Yes, yes, I know, it’s been far too long. Don’t worry. Recent events have given me a supply of blog topics sufficient to carry me through several weeks.

Let’s start with cars, since mine threw me a curve today. Some might recall that I recently had to buy a new car, because my old and dearly loved Buick fell victim to age and crooked mechanics. The new one is a 2002 Mercury Grand Marquis, and has worked out satisfactorily so far. This morning, dutiful in my stewardship of things mechanical, I checked the oil as I usually do, and found that it had finally reached the “ADD” mark on the dipstick. So, I trotted into the convenience store in search of the proper oil.

Here’s where things got odd. The car’s owner’s manual and the markings on the oil filler cap recommend SAE 5W20 motor oil. On the shelf at my neighborhood Stop ‘n’ Rob store, I found 10W30, 10W40, 15W40, 5W30, and plain old 30. No 5W20.

Feeling that maybe this was to be expected from a small, redneck store in the middle of nowhere, I drove on a few miles and stopped at a big, MegaloConvenience store a mile or two from my office and again scanned the shelves. Again, the 5W20 was nowhere to be found. A check at a second SuperBloodyConvenient store up the street netted the same result.

I am sure that if I go to the local AutoZone or Advance Auto, or some other automotive specialty shop, I will find the proper oil. I will probably buy several quarts to store in my trunk, since it seems to be so rare. I just have trouble understanding why the supposedly brilliant engineers at Ford Motor Company couldn’t have designed an engine to use a more common grade of oil.

From cars, my thoughts turn to the stupid people who often drive them. Twice this morning I had to weave around people who were poking along, at a pace just slightly faster than that of sea turtles, in the fast lane, talking on cellular phones. This makes me want a cellular phone jamming device in my car. I think such things should be legal … in fact, I think they should be standard equipment on all new cars.

Smokers, you’re next. For some reason, at least in this area, smokers seem to think their habit gives them a divine right to litter. They toss lit cigarettes right out their car windows. At night, I see them sparking and tumbling toward me like horizontal meteors from the cars ahead. If you walk along the shoulder of any major road, you find it littered with cigarette butts. Don’t these people’s cars have ashtrays? As one who does not smoke and never has, I will never understand this.

The air conditioning in my house has failed. We were not able to get a technician to fix it this weekend. The genius who built my house decided to locate the air conditioning unit in the crawlspace, in the most inaccessible spot imaginable. I crawled under there, poked around at a few things, replaced the filter, and generally tried to look competent in the hope that the unit would respect this and begin working again. I had no such luck. Saturday was the hottest day so far this year, with temperatures in the 90s (32+ Celsius). We put fans in every window, drank lots of beer, and sweated. It was hell on earth. Sunday, mercifully, it rained and cooled things down.

Now, with my blogging guilt assuaged, I will go in search of coffee. We once had a professional coffee service here at the office, complete with one of those big, stainless steel drip coffee machines. Budget cuts eliminated that about a year ago, and someone brought in a little home machine to replace it. It’s one of the newfangled ones with no warmer, and it brews into a sort of thermos bottle instead. You can’t see into the thermos to find out how much coffee is left, you can’t pour from the thing without making a mess all over the countertop, and if someone forgets to screw the lid down the coffee is cold in 30 minutes. I hate it.

I brought in a nice, top-of-the-line BUNN coffee machine from home … one that I had bought but which wasn’t getting much use because my wife prefers the KRUPS one we already had. It’s a great machine, the home version of those big stainless steel pro models. Anyway, I brought it in and set it up in our little kitchen at work and NO ONE USES IT! They actually prefer the dodgy one.

People. *sigh*

I’m really looking forward to having a pint with The Merman later this week, and I wish him a safe and pleasant flight across the big pond.