In a spirit of being festive, I made sure the paper’s masthead was pink for today (well, it’s technically magenta, but people look at it and think pink, so it’s pink).
To extend this effort, I also have a specially themed Valentine’s post (largely based on occurrences from this weekend). Looking at the ever-present counter at the top of the library’s computer screen, I have 9 minutes and 35 seconds before I’m supposed to log off (e-mailing, blog reading, online zombie fighting, and finishing the hypertext on the previous post having taken up so much time).
Nevertheless, it is my stated goal to transcribe as much as I can now and come back to the library during my dinner break to conclude the tale… or worst case scenario, tomorrow morning (well, I figure the worst case scenario would be posting on Oct. 27, 2083, so I guess I’m aiming for best-case worst case scenario).
Anyway, please enjoy
Fire, Ice, and Hearts – A Valentine’s Banquet
Part One: Tricky Connections
Music: “Expressway to Your Heart” covered by the Blues BrothersSo I decided to attend my first big church event on Sunday. I’ve been going to Sunday services at the Assembly of God church in town for a month now (Wednesday services being out since I’m at the paper). However, the church was sponsoring a big sectional Valentine’s Day dinner for the area churches. It was to be conducted in a restaurant owned by some of the members of the church and fully catered. In lieu of other plans, and my own cooking, I thought it’d make for an interesting evening.
As to my expectations, it was par for the course.
I caught a ride from one of the members of the youth group I’ve been getting to know. He often works odd jobs around the church, being a utility player however is needed. As I’ve seen occur before, within a few minutes of arriving and picking out some seats, he was asked to look into a car problem.
If showing that you care for your fellow man by tinkering with another parishioner’s vehicle isn’t a great way to start a Christian Valentine’s banquet, then… well… I guess I’ll have to come up with another example for next year. As it was, we still had 20 minutes before the food would be served, so we had time to kill anyway.
We were told a turn signal “wasn’t working,” and if we figured out that we could look into fixing a neon tracking light.
While I am told my friend is a car fiend has driven nearly every church member’s vehicle (all but treating the church parking lot as his own personal car lot), tackling this case was a bit more personal than the average fix-it job. We had worked on the same car a week before – and on the same tail light, no less – so we were curious to know if we had bungled something in the previous job.
Heading outside, to a windy but not too dreary dusk, we found the suspect car. A short investigation showed us all the turn signals were working; we checked the front and the back because a miscommunication the previous week had cost us several minutes and made us look like fools for not checking both ends of the vehicle). A further review showed the other lights were working: emergency blinkers, low beams, and high beams – the last to my temporary blindness.
Slightly confused, seeing as the turn signal was already fixed, we pressed on with our charge.
We had no idea where the neon running light was hooked into the car. We began a search for excess wires or mysterious gizmos that looked out of place. We hadn’t looked long when we found a makeshift wire creatively tucked into a panel of a fuses in a side panel. It was a MacGyver-rig if I ever saw one.
Of course, while it stood out in the “one of these things is not like the other” contest, we weren’t sure what it did. My friend decided to start pulling out some of the fuses to get a better feel for the situation. I didn’t think this was the best idea, but since my assistance largely consisted of blocking the wind, nodding thoughtfully, and saying common sense things like “Are you sure it’s plugged in?”, my opinion wasn’t given as much weight.
For all the tweaking and rearranging, nothing discernable changed – other than the time on the clock. Even more confused, and having exhausted the options he had in a cramped parking lot devoid of tools, we decided to pack it in. We put everything back the way it was – we hoped – if only to follow the old maxim, if you can’t fix it, leave it no worse off than you found it (a particularly difficult adage to follow).
We did a double check of the major systems to make sure we hadn’t disconnected anything important:
“Radio?”
“Check.”
“Headlights work?”
“Good,” I reply from the side, instead of standing face on like before. “She would have missed that. How about the breaks?”
“They’re good.”
“Great. She would have missed that too; maybe not as quickly, but just as surely.”
We went back in to report our findings. When we told the woman her turn signal was working, she said she knew that, it just “wasn’t working well.”
Ah… not working well. That was an important adjective that was left out. We could have used that.
We’d spent 25 minutes, and for all our efforts all we had done was “fixed” a light that wasn’t broken and found a mystery wire. My friend told the woman if she brought the car by later this week, he might have better luck with it.
With that out of the way, we were ready for some food.
This post seems to be getting long enough (coinciding with my time running out at the library). There will be more to come, but it will be in the form of a Part II post.
stay tuned…
