Day 148: Acting strangely?

Yesterday's sign reminded me of my obsession with good acting in TV adverts/commercials. I think that in 9/10 cases what separates a good advert from a bad one is the acting. Here is an example but I apologise to all the US readers who are already fed up of it. I have seen it many times and still find it amusing. Cingular oops - AT&T have some others at the moment about dropped calls - simple ideas well acted and they don't get annoying quickly. Another example is the Mac/PC adverts (although we don't get Mitchell and Webb here). The first time I noticed the power of good acting in what on paper would have been a mediocre advert has a Mitchell and Webb angle actually - it was their regular collaborator Olivia Colman in the AA advert as Bev "We used to have one of those." Should have been cringe-inducing, but somehow she made it OK!

Not that any of these adverts have induced me to buy their product. Although I think this PC I'm using would be better suited to doing my accounts. A Mac on the other hand would be cool, fun and creative. D'Oh!

Day 147: You wait all day...

We spotted this sign recently, an acting deer would indeed be a strange thing to see on the trail, or does it mean people doing deer-acting, or possibly neither?

Today I finally gave up on the car-leasing people who have been giving me the run-around for weeks and phoned someone about getting a car-loan. I had to leave a message. A few minutes later my phone rang - it was the leasing people! The lenders called back a few minutes later. Typical. It seems that my social security number is 'impossible', and I need to prove everything I told them before they will even decide if they will give me a lease. If only they had said this weeks ago I could have started the process then.

Somewhere nearby a garage has started selling bio-diesel - maybe my car's time has come at last!

We saw this sign on the road on Monday. It rocks my world.

You wait all day for a bus / sign / car-financing deal, then two come along at once. Possibly.

Day 146: Diesel be a rare sight

When I bought my TDI Jetta, I didn't really think much about it. It is a nice car, with a noisy (but not excessively so) engine, good fuel economy (hopefully) etc. What I didn't realise is that (due to the basically free nature of 'gas' here, no-one drives diesel cars. And as a result most of the 'gas stations' in car-driving areas (i.e. off the highway) don't sell it.

Ah well, I eventually managed to limp in to one that did where I caused a few raised eyebrows and as I returned from paying for my weird fuel I overheard the end of a conversation: No, the nozzle's too big. I imagine that the conversation started with concern that I'd just filled my petrol-engined car with a tankful of diesel.

These'll be goslings outside my work - another rare sight.

Day 145: Got wheels

Money arrived - check. Mortgage approval in - check. Car bought - check. Not a bad result for one day. Still plenty of things on the list though.

I've also been doing the handyman bit, unblocking a toilet (we're now 'proud' owners of a closet auger, which succeeded where multiple applications of force-cup plunging had failed), fixing a door handle and rigging up some piping to stop the A/C condensation drowning the furnace.

So after all that, I feel quite satisfied with myself as I turn to trying the first cone challenge in PGR3 on hard-difficulty. I've got to get my bad-driving fix somewhere now that I'm actually responsible for the car I'm driving in the real world.

Day 144: Gross!

This picture is from last week. But it's a similar expression to the one that E5N1 greeted me with at the airport. He had come (with Exile #2) to pick me up as I am car-less until tomorrow, having dropped off my rental car on the way to Denver and not yet collected my own car purchase.

So, I've made it home. The journey included long waits at security, sprinting to just make a flight, a tight connection made easy by outgoing delays, turbulence, co-passengers impressed by my iPod nano.

One strange coincidence from the day requires a slight rewind. Having had a few drinks in a bar earlier in the week, two doctors (a man and a woman) came in who were in town for a rheumatology conference. We got talking to them briefly and I half-joked that they should call me so we could go out on Saturday night as at the time I thought I would be at a loose end. I gave them my number and left. As it turns out, quite a few of my colleagues were around and I didn't hear from the rheumatologists, so I thought no more of it until the snaking check-in queue brought be next to the woman doctor at the airport this morning. "You stood me up last night!" was my inevitable greeting. We ended up waiting in the huge queue at security together talking about her kids (her patients) and my kids (and whether I would see them before bed tonight - result=1 out of 3) and wondering whether I would make my flight (which I did with about 2 minutes to spare). I can't even remember her name, but she brightened up what would otherwise have been the most stressful part of the day - thanks pediatric rheumatologist from North Carolina - whoever you are!

Oh yes - nothing was gross, until I started typing the title for the post.