Subaru in the Winter
First row of elephants completed (for those of you just tuning in, the issue is whether or not I can finish a child's vest before January 26):
I need to do some rows of geometric patterning -- easy peasy, so that'll go quickly -- and then repeat the 28-row pattern and another 10 rows before I start decreasing for the V-neck. (I've got 221 stitches on the needles now.) I think I can do this. Can knit tonight, even, for a while at least, at choir rehearsal; the elephant section I might not want to do at choir, as it requires looking at the chart too often, but I can do geometrics while the sopranos and tenors are getting yelled at. Ah, the advantages of being an alto! It's not that my section is better -- no, no. It's that we're not doing fancy things, so don't require as much, shall we say, guidance. I try to sing Very Low Notes so as to make it clear I should NOT be moved over into the soprano section, where I'd NEVER get any knitting done.
So, it's winter, and it's cold, cause I'm in Pittsburgh, so that's how it is, and the Subaru station wagon -- which I have specifically because there's about four days in the year here when a Terrible Ice Storm hits and it's excellent to have all-wheel drive -- has started its annual acting up, which consists of calling wolf. Whenever it gets cold, the "check engine" light on the dashboard lights up -- Sam took it in this summer, and asked Them to look at it, and They said it was just fine. So the "check engine" light is on, or it's not on, depending on how cold the car is, and it doesn't mean anything, really, except that the car thinks we should clean out the garage and keep it there, instead of in the driveway. Dream on, little car.
Only now, instead of just coughing up the "check engine" light, the Subaru's started lighting up the "brake" light. Well, didn't THAT give me a turn the first time it happened. I thought something gawdawful had happened to the brakes. Nope. The light's on cause the car's cold, and apparently it needs a little dash light that says "car dislikes the temperature," but it hasn't got one, so it lights other things up at random.
This irks me.
The upshot is that I have no idea if anything is wrong with the car or not, do I? Cause various sorts of lights are on all winter, so I don't pay attention to them anymore, do I? So at some point I'm going to be driving down the freeway, and the engine will stop, and the brakes will fail, all at once, and then when we drag the car in, They will say, well, the dash lights TOLD you there was a problem, why didn't you do anything about it?
Mostly I love this car -- it has a disarming cup holder that's really cute, and makes me wish I drove with coffee cups so I could use it. And you can fit either an entire Christmas tree, or all your groceries, or belongings for a family of three on a week-long trip to the beach, in the back. Also, it drives pretty well for a station wagon, emblem of the Suburban Mom part of my identity. But I don't like this crying wolf problem with the lights.
Also, there's that issue with the clutch. I'd been driving the thing for two years when the clutch went out, to my extreme shock. Sam took it in, so They could fix, it, and asked Them why the clutch had given out so early, and They said that it had something to do with how his wife drove the car.
It was good it was Sam who took it in, cause that would have gone right up my nose. Oh, really. How I drive the car. What an excellent remark that would be to make to ME, who learned to drive on a three-on-the-tree '53 Plymouth (which was at that point about 20 years old and drove like a truck), and spent her teenage years driving A LOT (cause that's what you do if you're a teenager in Albuquerque, mostly around in the desert really fast), and won't drive anything but a stick-shift (cause automatics aren't really CARS), and besides that has been a feminist since 1969, when she was Exceedingly Young but doesn't feel like doing the math right now! Yo, dude! Why don't you call me a Little Lady, too, cause I'll REALLY like that!
And it was good also that Sam's Professorial mode took over, instead of his Southern Gentleman mode (though they're often the same thing), as instead of saying Suh! Ah say, Suh! You have denigrated the character of Mah Wife! Pistols at 20 paces, Suh! he said, much more reasonably, Well, if it's how she's been driving the car, then why is it that she drove the Toyota, also standard transmission, for 10 years, and the clutch on it was just fine?
Did he get a decent answer to this reasonable question? He did not. Later we heard that Subaru clutches are notorious for going out early. How I drive the car. I think not.
Maybe I'll go call Them out myself.
I need to do some rows of geometric patterning -- easy peasy, so that'll go quickly -- and then repeat the 28-row pattern and another 10 rows before I start decreasing for the V-neck. (I've got 221 stitches on the needles now.) I think I can do this. Can knit tonight, even, for a while at least, at choir rehearsal; the elephant section I might not want to do at choir, as it requires looking at the chart too often, but I can do geometrics while the sopranos and tenors are getting yelled at. Ah, the advantages of being an alto! It's not that my section is better -- no, no. It's that we're not doing fancy things, so don't require as much, shall we say, guidance. I try to sing Very Low Notes so as to make it clear I should NOT be moved over into the soprano section, where I'd NEVER get any knitting done.
So, it's winter, and it's cold, cause I'm in Pittsburgh, so that's how it is, and the Subaru station wagon -- which I have specifically because there's about four days in the year here when a Terrible Ice Storm hits and it's excellent to have all-wheel drive -- has started its annual acting up, which consists of calling wolf. Whenever it gets cold, the "check engine" light on the dashboard lights up -- Sam took it in this summer, and asked Them to look at it, and They said it was just fine. So the "check engine" light is on, or it's not on, depending on how cold the car is, and it doesn't mean anything, really, except that the car thinks we should clean out the garage and keep it there, instead of in the driveway. Dream on, little car.
Only now, instead of just coughing up the "check engine" light, the Subaru's started lighting up the "brake" light. Well, didn't THAT give me a turn the first time it happened. I thought something gawdawful had happened to the brakes. Nope. The light's on cause the car's cold, and apparently it needs a little dash light that says "car dislikes the temperature," but it hasn't got one, so it lights other things up at random.
This irks me.
The upshot is that I have no idea if anything is wrong with the car or not, do I? Cause various sorts of lights are on all winter, so I don't pay attention to them anymore, do I? So at some point I'm going to be driving down the freeway, and the engine will stop, and the brakes will fail, all at once, and then when we drag the car in, They will say, well, the dash lights TOLD you there was a problem, why didn't you do anything about it?
Mostly I love this car -- it has a disarming cup holder that's really cute, and makes me wish I drove with coffee cups so I could use it. And you can fit either an entire Christmas tree, or all your groceries, or belongings for a family of three on a week-long trip to the beach, in the back. Also, it drives pretty well for a station wagon, emblem of the Suburban Mom part of my identity. But I don't like this crying wolf problem with the lights.
Also, there's that issue with the clutch. I'd been driving the thing for two years when the clutch went out, to my extreme shock. Sam took it in, so They could fix, it, and asked Them why the clutch had given out so early, and They said that it had something to do with how his wife drove the car.
It was good it was Sam who took it in, cause that would have gone right up my nose. Oh, really. How I drive the car. What an excellent remark that would be to make to ME, who learned to drive on a three-on-the-tree '53 Plymouth (which was at that point about 20 years old and drove like a truck), and spent her teenage years driving A LOT (cause that's what you do if you're a teenager in Albuquerque, mostly around in the desert really fast), and won't drive anything but a stick-shift (cause automatics aren't really CARS), and besides that has been a feminist since 1969, when she was Exceedingly Young but doesn't feel like doing the math right now! Yo, dude! Why don't you call me a Little Lady, too, cause I'll REALLY like that!
And it was good also that Sam's Professorial mode took over, instead of his Southern Gentleman mode (though they're often the same thing), as instead of saying Suh! Ah say, Suh! You have denigrated the character of Mah Wife! Pistols at 20 paces, Suh! he said, much more reasonably, Well, if it's how she's been driving the car, then why is it that she drove the Toyota, also standard transmission, for 10 years, and the clutch on it was just fine?
Did he get a decent answer to this reasonable question? He did not. Later we heard that Subaru clutches are notorious for going out early. How I drive the car. I think not.
Maybe I'll go call Them out myself.
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