Yesterday after work I had to pop into Wal-Mart for some ‘stuff’. I was not a full scale-shopping trip; I just needed some ‘stuff’. I hate stopping after work for stuff. When work gets out I want to go straight home and flop down for about 15 minutes while the work day seeps out of me like beer out of a can tossed in a gutter.
At first I was happy when I walked in the doors of Wal-Mart because I thought blueberries were on special. They were piled up on the ‘in season’ fruit rack that dominates the fruit section of Wal-Mart. However, when I picked a carton of blueberries off I was annoyed to see that it was nearly two-dimensional. It was not so much a carton of blueberries as it was a layer. At two bucks a pop I think it came out to almost a nickel per blueberry. I bought some anyways because I wanted some fucking blueberries. I’m going to put them in pancakes. Somewhere the blueberry lord is laughing and pocketing my money.
I also picked up a Jigsaw and a can of automotive refrigerant. I have not had a/c in my car for almost two years now. Normally it does not bother me. I have hardly ever had a car that had A/C that worked. First there was my Celica, then my chevette, then my cheap mustang clone that never ran, and finally my VW bus. When I first bought my Saturn it had nice cool A/C, but it mysteriously vanished one day. I never questioned it; I simply knew it was one of the many curses I live under. One curse is that I am doomed to have a car with no A/C. Another curse is that I will always pick the slowest checkout lane in a grocery store. Oh, I have others.
After I installed a new blower in my Saturn and was pleased with the way I could once again generate a breeze in my car, I decided to try the A/C recharge. Luckily my car is new enough that it uses the ‘environmentally friendly’ coolant you can buy in stores. I found the little port on the compressor under the hood you hook it up too and followed the instructions. The can had a button that was supposed to lock when I pressed down (sort of like a raid bug bomb), but it did not engage, so I had to stand there for ten minutes wondering if it was going into the car. The can’s instructions said to ‘listen for the hissing noise’ which does me an assload of good, being deaf and all, so I had to stand there and just sort of use the force.
After a while the can got cold, so I thought perhaps it was going in. I jiggled the can a bit and was rewarded with a little bit of the coolant squirting onto my hands and making my grip slimy. I then went in the car and felt the air. If it had felt even a little bit cooler, then I would have been pleased, and would have bought another can to add more. But I’ll be damned if I could figure out if the air coming out was cooler than simply the blower by itself. I had worked up a minor sweat standing over the hot engine as I filled it with coolant, and I thought that perhaps the air blowing on me was simply cooling my sweat and was not actually colder. After a while I snorted in disgust and shut off the car and went inside. I’ll have to pay a mechanic to poke at it. I hate mechanics. Going to a mechanic is like getting raped and then having to pay for it.
I went back inside and made eggs for dinner, and then flopped in bed with my latest book, a new Agent Pendergast book 'Brimstone' by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. I am not usually a mystery reader, but damn, I love these books. Pengergast is sort of like a Hannibal Lector, but he’s a good guy and doesn’t eat people. The books are always macabre, touching on both the supernatural and the perfectly logical, and are fast paced and fun. Sort of like the x-files with more class. I’ll probably chew through it in the next couple of days.
Nineteen years ago, Ed was doing battle with a two-dimensional carton of blueberries and a hiss-less AC can.
Ah, 2007. The world still had Wal-Mart as a place you went to after work for 'stuff,' and blueberries were a seasonal miracle piled on a rack, not a year-round plastic clamshell that costs like a small mortgage. The idea of buying a can of refrigerant at the same store where you buy a jigsaw and eggs—and trying to recharge your car's AC by feel, because the can's button wouldn't lock and you're deaf—now that's a lost art. Today the car would text you a service reminder, the app would ask for a subscription to 'cool air,' and the mechanic would send a video of your compressor while you approve an estimate from your phone. Ed's curse of always picking the slowest checkout lane has evolved: now we all stand in line behind one person returning seventeen items to a self-checkout kiosk that's screaming for help. And instead of flopping in bed with a paperback Pendergast, he'd be halfway through an audiobook, interrupted by notifications. Progress! Or at least, different curses.
“2007 Ed, you stood there for ten minutes 'using the force' on a refrigerant can, then gave up and decided to pay a mechanic you hate—did it ever cross your mind to bring along a friend, a mirror, or just a piece of tissue to see if the can was actually hissing?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2007 Ed: Well, Beelzebubba, you give me way too much credit for common sense. Did it cross my mind to bring a friend, a mirror, or a tissue? Hell no. Crossing my mind would require a clear path, and my mind is usually full of old Wal-Mart receipts, cat hair, and whatever nonsense I read about Agent Pendergast the night before. A friend? I don't have that many friends who'd want to stand over a hot engine squinting at a can of refrigerant for me. And a mirror? I'd probably just end up staring at my own sweaty, baffled face and forget what I was doing. The tissue trick, though, that one stings a little. That would've been smart. But no, I stood there like a Jedi with a head cold, jiggling the can and hoping the Force would tell me if it was empty. It did not. The Force is apparently not big on automotive diagnostics. So yeah, mechanic it is. Take that, foul refrigerant.
