Here’s how I planned to spend today:
9.30am: duck up to petrol station to fill tyres with air
10am: appointment with Chiropractor
11am: drop in to rickybuchanan’s place to pick up book
12ish: return books to Melbourne Uni Library.
Lunch, maybe with my colleague Dale.
1ish: Pop in to ACMI, hand in my volunteer’s member form, borrow a bunch of films for thesis.
1.30ish: Take Jezebel to vet for check-up.
3ish: Install self in front of TV and watch cool film borrowed from ACMI. Repeat until filled with filmic stupor and joy.
Here’s what actually happened:
9.30am: Try to start Astrid. Fail. Try to kick-start Astrid. Fail. Hurt leg in process.
9.40am: Kind new downstairs door neighbour comes out to find out who is kicking Astrid and swearing. Assess situation and decide: flat battery caused by trying to start bike in cold and flooding it.
10.10am: Kind new next door neighbour drives me to chiropractor.
10.50am: Kind new next door neighbour picks me up from chiropractor and takes me to petrol station to fill jerry can with petrol asshe was very low anyway.
11.10am: Arrive home with jerry can. Try to find key to Astrid. Cannot find key to Astrid anywhere.
11.30am: Attempt to use special code key to open Astrid. Succeed. Fill tank. Attempt to key-start Astrid. Fail. Attempt to kick-start Astrid. Fail. Kind new next door neighbour attempts to kick-start Astrid. Fails. Kind new next door neighbour leaves for uni.
12pm: Call RACV. Wait in phone queue. Am only insurance member not roadside assistance member. Am put through to membership line. Wait in phone queue. Pay $165 to join. Am put back through to roadside assistance line. Wait in phone queue. Am told that RACV only offers limited roadside assistance to motorbike and scooter owners and that they can come and tow it to a shop but will not kick-start her for me. Ask why I was just made to pay $165 after explaining clearly what I needed. Am told that was to become a member. Yell and scream a bit. Finally convince idiot on end of phone that a battery is a battery is a battery and that I basically need roadside assistance, not a towtruck.
12.45pm: RACV guy arrives. Attempts to kick-start Astrid. Fails. I lift seat, get out tools. We unscrew battery lid. Battery is tiny and cute but regular 12 V thing so attach jumper leads and jump-start. Success! Check battery with multimeter. Charging properly!
1pm: Go to petrol station and fill tyres with air. Only 3.5 hours behind schedule.
1.30pm-ish: Arrive at rickybuchanan’s. Grab book. Leave. (Sorry so short! Would have loved to stay longer.)
2pm: Go to Vespa House on Johnston St and buy new blank microchipped key for Astrid. $28.
2.20pm: Go to Collingwood Locksmith and get them to cut new blank key using Master key. $7.50.
2.40pm: Return to Vespa House to get new key programmed so it will over-ride Astrid’s immobiliser. Frank decides Scooter Market did something weird to Astrid when they fixed her last time and that’s why left tail light isn’t fitting properly. He checks. Says fuel tank is loose because they forgot a screw and it will take him 20 minutes to remove luggage rack and bunch of other stuff and insert screw.
2.50pm: Go and eat lunch while Frank inserts screw.
3.30pm: Finally head to Melbourne Uni to return books.
4.15pm: Arrive ACMI. Hand over volunteer member form. Am informed it takes a week to process forms and that I can start borrowing next Wednesday.
Laugh maniacally. Return home.
4.45pm: Call vet. Explain insane day. Describe Jezebel’s healing. Sigh with relief when told her check-up can probably wait till Saturday.
5pm: Write LJ entry as attempt to calm down. Mostly succeed.
Meanwhile, happy Samhain people. sleazemonkey and I celebrated early last Friday night but my friend Mark alerted me to a site that has accurate cross-quarter days as well as solstices and equinoxes, so now I can stop being lazy and saying the cross-quarter festivals are on whatever calendar day the renaissance folks assigned to them. What’s more it has the local times, so I don’t have to do that calculation myself anymore! Go, Mark!