Monday, December 16, 2013

Weekend.

Sunday morning scones and coffee.

So it turns out my little car just needed a new battery. But rather than not starting up while sitting in our parking spot at home, my car decided to dramatically stop running while waiting at a light. In interest of full disclosure, though, I was doing something that might be considered sort of weird driving behavior.

During the winter Utah has terrible air quality issues. Friday was a yellow air day which means no wood-burning stoves/fireplaces can be used and, if possible, people are asked to limit their driving. I needed to take a check to our interior designer for our wallpaper order (which will be installed at the end of this week!!) and, as I drove to her office, my guilty conscience nagged at me for driving my diesel and adding to the smog-filled air.

I dropped the check off, she said "Oh, you could've put this in the mail!" (DOH!), and then I headed home. As I approached an intersection with a notoriously long wait cycle for the direction I was headed, the light turned red and I had an idea.

Rather than idle for three or so minutes while waiting for the green light, I turned off my car.

All of the lights in Utah have a countdown for the walk signal so that a person crossing the street knows how much time they have to make it through the intersection. And as soon as the countdown hits zero, the light turns red for that direction of traffic. So this smarty-pants decided to watch the countdown of the walk signal and time the restarting of my car with the green light.

And wouldn't you know it! When I turned the key, I had no power. No lights. No radio. No turn-over of the engine. My hazard lights wouldn't even turn on!

Luckily my car stopped working on a street with relatively low traffic but I was in the left turn lane blocking traffic onto a major road so I had to wave a few cars around my broken-down car. Eventually a policeman showed up and stayed parked behind me with his lights on since mine were useless. And then an hour later, the tow truck arrived and towed me and my car to the VW dealership.

Thank god Alice didn't come with me on that errand.

By Saturday morning my car was fixed and the three of us headed to Park City to spend some time with one of Lee's friends from college who was in town with her family to celebrate a birthday (nice finally meeting you, T!). And then my mom came over on Sunday morning to hang out with Alice while Lee painted the remaining walls of our bedroom and I made delicious (and easy!) lemon scones.

How was your weekend?

Weekend workouts: None... a late night out on Friday, a full day on Saturday, and a sore throat on Sunday. Yuck. But I did register for an ultra-marathon! More on that another day....

3 comments:

  1. The scones were delicious.... Alice ate most of mine. She loved them too. Thanks for inviting me to come play with Alice on Sunday. Hope you are feeling better soon. xoxo

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  2. That sounds so frustrating! I do the same thing at lights or, say, the coffee drive-thru -- I always wonder how much it affects pollution. I'm totally down with the "Turn your key, be idle free" campaign... but I can't help but wonder how much pollution is reduced in those few minutes vs. how much extra energy it takes to restart your car [I'm sure people more invested and well-versed in these sciences have figured out such things ;) ]

    No wonder you woke up with a sore throat with this nasty air! I hope you're feeling better and it isn't turning into a cold. My lungs have been feeling it the past few days and Devon has had a couple migraines since our air quality has dropped. Such a bummer for such an otherwise gorgeous state.

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  3. Oh my goodness, you definitely should have had a stiff drink after that morning! Glad to hear it wasn't anything to expensive, just frustrating.

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