csammisrun

One of my New Year’s resolutions was to take days off on a more proactive basis. With that in mind, I scheduled a vacation day, called up and emailed people in Ames, and this past Friday I drove up to my old college town.

The drive itself was something of a minor adventure, as I discovered in Betheny, MO, that my radiator is given to leaking at a plastic seam in its side. When I turn off the car, the pressure spike in the system causes antifreeze to spurt into the left half of the engine compartment. The mechanic I talked to in Betheny said it would be fine as long as I kept the tank topped off, since it wasn’t actively leaking while I drove. Hooray!

I arrived in Ames around 10AM on Friday, and my first stop was at my old office in the stat department with CSSM. I caught up with my old coworkers, which was a good time. It’s rather impressive what can happen in eight months. Houses bought and sold, babies on the way, all that fun stuff. Next stop was at the ag college computer support, where I worked as a server administrator for three years. Tom, John, John’s girlfriend Gaila, Greg (who similarly drove in from IL for the day), Dan, and I all trouped off to Bali Satay, one of my favorite restaurants in Ames. The waitress still remembered my order — pork lo mein and a Coke. Afterwards, Greg and I went to chat with our advisor in the CS department, then we wandered around campus for a couple hours. We stopped at Kildee to chat with one of the other ag college computer administrators, then worked our way to Flying Burrito to meet up with people for dinner.

Post-dinner, I discovered that my car simply was not starting. It was pretty damn cold, so I figured that the battery was in need of a jump. I went over to Lebaron Hall to watch The Rock, a Christian music/teaching group that Russ is a part of. Afterwards, I explained what my car was doing, and we decided to mess with it in the morning. We hung out at his place, shooting the shit and playing Playstation 2 games (Katamari Damacy looks ridiculously addictive), and I crashed on his couch for the night.

Next day, we went out to deal with my car, but a jumpstart didn’t affect its efforts to start at all. Long story short, the spark plugs and distributor cap had to be replaced. The plugs apparently had come with the car. $50 for parts, $12 for lunch and $15 for dinner…not bad to get my car purring like it hasn’t in years! Later that night, Russ and I went over to John’s apartment, because as a very odd coincidence, the girl with whom Russ was planning to spend time with that evening happened to be John’s girlfriend’s sister. We watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail, then I crashed at the hotel room I’d gotten earlier. No need to cramp Russ’s style

And here we are at Sunday morning. I’m driving back later this afternoon/evening, and I’m currently waiting for a call to see if some friends of mine are available to hang out a bit later.

This vacation, however brief, was sorely needed. Rising amounts of work at work, combined with the lack of Adrienne and the general crumminess of the trailer, are driving me slightly nuts. Leaving the area for a day or three is a great way to avoid cracking under the strain.