The Saturn, the car with good gas mileage, has started losing coolant.  I’ve had to top it off a few times in recent weeks.  The problem is, I don’t know how fast it’s losing coolant–and this is complicated by the fact that the design of this vehicle does not include direct access to the radiator, but only to the overflow tank, which is under pressure when the vehicle is hot.  Thus I cannot easily determine whether there is air in the radiator trying to get out.

The problem was severe last night, as the car started overheating en route to the fulfillment of an interstate errand, and the one running the errand (not I) had to return to swap for the less-efficient truck.  This creates uncertainty, since on the one hand I had topped off the tank Saturday afternoon, but on the other hand I do not know that there was no air in the radiator and I do know that there was extensive driving done Saturday night and Sunday morning, which could have depleted the reserve.

Right now someone is driving the vehicle around locally to see whether the added coolant is sufficient; when the car returns, I will have to let it cool and then open up the overflow tank to check the level.

All of this is because it is Monday, and part of the Monday workload includes taking my mother-in-law shopping.

It has also been a strange Monday, as I was informed sometime late yesterday that one of my sons would need to be seen by a doctor today, so (after going back to bed after bus riders were organized) I forced myself out of bed once the office was open and made a call to get an appointment.  The first available appointment was at crack of dawn tomorrow–actually, eight in the morning, but that’s outrageously early by my standards–and so he did not go today.  However, I had by then forced myself into wakefulness, and so attempted to get started on my day–an effort which took longer than I would have preferred, and then was interrupted several times once the hurdles were crossed.

At the moment, then, I am trying to get as much of this work done as I am able while awaiting the return of the car so I can figure out what I’m doing for dinner and what I’m doing about the car.  Once those matters are settled, I will be dealing with my mother-in-law with whichever vehicle is guessed to be the better choice, and returning to finish whatever was left undone.

So maybe I do know what I’m doing; I just don’t know that I know.

–M. J. Young

Why don’t you just tell everyone that you don’t have time to post because you have to get ready for Ubercon?

The question would have been less ironic, I suppose, were it not that the one asking it had called me around one in the morning, when I was trying to make good use of the time my laundry was running by washing some of the dishes which must be under control by the time I leave tomorrow–a phone call that lasted over an hour and took me away from the things I needed to do to look at one of the very forum posts he was suggesting I not answer until Monday.  Yet irony or no, it was a good question.  I could decline to attend today’s game, and let it all slide into Monday.  I would be a lot less pressured in terms of convention preparations were I to do so.

It is not so simple as that, however.  To my mind, the question is not whether I will post today, but whether I will attempt to post tomorrow before I leave.  My inclination at the moment is that I will not, but it is a hesitant inclination.  I believe that I have always posted on Friday before departing for any convention, probably all the way back to Apartment Con years ago.  However, I have also gotten caught in traffic, or fallen behind schedule, or otherwise wound up reaching the first event late, or breathless, or both.  I would like this time to get to my hotel first, leave my suitcase there (since I will be traveling in the pickup this time around, and I do not wish to leave my suitcase in the bed of a pickup in a hotel parking lot in the middle of a New Jersey Turnpike interchange while I spend four to six hours in the convention).  That means I’m looking to leave earlier than I usually get out of bed, and hoping to have accomplished at least a few things before that (although I will probably pack most of the stuff into the truck tonight).  So I already feel a bit guilty about the fact that I am nixing tomorrow’s visit, and to add today to it would be too much.

On top of that, as I pointed out to my caller, the work does not stop stacking up simply because I stop doing it.  Come Monday I will have all that I usually do on Monday, plus whatever I did not do in the interim.  Frequently I have managed to pop in and post upon my return Sunday night–but last Ubercon the last session was packed, and this Ubercon promises to be even more insane, so there’s no hope of an early departure (and really, I do not hope that there will be no interest in the last session).  I will be late getting home, and probably will not be able to do the bare minimum of Sunday’s work.  Thus Monday promises to be nightmarishly overloaded, and adding Thursday to it would be completely foolish.

So here I am; but I make no promises that I will return again before Monday.

–M. J. Young

The Collision concert went reasonably well last night.  Baxter brought his new amp, which looks really good, but because we’d not worked with it I suggested we use the old one for this concert.  Adam got crossed communication wires and went to the wrong coffeehouse location, and since Brittany had to be out early we got a short delay and then did the first song without him, tuned up the bass while Brittany introduced the second, and finished our two songs to audience approval.  I got some compliments on Adam’s playing, but he ducked out early.  Baxter and I did an encore near the end of the night, which also went well, although not as well as the opening songs.

Meanwhile, I’m starting to get nervous about the week ahead.  I’ve got Ubercon on Friday, and Kyler has indicated that he will not be going this time, and I’m not certain what John’s situation is.  I can probably handle it alone–but there are still many preparations to make, including getting my hotel reservation (I don’t know anyone close enough to Edison to stay with them, despite having attended elementary school within half an hour of there).  I have to do inventory of everything that has to go with me, probably printing copies of forms used, and make sure that I have everything packed.  Complicating this, my Monday Workload has been increased because when I take my mother-in-law shopping I will also have to go about ninety minutes further to return a certain young lady to her home.  Then my overbooked Tuesday has been further overbooked by the need to help an old friend move.  I’ve also realized that our youngest guest’s medicine will run out next weekend, and that his doctor cannot refill it without seeing him, so I’m going to have to twist arms to get him an appointment midweek on top of everything else.

It’s not looking good; and I have been alerted that there is a substantial amount of work awaiting me in the form of an analysis of The Last Mimzy that will add a significant chunk of time to Monday’s work.

Conventions always mean crazy weeks; unfortunately, crazy weeks don’t always wait until they are convenient.

–M. J. Young

I suppose it was a sort of accomplishment.

I finished my scheduled Monday work last night, signing out from posting to the Corinthians list just as my wife finished hers and arrived home.  We were both dealing with those last-thing-before-bed things when the phone rang, and our son wanted to come home from his work address.  Normally my wife would go, as she enjoys late night drives; or else, if she was not feeling well, I would go.  However, she decided we would both go.  That, though, meant that our departure was delayed a bit longer, and we stayed a bit longer at the other end than we otherwise might have done.  I got home in time to shut off the five o’clock alarm and give the first boy his medicine as he prepared for school.

We had a bit of a scare, because his bus was late.  I do not recall it ever having been late, and thus our fear was that it had come early and he had missed it.  This would have meant an extra forty minutes or more of driving for me, to deliver him to the school.  However, it arrived, and he caught it.  I, then, proceeded to prod the other boy, the one who has to catch the next bus but who lately has been freed from riding buses because his girlfriend drives and has her own car.  He is not an easy starter, but I managed to get him to acknowledge verbally that it was six thirty-one.

I’m afraid that the next thing I remember was said girlfriend standing over him telling him that he had to hurry, because she had misplaced her car keys and her father was driving them.  He flew out of the house remarkably quickly as I apologized for failing to roust him quicker, and I finally had the opportunity to get ready for bed.

All of which means that I am finally hitting the ground for today’s work.  I have managed in the midst of everything else to arrange for our mechanic to take a look at the car one of my sons is hoping will be available for him to take to school soon.  I’ve unblocked it in the drive, but one of our houseguests has apparently decided it is a good place to store stuff, so I’m going to have to get him to clean it out later before it vanishes.  However, there is much still to do, so I’d better get to the doing.

–M. J. Young

…Not necessarily in that order.

As I mentioned on Sunday, yesterday’s plan involved driving north so that a son could spend his girlfriend’s birthday with her. This also would give me opportunity to visit my sick father, who although home from the hospital seems to have lost his voice (vocal chords not responding for some reason), and to connect with our drummer to give lend him the electronic drum gadget he’s been eager to use. It has also meant that the Monday workload got pushed into today atop the Tuesday workload, which is a lot of work.

The plan did not go entirely smoothly. I believe I got almost three hours of sleep by five in the morning, when the first to need to catch a bus was looking for his morning medicine, and then in somewhat disrupted and disjointed fashion pieced together my morning study and was on the road around quarter after seven. We grabbed breakfast at the gas station (which is not as bad as it sounds, since although Wawa has recently established a strong place in the retail gasoline market they are traditionally a deliconvenience store) and so reached the northern destination very shortly after ten.

Having fought for consciousness over the last leg of that journey, I locked the car and slept, fitfully with the CD player running, for about two hours. I then was unable to reach the drummer, who I think had not anticipated his wife and her Irish family monopolizing his time on St. Patrick’s Day–but my mother called, wondering why I was not already there, so I went there, ate lunch, and by around two was reading clippings cut for me.

Then, perhaps near three, I fell asleep again, and slept until my cell phone awoke me, my wife calling to see what arrangements I had made for several things she had expected me to address. Since it was by then almost six, my mother turned her attention to feeding me dinner and packing my car full of groceries. I still could not raise my drummer on the phone, I settled in to wait for someone to call.

The son called first–not the son for whose call I was waiting, but the son who hoped I would pick him up from his brother and bring him home for a few days. That was agreed, although the timeline was still uncertain. Then the anticipated son called, but to tell me that he was going to have dinner nearby before he was ready to go home. Then the drummer called, and the end of the stay up there was a somewhat awkward juggling of conflicting connections–but we made it.

The return trip put us in the driveway around two in the morning, if memory serves, and then there were some things that could not stay in the car overnight which had to be unpacked. My online work was limited to posting to the Corinthians list, and then I got to bed about an hour before I would be getting up again–but at least this time I correctly anticipated being able to return to bed after people were rousted and driven from the house. I think I’m reasonably rested at this point, but do not know whether I will be caught up by the end of the night or not.

To add to the confusion, my mother-in-law called. We just solved her banking problem so she can pay her bills, but now she has no stamps. Thus I have promised to bring her some tomorrow. Here’s hoping that’s not too disruptive.

–M. J. Young

Tomorrow is an anticipated disaster.  I’ve been tasked with dropping someone off three hours away by ten in the morning, which means I’ll be leaving here as soon after the boys are on their buses as I can manage, and then with bringing him home sometime after eight at night, which means I’ll be getting in around midnight.  This is not unreasonably because of a certain girlfriend’s birthday, and while I am in the neighborhood I am planning to visit my ailing faither (who is home now) and hoping to catch some time with my old and returning drummer.  I am not anticipating being able to do even the bare minimum of work here.

To compensate, I had planned to tear through a lot of tomorrow’s work today, tackling e-mail and getting everything in order so that I was on top of things, and then getting to bed early.  I did manage to take my mother-in-law shopping; but my wife had a meeting up that way, and so we went together, and one thing was added to another to another until it was very late, and I am very tired, and I will be lucky to manage today’s work today, unlikely to get to bed early, and probably not going to manage to get the things from the attic that I had promised to take with me when I went.  Well, maybe I can manage that part–but I’m pressing my luck as it is.

I’m constantly asked why I never plan to do the things that need to be done.  The reason is that my plans are irrelevant; whatever I plan, I can be pretty certain that that is not going to be done.

–M. J. Young

It was like most other Mondays, really. I got through the e-mail, which is the bulk of the Monday workload, and I took my mother-in-law shopping. At the same time, it was not like other Mondays. One of my sons is sick, and no sooner did I have the others on their respective buses but I was out of the house and on my way to get medicine for him.

Even though I did get back to sleep, that put me back a bit on schedule. Further, our oven has decided to give us trouble, and the repairman will not be here to assess the situation until tomorrow morning, so since over the weekend we used the rest of the stove top foods and there’s nothing suitable for grilling, I had to bring food home for the masses. This put me back further–although I did get a bit of Romans editing done.

My breathing is rough, and I am tired and have an early day tomorrow (for the aforementioned repairman), but let me attend to the rest of today’s affairs before I crash for the night.

–M. J. Young

I knew that today was going to be trouble before it started. After all, my wife has been sick for a few days, and was going to need me to drive to the doctor for a mid-morning appointment. My sleep was to be curtailed.

Then the kid with the distant school missed the bus. I could complain that it was his fault, since he was playing a video game instead of watching out the front door; but then, I had fallen asleep on the couch and did not hear the six o’clock alarm that tells me he has five minutes to go. That meant that after getting the other kid on his bus I had to drive the first almost half an hour away. By the time I returned, there wasn’t much time for a nap, and I was going to have to get moving on my two hours of sleep–the hour from when I made it to bed after the late night delivery of my son back to his work address until my wife needed my help, and the hour from then until the five o’clock alarm.

That was bad; but I had already been forced to boot Tuesday’s work into today because because I’d booted Monday’s work into Tuesday and had that delivery run in the evening.

So it is not yet late, but it feels like it. Still, I am almost on top of the day, and with a bit more effort I’ll reach bedtime.

I do hope that the run-down feeling and body aches are due to this, and that I am not catching the horribly debilitating illness my wife is battling. I don’t want that.

–M. J. Young

This was a busier Monday than usual, as my afternoon was tapped for dealing with some important matters related to the son of a houseguest. I still had to take my mother-in-law to the store, but with the afternoon shot and supper to do it was nine at night before I reached her. Then on the way home I picked up my son from his brother–which is not really on the way, but completely the opposite direction, but still a lot less driving to pick him up while I’m there already than to make a separate trip for him.

I squeezed in the e-mail while making supper, which thanks to the premier of The Sarah Connor Chronicles (which I did not watch) had several letters concerning the Temporal Anomalies site, one of which was calling my attention to a special forum for it at the IMDB web site. I have begun the process of registering for that site so I can see that forum.

I ate supper while my computer was rebooting, which is a commentary both on how fast I wolf down my meals and on how slowly my computer functions, and now I’m trying to finish here and get some sleep before tomorrow arrives officially.

Oh, I’ve also sent a couple of music files to the drummer, so he can begin to get some idea of what I am hoping Collision will sound like. He did hear the one that is on the web, Holocaust, but I don’t know whether he got either of the ones I e-mailed him. Even so, I am going to attempt to e-mail another tomorrow, and am working on getting more of the music files converted to mp3 format (something I have not been able to accomplish on my computer, for reasons I have not been able to determine) so I can send him more.

–M. J. Young

It is Monday, so of course I took my mother-in-law shopping. I took advantage of the trip to pick up a son from his brother’s house, who will spend a few days and go back on Thursday, when there are several people needing to travel north (enough that I am not certain how we will all fit in the car, in truth).

I also remembered that for Christmas we bought art supplies for someone, and after wracking my brain a bit I remembered who (it has been a stressful holiday season). My daughter-in-law dabbles in art as a hobby. She has agreed to undertake creating a cover for the forthcoming book, Do You Trust Me? I am particularly encouraged, as when I explained the essence of the book to her over the phone, she described an image very like what I had imagined (and knew was beyond my abilities). She has already shown me an initial pencil sketch, as I delivered to her a copy of the text of the book to help her better understand it, and I like what I see.

She keeps asking when I need it; I keep saying that I’m not pushing her. It took too long to get previous covers finished, and I can’t imagine it will take her so long to do this one, so I’m happy already.

–M. J. Young