Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Good start to the week and year, but then

Tuesday came around. Seems like such an innocuous day at first glance, but it is back to grindstone after holiday weekends. When exactly did this trend of moving holidays to monday start anyway? In the UK I believe they call them bank holidays and had them for many decades but I believe in the U.S. we didn't do holidays to make 3 day weekends for banks and government employees until about 30-35 years ago. I remember they moved memorial day to last (or possibly 4th) monday in May when I was a kid, and we used to 'celebrate' Abraham Lincoln and George Washington birthdays in school. Probably the USPS/government offices had day off but kids celebrated in school --then the U.S. moved to MLK day on the 3rd monday in Jan + 'presidents day' on 3rd monday in Feb and teachers take these days off along with the banks and gubmint employees (and us who get most of the gubmint holidays --but not veterans day because they are a bunch of commie hippies here and want 4 paid days at thanksgiving instead. This year is bad since Christmas and NYD fell on sundays so we have extra monday holidays.

And then tuesday is a preferred voting/caucus day and that leads to plenty of evening angst on several election year tuesdays. Darn it, taking an interest in politics is bad for one's mood. Such a depressing thing choosing the candidate you distrust the least rather than really liking any of them most of the time and then stupid people buy phony BS propaganda and make choices you think are even worse than your own 'best option available' or worse you actually liked a candidate but stupid other voters reject them.

Then I bumped into the cupboard door with my mug of hot peppermint tea last night when I went to reach for sugar. OW dammit, splashed right onto the side of my boob. Grabbed the tee away from my skin and ran upstairs and stripped and got some cold water on it and then neosporin + lidocaine and used an ice pack a bit later and it is barely, just barely a first degree burn in the center of the spot that was bright pink last night but it was uncomfortable for about an hour. Who knew there are that many nerve endings on a boob.

Then today, a really NICE sunny warm morning but I choose to grab my snow tires to get them put on and the tire guy talked me out of it. (well not OUT of it --but I didn't have him swap them out) I am so annoyed. Darn it, charge enough for the service that it is worth your while instead of wanting me to wear out your brand name tires faster so that you can sell me the replacements or whatever. I misunderstood when he said $10 to do it, but "its not worth doing it when you'll take them off in 2 months" it is really more like 4 or 4.5 months, they don't have to come off before end of Apr, middle of May; and thought it was $10/tire which seemed so high I didn't care to bother, but they charge $2.50 per tire to rotate on their price board inside and I think it should not be any more to swap my snow tires on their own rims for the tires that were on the car so that would have been $10 total, he was by himself and maybe wanted to be free to make a higher profit sale but it was very irksome. Guess I'll see if the co-op does tire rotations for a reasonable charge, or I'll dig into my mulish side and change them myself this weekend even though it will take me so much longer not having the lift and air wrenches that $10 would be very much worth having got it done. Mebbe the tire store owner is going Galt.

4 comments:

Gerrick said...

I think the "Bank holiday" stuff started with FDR back in the '30s.

Gerrick said...

Oh, and if I lived near you I would change your tires for free. It's not much effort if the snow tires are on their own rims.

Teresa/ride4fun said...

I think the FDR/Hoover bank holidays were to stop runs on the banks. I read a novel by a Brit writer once that referred to Bank Holidays which seemed to be monday holidays. U.S. Federal holidays moved from actual anniversaries to #monday of the month in 1971. Sometimes wikipedia is useful, I knew I remembered it changing when I was a kid.

You make me feel so lazy for not just swapping my tires myself all the time. I think I am going to do it this weekend, I was going to have Meineke do it today but they had a 2 hour wait, so would not have saved me any time at all.

Gerrick said...

Yeah, but after changing your tires around I would probably get on changing the oil in my van.