I dropped Steve off at LAX at about 6:45, and headed back to Irvine to work. I hit just a little traffic on the way, stopped to pick up a bagel, and was at my desk by 7:45. Pretty good. I still beat about 90% of the folks here in as they are mostly 9:00 kind of people.
I had a busy, productive day at work today. During lunch I stopped by the Candlewood Suites to check back in. I got room 318. I was in 138 before. If they had an eighth floor, and I was going to check in again, I might get room 813 or 831.
From there, I ran out to the airport to trade cars because of the cracked windshield. As I left the hotel, I lifted up the windshield wiper to see the bottom of where it looked like the rock probably hit, and to my amazement what I found looked like a bullet hole! I immediately got the chills thinking back on how that didn’t sound or feel like a rock hitting the window when it happened. Both Steve and I commented on the impact, and how big of a rock it would have had to have been to make as big a crack as it did, and to shatter slivers of glass on the dashboard and in the gearshift area. And we never saw any rock. I began to wonder if we weren’t victims of a drive-by shooting. Welcome to L.A.!
I pointed this out to the Hertz folks, and they were rather intrigued. They called the manager, David, down to speak with me. He said they would look into it. They replaced it (Mazda 626) with a nice Maxima, complete with GPS. That’s more like what I’m used to driving — 6 cylinders, and just a nice comfortable ride. I may call back to Hertz in a couple of days, or ask when I turn this car back in, if they were able to confirm anything. I thought of the fact that if you die while traveling on business, your heirs get 5 times your salary (as opposed to dying at home — 3 times).
I set GPS to take me to the nearest In-n-Out Burger, and it started taking me way away from work. I turned that thing off, and went to a McDonald’s I was approaching. I set it to take me back to work, the way which I knew, just so I could observe how it worked. It is very cool. I really do want to change the voice to that of a man’s though. I thought I had read that you could do that, but I haven’t taken the time to figure it out.
I really needed to wash clothes tonight, but didn’t. I spent most of the night, with the exception of running out to eat and stop at the grocery store, catching up my journal from the weekend.
I intended to eat dinner at an Il Pollo Loco, since I’ve been wanting to try one, but set that silly GPS to take me to one, which was a mistake. It took me way out — I knew there was one closer, but I didn’t know what street it was on. By the time I got to it, it was closed. So much for “technology to simplify your life.” I ate at an Arby’s right next door to it, which was open for another half hour. I know the people working in there were not glad to see me coming.
Brad (at work) gave me some “movies” today. I “watched” one of them before retiring.