A Case of the Mondays

here i sit broken hearted
have a car which shoulda started
ignition switch has gone kapoop
i'm missing work and outtta the loop.

AC unit done quit on me
and the air in here is 103
money's tight, not much to give
now i know how artists live.


yes, indeedy. home alone. without a car. without reliable air conditioning. and a cat that suddenly wants to be picked up and held. i have to admit that the walk home this morning from the mechanic's shop was not so bad. i stayed on van ness blvd as long as i could. and the tow truck fee was a lot smaller than it could have been. you see, yesterday when i got in my beloved bmw 3.0 Si (silver) to go and meet lecram for sunday coffee at java wava i noticed something amiss. the damn thing wouldn't start! wouldn't even turn over! all it would do was play dead!
so, i calmly got back out of the car and called lecram to inform him that i would not be meeting him after all. this was not a good start to the day. especially after i very calmly put my fist through the window and my foot as well.
that was a joke.
so, i fretted some and i stewed some and i chewed my nails some wondering whereohwhere was i going to raise cash if the car problem thingy turned into an expensive surgery (and trust me. nothing about this car's upkeep is cheap). after a while i turned on the central A.C., because the thermostat hit 90. an hour later i realized that besides stewing i was now steaming. boiling over. that's when i noticed the thermostat read 95. that's when i noticed something new was amiss. that's when i noticed the outside condensor unit hadn't kicked on. that's when i noticed that the furnace blower was pushing outside air in without benefit of cooling.
all of this on a sunday when nothing's open and no one cares.
so, i walked over to my mechanic's house to find him remodeling the kitchen. i told him of the problem and asked him for advice. the advice he gave me in body language was to leave immediately. i politely did so without reminding him of the more than $2000 i had spent at his shop in the last year.
so, now to this morning. i called van ness automotive (a neighborhood shop), was given the green light to bring it in and proceeded to call for a tow truck. first, though, i (in my infinite wisdom) decided to try starting the car one more time. and it star---no it didn't. it thought about it for half of a second, then reverted to its original opinion.
i called for the truck. the truck arrives, driver asks what's the problem, checks lights, asks me to turn the key with lights on to check battery...and guess what? the car starts. it starts as if it hadn't a care in the world. after a good, hearty, man to man chuckle with the driver (and i'd swear the car was laughing, too) we agreed that he would charge me for a service call and would follow me to the car shop at no extra fee. so, a silverer lining around my silver P.O.S.
now, i'm home again thinking that i could hop on the city bus and be at work in about an hour (because fresno's bus system serving a community of well over 500,000 souls is a system built for a town of 500). then, my landlord calls.
"joel, whozit air conditioning will be at your house tomorrow between 1 p.m. and 4."
"...greeaat. i'll be here."
at that point i know i have no intention of getting on any bus to drive anywhere for over an hour and still have a 3/4 mile walk to work. i, also, knew that i would have to call my manager and gently inform him that i would be bussing it to work tomorrow and needing to leave early...but that brings up the question: if the earliest i can get to work is about 7:30 a.m. and i would need to catch a bus that got me back to my house by 1 p.m., should i even go in if i can only be there for four hours? the asphalt work that i do is an all day affair. after 4 hours i'm just getting into the nitty gritty of the tests.
well, i haven't called him yet. most likely he'll tell me to borrow a company truck to drive home in tomorrow. which ain't a bad thing. those trucks have better air conditioning than my car.
so, here does the call...