Transportation

Our van died on Sunday. A rubber seal burst, we lost all the transmission fluid, and the transmission is cooked. So now we need to buy a new car, not an easy proposition in our current state. Go super cheap and hope to things get better in a couple of years? Finance something more reasonable and pray that everything falls into place? Of course, what I really want to do is not even think about it. I'm not interested in cars and would prefer to live without one, but that's simply not feasible just yet. And I'm really busy right now and not excited about this process. Oh well, this is one of those problems reserved for the fortunate of the species. Deciding what car to buy! I just need to think for a moment of the hundreds of millions who are trying to figure out real problems: how to eat, how to avoid violence, how to provide for a family.

What impressed me about the breakdown was how relatively non-eventful it was. Easy! It's Easter Sunday and I'm thinking, man, this could be bad. Not at all: we call AAA and a guy comes right away. Pete Ford, you are one of the nicest men I've ever met! Amazing. Pete drove us to the Elmira airport, where Alma had reserved a rental for us. Off we go and that was that. Pete then continued with the van to a car place in Ithaca. All told we were only set back a meager 60 minutes. Pretty impressive. Jay Ohlsten: you are a paellero extraordinaire! Thank you! The day was beautiful and lunch was delicious. All of us together. Magnífico! Ok, it's late, time to go to work, do something productive. Oh, oh, oh, how about that play by Mark Buehrle to open the season! You won't see that again ever, I can assure you. I'll remember that one. (More on that later!)