My car came up for its 5,000-mile servicing Tuesday. Actually, my dealer was ready for it a couple weeks back and e-mailed me hoping I'd make an appointment, but the time I'd spent with 
bunny_hugger disrupted their extrapolation of when I'd need servicing enough that there wasn't any point in making that appointment. I did last week call to make an appointment, and they warned me I couldn't get one before this week, which was fine as that was what I wanted. It will not surprise anyone who knows the obsessive-compulsive nature of my personality that I want to get these services done as close as possible to exactly on the 5,000 mile mark; this time, alas, I missed by about 15 miles. (I'm really spoiled from having been off just the one mile once.)
Of course I went after work, which has some benefits --- it's relatively convenient, I suppose --- and some drawbacks. The main drawback is somehow I'm always the last car finished for the night. I can't explain this; even when it's just the little change with oil being changed and fluids being topped up I know I'll be around the waiting room until even the people who came in after me get finished. Maybe they sense my generally laid-back and unrushed nature. Maybe my carrying books to read while trying to ignore the excessively loud TV makes me look like the guy who can be put lowest on the priority scale.
But it was finished and in good shape, I think. They told me when it was finished that my car was in parking space B20, by the side of the building, and even wrote the spot number on my receipt. I walked out to the side and there was B23, B22, B21, B20 ... and nothing there. I could see many cars, none of them remotely mine. I tried walking around the building some clicking my key's remote so I might see the lights flashing or something, and considered hitting the panic button.
It turns out the dealer not only has a parking space labelled ``B20'' in the paint on the pavement, but it has another parking lot, on the opposite side, labelled ``B'' with just the number ``20'' in the appropriate space there. My car was in the other ``B20''. I wonder if I should tell them about letters other than B which might serve for parking lot identification ses.
Trivia: In 1822 the Royal Society of Arts offered a prize of 50 guineas ``to whoever could grow and prepare the greatest quantity of China tea in the British West Indies, Cape of Good Hope, New South Wales, or the East Indies''; the prize was never awarded. Source: A History Of The World In 6 Glasses, Tom Standage.
Currently Reading: Aspects Of The Novel, E M Forster. Oooh. I like his functional differentiation of the story from the plot. (Story: ``the king died and then the queen died''; Plot: ``the queen died, no one knew why, until it was discovered that it was through grief at the death of the king''.)