by Carl Sandburg caught my eye: “Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent.”
Yeah right—try telling that to the Canada Revenue Agency.
***
I found a nifty little gizmo at a yard sale recently. A business card dispenser with a calculator built into it. The dispenser has a rubber wheel, which when you roll it with your thumb a card pops out.
The calculator has me baffled though. It has M+ and M- keys but none for recalling or clearing the memory. Of course, buying it at a yard sale means there are no instructions.
The thing only cost me a quarter but so I’ve gotten more than my money’s worth trying to figure the puzzle of it.
***
The switch for the driver’s side window on my car finally gave out. The other three windows work just fine—my only problem is the button for the driver’s window.
It’ll roll down just fine, but getting the blasted thing to roll up involves pushing the button repeatedly until it finally catches the “sweet spot” and the window starts to close. But, when it does move at all, it closes only for the briefest distance, sometimes only a few millimetres. Most times it won’t move the window at all.
So I am pushing and releasing, pushing and releasing, repetitively trying to find that sweet spot where it’ll close just another little bit.
This sometimes results in my getting such a nice push/ release rhythm going that I just automatically release whether I have found that magic spot or not. So instead of moving up the few centimetres, the window is still open.
Which could be frustrating to say the least.
But if I’ve been lucky enough to get the window part way up I have to be careful to stay calm. Frustration must be avoided at all costs because the button that makes the window go down, which works fine, sits right next to the malfunctioning go up button. I can’t afford to just start flailing away at the buttons there.
So I got the bright idea that I should disable that switch before winter comes on. The prospect of driving for 40 or 50 km with the window open in January isn’t appealing.
I figured it to be a simple fix. All I had to do was cut the wire that went to the button in that corner of the switch unit.
I should have known things weren’t going to go well when the access panel to the switches and wiring opened after removing just two very visible screws. Most times when you want to access something behind a panel in your car, it takes a factory trained mechanic to open the secret panel.
After I cut the wire things looked well. The driver’s window switch was now dead. Unfortunately so were the other three windows and, since it was a warm day, the back window had been left rolled all the way down.
So my simple task of cutting a wire became a repair job.
Looking on the bright side—at least my car isn’t a convertible with the top stuck halfway between up and down.