Where's My Cape?

cheeseburger paradise by the dashboard light

We are cursed/blessed by living a block away from a McDonald's. Boy will use his special tug-of-war stance body weight pull to achieve a McDonald's vector during walks. I swear those Chicken McNuggets and fries are kid crack. (Actually, they are plain old crack as there was more than one occasion while I was pregnant and burning rubber to get to the nearest Mickey D's.) I suppose I may have set them up for fast food addiction by so much exposure in utero.

Still, McDonald's has saved us after activity-filled weekend mornings with limited time before the blessed nap. That's when we'll swing through the drive-through on the way back home for an easy and fat quota satisfying lunch. As if we are ever in danger of missing the fat quota.

Our McDonald's does good business. At lunch time on weekends it is packed. They are also an efficiency machine. I'm amazed how they expedite the drive-through line with staff on foot to take orders and pass them up so there's minimal delay.

So today, I gave my order to the man walking around with a clipboard - 20 nuggets, a cheeseburger, fries. Don't judge me. Oh, and barbecue sauce and ketchup! At the pick-up window, the woman hands me my bag right away and I think - I don't care if there's a huge line, I'm checking this bag!  I peered in and saw that it looked okay - saw the nuggets, they remembered the sauce this time - ketchup packets- sweet. (Last time they gypped us of ketchup packets. Girl loves the ketchup packets.)  And drove away.

I pulled into our driveway and was geting ready to get out of the car when I peeked into the bag one more time...mmm...fries. And nuggets. But where's the cheeseburger? THERE IS NO CHEESEBURGER.

I checked the receipt. I paid for a cheeseburger. *bleep*

I debated whether it was worth going back for the cheeseburger. It was 99 cents. Really. Could we live without a cheeseburger? It's late. But, No! This is on principle. They should know they screwed up. And, by God, we are going to get our cheeseburger.

I pulled into the drive-through overflow parking. I marched into the McDonald's only to find a mob of customers waiting to be helped at the registers. Customers who didn't look like they would tolerate someone marching up to the front too kindly. Grrrr!

I quickly exited and weighed my options. I could walk up to the drive-through window after the current mammoth SUV blocking all access to the window. Yes. Let's do that. But, the SUV was still there. I basically stood on a small strip of curb, possibly to get plowed into the brick exterior if the SUV decided to gun it out of there. Luckily, the woman driver saw me perched precariously there and I yelled over to her that they forgot to give me something.

Woman driver was kind and helped me out by relaying my message to The Woman Who Stiffed Me...and later passed my small cheeseburger-containing bag to me. Thank you, woman driver!!!

Got back into the car only to wait for this long line of backed up drive-through/parking lot traffic, including witnessing a minor accident and people getting out of their cars to yell obscenities at one another, before finally pulling back into the driveway. Ugh!

I was so distracted by this point that I ran over our hateful step from our front walkway that partially juts out into the narrow driveway and that has caused more grief than any front walkway step should. Running over the corner of the step flipped the entire stone slab up and apparently banged into the side of the car over and over. Longer than you'd think.

The step from hell.

The damage? There's a freaking dent in the front of my side panel of the car, and a length-wise scratch that's like 4 feet long. From the freaking step! For the freaking cheeseburger! For 99 cents! Because they screwed up at the drive-through! 

I wonder if Mickey D's would pay for the repairs.

Old Landlady KC

Being a landlord isn't too bad. That is, until you get that unexpected call from the tenants. You know it can never be good when you get that call (which only occurs on Friday nights or Saturdays because THAT'S WHEN YOU ARE MOST SCREWED). For instance, it's never to say, "Hey! You guys are the best! Hope you have a great weekend! We're sending over a bottle of wine to toast your Landlord Awesomeness!" Instead it's, "Um, we have no hot water for 24 hours," or "There is water leaking from the kitchen light fixture into a bucket," or "We picked up a piece of the roof that was blowing around in the backyard."

Joy!

That's when I really get my Landlady groove on. In between mutterings about the freaking house.

This is the same house that during The Great DC Deluge of 2006, leaked like a crying baby and formed obscene shapes out of the wet, drooping ceiling.

This time, it was no hot water, and before I called in the plumber to rob us blind for an emergency weekend job, I decided to pop on over and do some investigation. Like I could fix it. HA!

But, I did do a quick google search on hot water heater repair and it seemed that the first few steps were easy enough - like turning the thing off and then on and so forth, so I figured I could at least handle THAT. How dumb would we feel if we just had to do a hard reset (which is my troubleshooting method of choice for everything). The other steps were a bit advanced for me. Anything that requires shutting off power to tinker with electrical (i.e. potential explosiveness) innards was out. Way out.

I got there and quickly determined that the hot water heater was indeed not working. I could not seemingly make it work just by looking at it. Or touching the temperature setting panel. Not looking good. I turned power to it off and on again via the main circuit breaker...which made it rev up...for 2 seconds...before dying again. Grrr.  The on/off method did fire up something, yes, but it didn't last, and I felt justified at this point in calling in for help. I started to fear the thing blowing up with me blasting into the neighbor's yard so, yes, hello, plumber, please come now.

I found a company who said it didn't charge more for weekend service - I had seen their vans all around town  - so probably legit. It would be a hefty fee for just the diagnosis, but what could I do?

The plumber came out to the house, spent all of 3 minutes before figuring out that the OUTLET was not working. Just that outlet. He plugged in the heater to another outlet and boom. Hot water. Um, yeah, don't feel too much of a dolt about that.

God bless them, that company, they did not charge us for the visit. Even coming all the way out there to plug in our heater into a different outlet.

But, now, I totally know how to perform some seriously advanced troubleshooting. 1) Turn off and then on again. 2) plug into different outlet. 3) call for help.