Tag: office

Today, I have to travel to my company’s home office to teach a class. The day before I’m supposed to drive over I find I’ve got a voice mail. As I do 99.9999% of my job either via emails, IMs or F2F, this in itself was extremely odd. Then I listened to the message and found out it was a sales manager from dealership where we bought the new car.

It turns out that they want to borrow the car for a bit to have to their insurance people look it over (since it was on the lot at the time of the tornados hitting Iowa City). I thought this more than a little odd. As I was busy getting ready for my trip to the home office, I kind of blew off the message. Then this morning, I got another call from the dealership asking for the car again. I called the guy back and explained that I’m driving out of town today. He said it should really only take about 20 minutes and they’d give the car a wash while they had it. He also said they’d bring a loaner by for me, just in case.

I agreed to let him do it and then immediately got a tad nervous about it. I checked their website and found him on it. A little bit later our receptionist called and said a guy from the dealership was here. I went up to the front desk and the only person around was a scrawny looking kid. But he was wearing a sweatshirt with the dealership’s name & logo on it. Then he held out a key to him and we walked to the parking lot. The key was to a 2005 Volkswagen Passat. The stationwagon version. With a dealer’s plate in the back window, a sales sticker on the same. I felt a lot better about giving him my key and took him to my car. He drove off, and I hopped into the Passat for a quick peek.

Oh my God! The wagon is fully loaded with all the goodies Volkswagen has to offer. Now I feel slightly cheated in that I won’t get to drive this puppy for my trip. Don’t get me wrong, I love our new car and our new car does have more gadgets in it than any car I’ve ever owned. But still, that Passat sitting outside if so dang plush and luxurious. I could definitely enjoy driving that card. 😀 Oh well, at least I’m getting a free car wash. Though, now that I think about it; I’m wondering if I should have asked them to top off the gas tank. With gas at $2.84/gallon, that would have been a nice bit of savings for me. *shrug* That’s probably being a little greedy and they’ve been good to me already.

I’ve not been posting anything for a while because… Well, I just have not felt like it which is not to say I haven’t had anything to talk about. Today, I decided to update the world at large about what I have been upto in my little slice of it.

  • We survived the tornados and hail that hit our area a week ago. Our apartment and cars were not even get damaged by the storm. Below are a few links to some of the stores online about what happened.
  • Last weekend, we replaced Ariesna‘s car (1992 Ford Escort, aka Ghost) with a 2002 Volkswagen Golf (aka Grace, aka Gracie). The really odd part about getting the new car? Even though it’s a replacement for Ghost; Ariesna has been letting me drive it the most. Apparently, this is at least partly due to the amount door dings her old car suffered through in her office’s parking lot but it still seems strange to me. Then today, the dealership called me back asking me to come in and sign a new finance contract on the car. Why? Because they found me another offer which would drop the interest rate by 1.25 points! Now that’s what I call service. So a big thanks goes out to Carousel Motors for the excellent service.
  • Last weekend, Ariesna and I looked at a house. But it was too expensive for the amount of work required to make it a home we’d want to live (namely a musty basement and some bad remodeling in the family room, dining room and kitchen). We showed up about 15 minutes early for the showing and the realtor showed up just short of 15 minutes late. He did eventually call to let us know he was running late… 5 minutes after he was supposed to be there. I was initially a bit underwhelmed by the guy. But when he finally got there and let us into the house; he let us do our own looking around without trying to pressure us and listened to the comments we had about the house to get a better idea of what we were interested in.

Over the weekend, Ariesna and I went to the CPL to check out their latest book sale. She got a bit ahead of me looking around as I was carrying out picks. I was about to move to the next room to catch up to her when it happened. Suddenly I felt a sharp, red-hot pain stabbing into my back. I managed to get over to Ariesna and set the books down, but it was something of a close call. We left the library shortly after that to go home and set me up with a heating pad. A bit of heat, some back pain meds and my back was feeling better. I took the day easy sitting down, reading a book.

I was still mighty tired the next day. Every time I had turned over in my sleep; I was half awakened by pain in my back. But awake eventually I was and into the shower I went. I’d just finished my shower and was drying off when another spasm ripped through my back. This one was much worse and nearly sent me to my knees. Ariesna came back and helped me. Then she called the doctor’s office and made an appointment to get me checked out. I spent the rest of the day lying down on a heating pad.

Monday, the doctor checked me out. He prescribed some pain killers and a muscle relaxant. He also set up an appointment for me to visit a physical therapist. That appointment was earlier today. The therapist was a really nice lady. She had me describe my problem. She then had me go through a series of stretches and movements to help her figure out exactly what is wrong. She told me she believes one of the discs in my spine (in the border area between the lumbar and thoracic) has a small tear.

She immediately moved to reassure me this is not something that will require surgery. I don’t think I was looking at her nervously, so I’m not entirely sure why she leaped to get that bit of information out. Though if I were to guess, I would say most of her patients are considerably older than I am and they do not like even the hint of possible surgery.

Anyway, she instructed me in doing a couple of light exercises designed to ease the tension in my back and which should improved the blood flow along the damaged area. She said these exercises should be enough for my back to heal itself correctly. Provided I keep in mind for my back to heal properly, I have to be extra cautious about it for a couple of months. She recommended I think about the damage like it was a broken bone. Even if I am feeling 100% in a few days or a week, I’m still to take it easy on my back.

Whee, such fun. Ah well, at least I haven’t promised to help anybody moving anytime soon. :p

As previously mentioned, Ariesna & I have been sick for a bit over a week now. So today, instead of taking a “romantic cooking” class through NewPi like we’d been planning; we got a trip to the doctor’s office. Whee…. For extra fun, we each got a Zpak1. I guess that’s a lot better for us than a box of chocolates, but it’s nowhere near as much fun. Still, as I told Ariesna earlier; it’s been a real pill of a day.

1 A 6 pack of azithromycin tables (250mg).

It was raining when I went home for lunch today. When I left to head back to the office; the rain was mixed with snow. *blech* It’s still too warm out for the snow to do anything except melt the moment it touches down, but it’s a sign that we’ve truly moved into Winter. Bah humbug!