Wandering where lights go, leave out the body load

My new car finally reached the 5,000-mile mark. Maybe ``finally'' isn't the right word since it reached that mark after only three months. I need to commute less. But the point is it reached the first point where the Maintenance Required light turned up on the dashboard, giving reason for me to return the Scion to its place of birth to spawn, or at least to get its tires rotated (not that way) and the oil changed. I even have this little booklet of Prepaid Maintenance coupons, some of them for extravagances like a free rental in case I need body work worth more than $229 done on the car and don't ask me why that value.

So after work I got my chance to try out not just waiting to have my car maintained by people with a much bigger garage than the Jiffy Lube kind of near work but also the lounge for car owners waiting for maintenance. So I got to stare without comprehension at the coffee maker which also promised tea and soups and oatmeal. The thing comes with these sealed packets of tea, coffee, and the like which you put into a part of the machine that only opens when you're partway through the process of selecting your drink. I'd have felt more comfortable if they listed the whole procedure by its side --- all they do is explain oatmeal's peculiarities --- but I get my French Vanilla tea without anything catastrophic happening. Also some cheese crackers. The TV was on Loudmouthed Idiots Passed Off As News, and there wasn't any remote, so I disregarded the sign about not fiddling with the TV's controls and turned it off.

When I got home my father said hello and that he thought I'd had a phone call. He thought? He asked if I'd brought my car in for servicing. Yes, I had. ``Do you wonder how I knew you brought it in?'' I assumed they called home. It seems they forgot to put the tire locks on, which brought a modest yeep from me. My father asked, so, you knew about this? I somehow resisted answering sarcastically that of course I don't move a foot without checking my tire locks. So I had to go back and get them put on, and the first maintenance session may be fairly described as being an ambiguous experience.

Trivia: Italy occupied Rome on 20 September 1870, despite the convention it had signed with France in September 1864 when the unifying state renounced territorial claims to the city. Source: The Struggle For Mastery in Europe, 1848 - 1928, A J P Taylor. (France was a bit occupied at the time.)

Currently Reading: To Conquer The Air: The Wright Brothers And The Great Race For Flight, James Tobin.