Catching Kings

In preparation for an upcoming road trip, I took the wife's car in to get its oil changed and fluids & tires checked out. Normally, we take our cars to a little place down town that always seems terribly appreciative of our business and also does a great job. I should have gone there this time, too, but we only like to take our cars to the down town place when we're not going to have to wait around. They have no waiting room to speak of, other than an old bench car seat outside and it's not the sort of neighborhood in which you'd really want to do a lot of wandering. So I went to King Subaru/Honda, the place that held my car hostage back in December. Yeah, we knew it would be more expensive, but they have a nice waiting room and we needed a little more done than an oil change. One of the wife's headlights had a burned out low-beam bulb. Now, I've replaced headlight bulbs before on my own, but it seemed like an easy enough thing to just have King do it while I was there already. I called ahead, and made an appointment.

One home car repair I already had in the bag was the replacement of the wife's rear windshield wiper. The old one has been useless and floppy for quite some time, but it's taken nearly a Homeric quest to find a replacement blade in this town. After searching three different autoparts retailers, I finally locate one yesterday, so before I left for my King appointment, I popped the new one on, fresh from its package.

At King Honda, they explained to me in advance that in addition to the oil change, they would do a 6 point inspection to determine if there were any other things that needed fixing, which they would talk to me about before proceeding. They also pointed out the astronomical amount of money they would charge for the replacement of the headlight bulb, in case I wanted to back out. Again, probably should have, but I decided that it would be worth it to have it done after all these weeks and not have to hassle with it myself.

I settled into their waiting room, where I waited for probably 40 minutes, making jokes in my head about how doctor's appointments and car repair appointments have about the same waiting time. But the waiting room was nice, with plenty of coffee and a snack basket full of very tasty granola bars.

Eventually, one of the King guys came out with their printout of their 6 point inspection. Again, he pointed out the insanely high price of the headlight and again I didn't blink. Then he pointed to the place in the inspection report where his mechanic had noted that both the front and rear windshield wipers were in need of replacement. Seemed an odd thing to have noted for a brand new wiper blade on the rear, I thought. My eyes fell upon the price they were looking to charge for the replacement, which was in the $20 range, and I was pretty sure I knew why these wipers had been determined to be bad.

"The back wiper is brand new," I said.

"It's new?" he asked.

"Yep. Put it on this afternoon. Never even been used."

I let that hang there in the air for a bit, allowing my suggestion that perhaps the wiper in question had not been inspected using the mechanic's entire ass, or perhaps any ass at all, to settle into the guy's head. He seemed a bit unsure how to proceed, but then pointed to the front wiper box and said, "So, do you want to replace the front ones then?"

"Uh, no," I said.

I was feeling pretty smug about this. I was of half a mind to cancel the headlight and just depart with some new oil. And, really, I should have, but I was pressed for time that late in the afternoon and still needed to find a place to get a haircut. I settled in to wait for another 20 minutes.

While checking out, a different King Honda rep passed me a copy of their report on the vehicle. He said that it contained the problems they had fixed marked in green and the ones they had suggested needed to be fixed, but which I had declined in yellow--the implication being that I was supposed to feel bad about that, because clearly I was not following expert advice. "Yeah, about that," I said, flipping to the yellow boxes for the windshield wipers on page 2. "The rear windshield wiper on my car is brand new."

The man looked a bit confused at first, then said, "New? Did we put one on?"

"No," I said. "I put it on, earlier this afternoon. It's fresh from the package. Never been used before today."

While that was sinking in, I glanced down at the report and saw that in both the front and rear wiper boxes, the report claimed that the reason they were recommending replacement was because the wipers were streaking.

"I see it says here the rear one was streaking. Hmm. I guess a new wiper might streak... fresh out of the package. Interesting."

"Um, yeah," the guy said.

I gathered my receipt, told the gent to have a good day and went out to the waiting car. I started the car and then fired up the rear wiper, hitting the window with a spray of wiper fluid. Nary a streak to be seen. I even got out and walked around to the back to inspect the window. The only smudges on the window were from the dog's snart (nose art) on the other side of the glass. The snarts didn't look like streaks either.

For a moment, I considered going back in to happily point this out to the guy. It would be satisfying, I thought, to say, "Yeah, that's very very interesting... how the brand new wiper blade isn't making streaks. Must have been a one off freak occurrence when your mechanic did it. Twenty bucks, you were going to charge? Yes, very interesting." Then I thought, Ah, what good is really going to accomplish?

I drove away with mixed feelings. I was glad to have caught King before they gouged me any more than he did, but annoyed that now I'll think twice before going there ever again. They have such a nice waiting room. And those granola bars were very good.

Fwash of Wightning, Kill the Modem!!!

Had me a little vacation from the internet for the past few days.

We had some nutty storms come through this weekend. And their arrival seemed to coincide with the that of one of my wife's best friends, who was staying with us for a few days. Friday afternoon, as we were waiting for Laura to arrive, the first of the storms rolled in and began pummeling the area with an unnecessary amount of rain and electrical activity. Our homes rain gutters, already partially clogged with leaves and crap from the winter, were not up to the challenge and soon there were torrents of water pouring over their edges and down into the flower beds. I'd just finished up some podcast work and decided to start shutting down the electronics before nature did it for me. Not long after I had, I was standing at my office window, looking through said curtain of rain water, when the first power outtage hit. It wasn't any big deal and didn't seem to coincide with any lightning. Less than half a minute later, the power returned and I kept watching the weather. It was raining so hard that I could barely see our trash can at the bottom of the driveway. I knew Laura was on the road already, her brother driving her here from his home in Kentucky. I hoped they were safe enough and not having to drive through the worst of it.

As I left the office and started down the hall, I heard a huge crash of lightning and, at the same time, the sound of an electrical surge that seemed to be coming from the wall outlet ahead of me.

"Aw shit," I said. Maybe I should have unplugged everything in the house. Granted, my computer and our TV setup are all on mega powerful surge protectors, but who knows how well those things really work until put into practice.

An hour or so later, I got a call from the wife at her clinic telling me that Laura had arrived and asking me to dash over and pick her up. She and her brother had indeed been forced to drive through the downpour, but they didn't look too shaken up by it. (Alaskans have to drive through mass quantities of water on a regular basis, albeit in a more frozen form.)

I'd never met Laura before. Never talked to her. When we went to Alaska, a couple of years ago, she was one of the many people from my wife's early life who we failed to see during the two days we were in the area. But she was a person who my wife grew up with and who later became one of her roommates in college. Laura's family was very important to my wife, for it was Laura's father, the school's orchestra teacher, who encouraged my wife to join and take up playing the string bass. There were several years during which the two of them didn't communicate, though. My impression is that this stemmed from some typical college roommate fights they'd had, which had kind of soured their relationship. However, a couple years back the two of them reconnected on Facebook, determined that neither could remember what it was they were supposed to be mad at one another about, and started where they left off. I stayed out of it. I wasn't even friends with her on Facebook, because I have enough of my own friends I never manage to talk to without extending my crappy-friendship circle any further.

Laura in person, however, was instantly likeable. She and my wife shared so much of their formative time together that I was kind of astounded at how close their taste in everything from clothes to music to fake clip-on hair (sorry to reveal that, ladies) matched. Even more oddly synchronous is the fact that Laura was into musicians like Taj Mahal, a fellow I know for a fact I'd been the one to introduce my wife to twelve years ago. We got along great.

Later in the evening, once the wife had come home, I was trying to look something up on the internet when I found that our home network did not seem to be working. Upon further examination, this turned out to be due to our cable modem not working. At all. With no cable modem, we also had no phones, cause they're through the cable company, too. My theory is that the surge protector protected all the electronics plugged into it, but not any surge coming over the phone lines.

This is not the first time this has happened to us. The last time was under basically the same circumstances and Suddenlink responded very quickly, replacing the modem within a day. This time, when we called, the operator told us that it would probably be at least three days, though she'd expedite the claim so it might be sooner. I wasn't terribly hopeful at this, as I've had massive corporations tell me many a story about claim expedition in the past few months and have seen no actual evidence of it. It was no biggie, though. While it was inconvenient to be without internet and home phones for a few days, we had Laura to hang out with and our cell phones to serve as backup to home phone and internet access.

On Saturday it stormed again, possibly even worse than Friday. This time it was me driving through it on my way back from a meeting out of town. It was pretty crazy for a bit there. By the time I got home, my neighborhood streets looked a lot like mountain streams, and the actual creek that moats our neighborhood had become a river.

On Sunday, Laura used my cell phone to confirm her flight on Tuesday morning through CheapTickets.com. She was flying United, but the only flight she'd been able to get was at 6 a.m. She kept apologizing that we'd have to drive her to the airport, which meant leaving at 3 in the morning in order to get her there in time to check in and do security. We told her we'd live.

We had a blast during the visit. Laura and my wife caught up with one another, told old stories from their childhoods, including a couple I really ought to retell here some time, and basically had us all in tears laughing. She was such a kindred soul that I made her watch the first episode of Firefly just to spread that infection of joyousness. (I should have given her some Sandman while I was at it.)

At 3 a.m. on Tuesday morning we awoke to drive Laura to the airport. As I was driving, I'd headed to bed early, but the wife had stayed up to help Laura pack--paying special care to safely pack the six jars of home made apple butter we were sending home with her in her check luggage. We made the drive to the airport in Charleston. Instead of just dropping her off, doing goodbye hugs and driving away, we escorted her inside to the United check-in counter. And there Laura was told that she had no ticket reserved for her particular flight. I missed out on the early parts of the argument between Laura, my wife and the United desk staff, because I was headed back to the wife's car to retrieve her lint roller so that Laura could divest herself of the half a dog of dog-hair coating her black skirt. When I returned, though, they were in the thick of it.

"But I have a confirmation number," Laura said.

"That number ain't gonna do you any good," one of the women at the desk said. I later learned that this was probably the fourth time the lady had said this and that my wife was on the verge of jerking her across the counter because of it. With no print outs, Laura had no other numbers to instantly give to prove the ticket was supposed to be there. Her name wasn't in their system at all, so the ticket agent had begun treating her like she was somehow trying to scam a ticket. Laura kept explaining that she had a ticket, she'd paid nearly $1000 for it and had confirmation and flight numbers to prove it, which were, unfortunately, stored in her email. So she and my wife began looking up what information they could in her email account, via my phone. The desk agent again told her that the confirmation number "aint gonna do you any good." Then, when given the flight number, the agent said that was only the flight number for the first leg of the journey, the one bringing Laura out of Alaska, and was not for the flight that morning. Oddly the email confirmation did not seem to have the second leg's flight number at all.

The other and more reasonable of the United ticket agents offered their United Customer Service hotline phone to call. The person on the other end kept telling Laura that the ticket was supposed to be printed there at the desk, but the rude desk agent kept throwing up her hands and repeating "There's no ticket to print," and "You need to call whoever it is you bought the ticket from" two or three times per phrase.

"Yes. Thank. You. For. All. Of. Your. Help," my wife told the rude agent.

Laura looked up CheapTickets.com's number and gave them a call. They couldn't figure out what was wrong either, as their records showed she had a ticket and there was no reason it shouldn't be showing up in United's system. Meanwhile all of the other passengers had checked in and were off to security. The rude lady told her flat out that she was pretty much too late to board. Then the rude lady departed, presumably to see to some other rude detail of the flight, leaving the less rude lady at the desk and Laura on hold with CheapTickets.com. When Cheaptickets came back on line, it didn't sound from her side as though they had found anything conclusive. Laura kept telling them, "But I've paid nearly $1000 for my ticket!" We don't know what they said in response.

Then, the lady at the desk called Laura by her first and last name. We looked up to find the lady standing there holding a freshly printed boarding pass. The lady had no idea why it had happened, but the passes had just printed. We gave Laura very quick hugs, because she was off at a dash toward security in order to try and make the flight after all. The wife and I stood by, infuriated that the rude ticket agent had not been present to see Laura proven right.

We returned to Borderland, though only barely. The wife drove on the way back and was nearly asleep at the wheel during the last 10 minutes. I offered to drive, but she didn't want to stop. We fell into bed and were quickly asleep.

At nearly 10 a.m., my cell phone began to ring. It was the Suddenlink tech trying to find our house. He soon arrived, giving me enough time to get dressed. The tech brought a new modem into the house but he explained that he couldn't install it until he'd not only tested the old modem to make sure it was fried (yep), but had also contacted his supervisor to ask permission. Sounded easy enough, but apparently Suddenlink has made it policy that their technicians are not supposed to use their cell phones to actually call the home office for permission, but are supposed to text for it. This guy did, but nearly 10 minutes went by with no response. He said this was, sadly, not atypical. After texts went unanswered, the tech finally had to use his phone to actually call a series of tech staffers (one of whom went on break in the middle of the installation process). All in all, I was happy with the tech guy, but what should have been a 10 minute installation took over half an hour due, seemingly, to the company policy communication issues. Perhaps this was also due to the many jobs Suddenlink had at the same time, but the policy just seems to be ill-advised. Smells like an upper management idea that fails to take into account real-world workability.

We now have phone and internet once more.

Laura made her flight, though only barely, and returned safely to Alaska. Her luggage containing the apple butter has yet to materialize.

When your old roma's looking ratty, pick up a neu one.

Had my first physical therapy session. No huge whoop.

Earlier in the week, the wife and I had lunch with Dr. Ralph at his office and he showed me my x-rays from last week. He said they were clean and didn't show any fractures, though this wouldn't rule out a stress fracture necessarily, as they often don't show up in x-rays. He said I'd be in good hands with his friend Jacko, one of the physical therapists in the area. His name isn't really Jacko, but that's a similar name to the one he goes by, which also isn't his real name. In fact, if you took the famous 80s Australian Energizer Battery pitchman Mark "Jacko" Jackson, aged him 30 years, grew his hair out into a gray pony tail, removed his Australian accent and penchant for shouting "OY!" in your face, and put him in scrubs, you'd have something that approached what our local Jacko looks like.

On Thursday, I went to see Jacko for the first time.

Jacko's was a tiny two room office in one of the local medical arts buildings, into which he'd manged to stuff four curtained off patient areas, his own desk area, a small library and his receptionist's desk. The quarters were cramped enough that I felt like I was co-starring in Das Boot.

On my way back to my particular curtained off patient area, I met Jacko himself. I'd not yet had my patient history taken, but Jacko grinned at me, shook my hand, took a quick gander at me and said, "So's it hurt your heal?"

"No," I said. Do I look like the kind of guy who has pain in his heal? Eh, maybe.

"Front of the foot?" he then asked.

"Yeah."

"Got a planter's wart?"

"Nope," I said.

He paused for the briefest of moments, as though weighing his odds at a fourth guesstimate diagnosis. "All right. I'll be in there in a minute." I'm still not sure what this was, but my impression is that he was trying for a Holmesian visual diagnosis and had missed his intelligence roll.

Several minutes later, after his assistant had taken my history, Jacko came back to have a look and a feel of my foot. (I'd washed that foot extra, for his benefit.)

He listened to my description of the situation and how I didn't really feel pain unless the foot was bumped or squeezed from the sides of the front of it. Then he clamped down on the front of my foot and gave it a solid squeeze.

"WAAYAAEI YEP, THAT'S IT!" I yelped.

He then examined the toes, pinching between each one and further down the foot itself until we located the tender point of the pain, about an inch back between This Little Piggy Had None and Wee Wee Wee.

I agreed that this area seemed to be where the pain was focussed, but that it actually spread out across the entire front of my foot when agitated. I reached down and tried to squeeze my foot so I could feel the sensations of the pain in order to describe it. Somehow, though, I couldn't really feel the pain as well when I squeezed it, likely because I can't bring myself to really give it a go

"Nope, you're going to have to do it, or I can't feel it," I said. Jacko was more than willing to squeeze the hell out of the sides of my foot again. Physical therapists are all about gain from pain.

"YAIYAAIE YEAH, THAT'S WHERE IT IS, ALL RIGHT! " I shouted. "Yeah, I can definitely feel that below my big toe."

Jacko seemed to think this was curious. "Have you dropped anything on your foot recently?"

"No," I said. It is very rare indeed that I drop anything significant on my foot. In fact, since age 5, I can probably count on one and a quarter hands the number of times I've dropped something on my foot. I don't know for sure, of course, but I've always thought this stemmed from the time when I was five-years-old and decided I wanted to be Charles Atlas. We were at my Mamaw's house, in back woods Wayne County, Mississippi. I'd seen one of the Charles Atlas ads in a comic book and asked my dad what I had to do to get muscles. He he told me I had to lift weights. He even found me a weight to try it with in the form of a 5 pound cast iron iron, of the sort people used to heat on the stove and then use to iron clothes, but which later became common ly used as doorstops around the time electric irons became affordable. I was only allowed to lift this weight while wearing my hard Sunday shoes, so I didn't drop it on my foot. Of course the one time I decided I didn't want to hassle with putting on my Sunday shoes, I dropped the thing on my foot, and but good. I had blue toes for a week. Since that time, though, when I cause something to fall toward my foot, be it from dropping it from my hand or accidentally knocking down a shampoo bottle in the shower, my feet automatically move out of the way of whatever is plummeting toward them, even to the point that they've done it while my eyes were shut tight from getting soap in them. My theory is that having something dropped heavy on my foot at so early an age caused me to develop hyper-vigilance of the feet and super-charged my pedal reflexes. My wife will tell you that bullshit, but it's bullshit that makes sense to me. (Hey, that would make a great title for my first book. "Some Bullshit That Makes Sense To Me.")

Jacko considered my foot some more and said he thought it was probably a neuroma, which is extra growth in nerve tissue, sometimes caused by a tumor, sometimes just agitation. Actually, Jacko told me what specific type of neuroma it was, but I wasn't listening so good at that point because he was still squeezing the shit out of my foot in his demonstration of how the tissue between two of the bones had become enflamed. He didn't rule out stress fractures and agreed that an MRI would likely show what was going on best, but neuroma was the likely candidate and he had some techniques which he thought would reduce the swelling. He was going to try electric shock therapy.

Okay, Jacko didn't call it that. He said he'd be electrically stimulating the tissue there. But I knew an electro shock machine as soon as he began adhering electrodes in strategic places along my foot.

"You're gonna feel this," he said, turning up the dial on a small black box. And presently I did, as my foot began to thrum with pulses of current.

"Yep, there it is," I said. Jacko set the black box down and said he'd be back in a few.

The shocks from the device were certainly not pleasant, but were quite tolerable. With each pulse my toes would curl on their own.

After about 25 minutes, the pulsing suddenly stopped. Was it on a timer? Was it out of battery? There was still a green light on the black box, but I was no longer feeling anything from it.

I called to Jacko's assistant, just beyond my curtain. "Hey, is this thing supposed to stop shocking me at some point? Cause it has."

Evidently it had run out of juice, while shocking Juice.

Jacko returned and had a look at the foot again.

"And you're sure you didn't drop anything on it?" he asked.

"I'm sure," I said. "Not dropping things on my feet is my mutant ability." I considered telling him about the cast iron iron, but decided the story would take too long and would risk having a licensed physical therapist scream "Bullshit!" in my face. Or, in this case, maybe "Oy!"

Jacko's question about my possibly dropping things stemmed from the fact that the symptoms seemed to manifest across my foot, rather than only in the tender point. This seemed odd to him, but not enough for him to declare it was something other than a neuroma.

My foot didn't feel noticeably different after the shock therapy, either, but this is just the first step. I go back next week.