Last night, as I drove to a friend’s house for dinner, my car decided that the time was ripe for yet another adventure. The thing is out to get me, and it always seems to sense the very second when I let my guard down and actually rely on it.

This time, in mid-drive, my power steering system started making horrible, whining sounds and stopped working. A few seconds later, I realized just how much I need power steering. I’d forgotten what a chore it was to horse the wheel around while trying to turn around in a tight space. It was quite a nice upper body workout, but all things considered I’d have rather done it another way.

Our friend was nice enough to help me refill the power steering fluid. When I restarted the engine, it began spewing fluid like a slashed teenager in a Roger Corman movie. I quickly got in and drove it home, stopping midway through the six-mile trip to refill the reservoir yet again.

I took the day off from work today to have my mechanic look at the car, and for once, luck was on my side. A bracket had come loose from one of the hydraulic lines, and that line had rubbed against a bolt on the transmission pan until it wore a hole in the line. A piece of high-pressure hose, a couple of clamps, and a mechanic with a bit more manual dexterity than I can muster got me on my way. I have said this before and I’ll never say it enough times — there is nothing, NOTHING more valuable in this world than a mechanic you can actually trust. If you have a car, at least.

I’m just back from Minnesota, and it was cold. I almost didn’t make it out of town … six inches of snow fell the night before my flight. Luckily, for Minnesota in March, that’s not really a big snow, so it was quickly cleared. The worst I had to endure was a 1 hour delay as we waited for the plane to be de-iced. The Federally Mandated Screaming Baby was at least twenty rows behind me, so my headset neatly drowned out the shrieking.

I think (knock wood) that I’m done traveling until late April, it’ll be nice to be home for a while! Now that the Thinging site is working again, I can catch up on getting some things thung … although it seems all my thungs have disappeared, so I may be back to square one!