Crying Purse, Smiling Car

Because I needed to get a safety inspection done for my car, and it also was time for an oil change, I scheduled a service appointment for this morning. Yes, you now have to make an appointment to get your car repaired. That amazed me the first time they asked me to do it but, in retrospect, it makes sense. No more waiting for hours and your car is ready when you want it. Plus, you set it by your schedule so you don't get as frustrated with things.

I'd requested 9 AM but they set me at 8:30. That's okay, first in first out! My dealership uses a web page to schedule these things and it has a comments area, so I asked for what I needed and included a request for a "tune up". This car maintenance procedure apparently no longer exists. When I described the problem, "It vibrates when sitting in traffic while in gear with my foot on the brake," they said they'd look into it. Turns out I needed more than a typical tune up. If such a procedure exists for a fuel injection engine, my dealership charges about $150 for it. That wasn't what I ended up paying. My car had a bigger problem. It had a gasket leak on the oil tank. This leak had dripped oil right onto a spark plug which had now been sitting in oil and not firing. So they needed to replace the gasket, the tubes for the spark plugs, and of course the spark plugs. There was also some carbon buildup on the throttle body and my air filter was nasty. So in addition to the oil change and safety inspection charge they added another $450. Ouch!

That's actually better than I'd expected. When they mention gaskets and cars I immediately think of head gaskets and replacing those pretty much rebuilds an engine. Thank goodness they didn't need to do that. It's happened to me twice over the life of times I've owned cars and I never want it to happen again. So I'm breathing a tentative, "Whew." And I think they actually took off the oil change price because the bill was about that much less than the near $600 I'd been told.

My car now drives very nicely. No vibrations and it picks up speed much, much better. Thank you Universal Toyota! For all the bad rep that dealerships get, Universal is really a good one. I base this opinion on 3 things:1) when I bought the car they actually listened to me; 2) when I took it back for a check oil light the day I bought it they went beyond the usual level of investigation on the car and I ended up with a better than purchase loaner and a new short block free of charge; 3) a couple of years later when a check engine light kept coming on within a week of being investigated and repaired, they completed the last 3 investigations free of charge and did a $500+ dollar repair gratis too. Yeah, I could have gotten a cheaper oil change at Wal-Mart, but I wouldn't have gotten the level of service this dealership gives to its customers. So, if you live in the San Antonio area and need work on your Toyota I highly recommend them.

Jury Duty

This is the Bexar County Courthouse, a historical building still in use in Downtown San Antonio, TX.

If you live in the USA, every so often you get called for jury duty. Monday was my day to serve. I'd already postponed it once because of work so I didn't think I should try again. Mind you, this day happened right after a very busy weekend where I traveled away overnight, attended a dinner at my rector's home, and even managed to make an offering for the table. So this added a lot of stress.

The jury summons isn't the easiest of documents to read, but it's clear enough in its instructions. It tells you when to get there, 8:00AM, and to not be late. It tells you where parking can be found. Then it tells you that parking is expensive and hard to find even if you do drive into downtown San Antonio. Last time I was on jury duty I drove my car and parked in the parking tower across the street. This time I didn't want to deal with the heavy traffic and I hadn't been downtown in quite a few years so I was no longer familiar with its streets. The city in its wisdom sent a bus pass along with the summons so I elected to use it.

I've ridden buses before but not in San Antonio. To accomplish the mission of getting to court on time I had to research the route. Of course, I didn't do this till Saturday and the bus offices are closed on weekends. I had to use the website. It had a handy utility that allowed you to plan your route. By using it I was able to discover that I needed to take bus route 17 and that I was to meet it at the Randolph Park & Ride. Then I looked up the bus schedule for that route and the location of the Park & Ride. Even with a map the website didn't have an address for the Park & Ride so I had to google it. Then with directions in hand I decided to take the 7:00 AM bus which would get me there before 7:30. It was an express bus so the ride only took 18 minutes inbound. The outbound trip was more like 25 minutes.

I'm the kind of person who gets incredibly nervous on streets and areas I'm not familiar with. That's because I can get incredibly lost. My cell phone has functioned as a navigation aid in getting to work more than once when detours rerouted me. So, I got driving directions from Yahoo. I carefully printed out the route, the schedule, even a map of the downtown bus stops. I stuck this all with my summons and the bus pass and into my purse they went. I set my clock for 5:00 AM so that I could get up and be fully awake when I tried to find a new place in the dark. My body protested both going to sleep and getting up. For sleep I took a pill and for waking I trusted the sounds of Credence Clearwater Revival blasting from my CD radio.

Jury duty is boring. You sit in a huge room with a lot of other people. Knowing this I brought several books to read, some sudoku, and a bottle of water. I also packed a couple of pop tarts figuring that I didn't want to pay for lunch at downtown tourist prices. The Park & Ride was not as hard to find as I'd feared. The bus was already there when showed up. The driver told me he would tell me when to get off. So I sat down near the front and off we went.

When I got off the bus the Justice Center was across the park from where I was so I had about half a block to walk. Once there the doors were manned by security guards with metal detectors and scanners for your bags. These security measures were put in place back in the '90s because someone brought a gun into a courtroom and shot someone with it.

The jury room is in the basement and once there we had to line up in the hall where they took our filled out surveys which had been a part of the summons. Then we walked single file into a room with over 400 chairs. I found a seat near the front and was happy with that. The lady next to me turned out to be a grandmother who had a daughter that was close to giving birth. She also had other grand kids to babysit but she was there anyway. We had nice chats all morning long, interrupted occasionally by periods of intense listening while they read off a list of names. Those people who were called would then be taken to a courtroom by an officer and there serve their duty. Or not.

By noon I hadn't been called so the grandmother and I decided to go to lunch outside. The woman on the other side of her got invited too and we discussed where to go. They elected to do Bill Miller's which is a barbecue chain. I said that was fine and had intended to just eat my Poptarts. The new lady decided that wasn't good and bought me lunch. We took our food to go and went out to sit in the park. There was one table left that I could see and we made a beeline for it.

When we sat down it turned out there was a band warming up in the corner across from us. They played in a Latin style and the music was pretty good. So was the food and the company. Once the eating was done I took out my camera and took some pictures.



This is a picture of the band as they were playing. Occasionally someone from the listeners would get up and dance around in front of them to the music.



These are my dining companions. The lady in pink is the grandmother and the professionally dressed lady was the one who bought me lunch.


From where we were sitting you could see a good bit of the surrounding area. The park is in the midst of the oldest part of Downtown and is taken care of zealously by the City Parks Division. This building was pretty far away but the tower is famous for its gargoyles which you might be able to see. They are those little projections off the side at each level. There's a stature up on tome too but I don't think it shows in this view.



There used to be huge trees filling the whole park. Recently they discovered that all the trees were diseased and most had to be cut down. The city put in these fountains which are nice looking and there are some decorative tiles placed throughout the park. What was missing was all the grass and squirrels that inhabited the ancient live oak trees.



It being Christmas season the city is putting on the ritz. The Riverwalk is bright with lights through all the trees and this was the tree that had been placed and decorated for the park. It looks like they hired a decorator to do it. Behind it you can see the front of one of the oldest churches in town. I think it is Anglican but I may be wrong. San Antonio started as a Mission community so there are several churches in the downtown area.

Update: Paschal tells me this is a Roman Catholic church and is the San Fernando Cathedral.



Here's an unimpeded view of the church architecture. These were taken while strolling and I wasn't in the best of positions to get pictures of the entire building at once. So I took the next shot.



Here you can see the height of the church and a better view of its architecture. I'm not sure but I think it is Gothic style of some sort.

I wanted to show you the spires on the courthouse. I think they are rather interesting in their different styles. The building is so old that there have been some carefully done renovations on it recently. But old as it is, San Antonio still loves it and it is in full use.

Here's a better view of the entire courthouse. It's pretty big. The Justice Center which is right next to it is even bigger and while pretty enough for modern buildings, no where near as interesting.

My name was called for a panel at 1:45. This was the biggest panel they called and the request was for 50 people. The judge told us she only needed to call 32 but knowing how things can run she called for 50 and they were glad they had. It was a felony case. That's about all I can tell you right now. I was not selected for the jury for which I was grateful. They let us go at 4:45 and we raced down to the jury room to get our passes and make sure that everything was in place to show we had served our day.

I went outside to locate the bus stop. It turned out to be about a block away. The bus returning was not as full as the morning bus had been but the conversation was more lively. The ladies who rode this one were used to taking it home together. One of them was knitting and quite accomplished at it. She was making a tank top for herself. The whole ride was pleasanter for her friendly conversation.

When we reached the Park & Ride a nice gentleman told me the best way out of the lot which was very helpful because the traffic at 5:30 was intense. I made it home safely and except for a dirty car was none the worse for wear. The cats were glad to see me and were eager to eat. I managed to stay up and even played a game of Scrabble with Sandi.

Misc. Bits

It's been nice to be busy this past week. Work is interesting and going well. I'm working a field test so details can't be shared but it is Math and the grades I'm on are 5 though 7. Each question is under development so they get created and then given to a sampling of students before they are put into an actual test. It takes a long time for test questions to be developed to the point of test inclusion. This is one of the reasons the education system doesn't have enough money to hire teachers. Tons of it is going to pay for the proof that they are doing their jobs, these high stakes tests.

This past weekend Hooboo managed to get himself into a fight and got his ear chomped through. There is a hole all the way through although it is healing. But over the three days before I realized it needed attention it developed an infection. When I looked at it on Tuesday it was weepy with stuff that turned scabby and was a little bit pink when I washed his ear out with ear cleaner. Uck! Yesterday evening I ran to the store and picked up hydrogen peroxide and some antibiotic ointment. With a treatment yesterday and again this morning it is looking better. The swelling is going down and the heat is gone. Whew! Thank goodness for kittens fast metabolisms.

Life has gotten really busy for me at church. Normally I'd think you couldn't do too much at church, but I may have been wrong. I added in choir as an activity about 3 weeks ago and while I love it I'm having to give up some of my adult education time. I'm already a Lay Minister and on Altar Guild, so the first Sunday I sang I was at both services since I was serving at the early service and singing at the late. This past Sunday I was singing at the late service and had altar guild duties afterward. Did I mention we are having a really good Sunday school class on spirituality and how to return to its center? I hate leaving early to warm up but I can't let the choir down. This Sunday two of those serving areas want me to help out by manning a table during our ministry fair which we are holding to try to increase the number of people contributing time to church service. I'm trying to decide if I want to attend early service to visit with my friend Kathy and keep in touch with what is going on there (because I'm also signed up for verger training and knowing how things are supposed to go is the main responsibility there). So when am I supposed to be at home and calling Mom? She sits by the phone waiting for those calls that I make with love every Sunday! And why did I pick up choir? Because it's fun and I wanted some socializing other than just on Sunday's. And I'm getting that! I get to sit next to Paschal's wife Tina most practices and Sunday's and when Betty comes back from traveling I will get to sit next to her too. Last night Marise, who I know but don't spend much time talking to, offered to sit next to me so that I'd have a strong singer to follow, I'm singing alto and haven't followed sheet music in over 30 years. I was delighted! It made things so much easier! And how nice of her! :)