Category: Wednesday Wrant

I haven’t written a Wednesday Wrant in awhile, mostly because the last couple of weeks, most of my ranting thoughts have been about Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, or Rick Santorum. But, I’d rather keep it mostly unpolitical on my blog, since I’m pretty sure my political opinion won’t skyrocket my readership. Also, the dog upstairs has been getting steadily quieter as the weeks go on, so I can’t complain too much.

So today, I want to rant about the sunroof of my car. Ever since I moved to Texas, I’ve been able to pretty well count on one hand the number of days it’s rained (which, for those who can’t count on their hands, means it hasn’t rained much). Some time ago, I thought I smelled a little bit of mildew in my car, but when it dissipated almost immediately, I didn’t think about it again.

Fast forward to last week, when we had a storm worthy of the Midwest in Spring. Nonstop thunder that left my fraidy-cat dog huddling under the bed, lightning that made me wonder if I was in a rave, rain and hail beating against the window thanks to the gale-force winds that came with it. I’m also a fairly light sleeper, so it kept me up for several hours.

Since I work from home and use the gym at my apartment, I only drive about once a week. So two days later, when I got in my car to go to the grocery store, I discovered about 2 inches of water in the floorboard of my car, a soaked and stained passenger’s seat, and a discolored roof. After finding a place in town that could repair a sunroof leak, which was of course not conveniently located for me, they informed me that there was a lump of mud lodged in the drainage tubes for the sunroof that they needed to flush.

Did you know that car sunroofs had drainage tubes? NO? Me neither. They looked at me like I was a neglectful car mom and cautioned me that I am supposed to flush the tubes once a year. Why have I owned no less than three cars with sunroofs and never, once, been told that part of owning a car with a sunroof is getting the tubes drained every other time I rotate the tires? Also, I get that you CAN charge $80 to run some water though some tubes, because I have no idea where they are and would probably eff something up if I did it myself, but that’s a little steep, don’t you think? Still, thanks for vacuuming out all the water. That was nice. Not $80 nice, but nice.

In other news, it rained again last night and the inside of my car and it’s nice and dry on the inside, so I’ll see you again next year, one place in town that flushes sunroof drainage tubes…

It’s been difficult getting back into the groove of things at the office, since the holidays and being sick last week.  I had this nasty sore throat for several days, but I finally got healthy and ready to get back to work.

Unfortunately, something has been distracting me when I already have this motivation problem – the little dog upstairs has been barking.  All day, every day.  And it’s got this yip-yap whine that makes it sound like it’s in mortal danger.  At first, my dog would whine when she heard the dog upstairs, but after awhile, she’s just kind of learned to ignore it.

I wish I could do the same.  Typically, I just turn up the podcast or the song I’m listening to and try to drown him out, but then I have a meeting where the only background noise I have is YAP-YAP-YAP-YAP over and over and over.  Normally, I would call the apartment office, but I’m a little hesitant to do so.  You see, my dog is part chow, and the Texas Apartment Association expressly prohibits any mix of breed they want to call “aggressive”: Akitas, Pit bulls, German shepherds, Dobermans, Rottweilers, and Chows.  Never mind the fact that my dog is scared of her own shadow.  So I told them she’s a Retriever mix, which isn’t a complete lie, but I hate to invite complainer karma lest someone decides they want to complain about my dog.

When the owners are home, the dog doesn’t bark, but it runs from one end of the apartment to the other all the time, which would make me wonder if it were thundering outside if only it weren’t Texas, where it rains about two days a year.  If I write the dog into a story and then murder it violently, I hope you all won’t think less of me if it turns up dead the next day.  I would think it’d be barking itself hoarse by now.