Category: General

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I saw an actual International CXT driving around town today.

These $115,000 beasts make even H2 Hummers look small, towering 2 feet above them with a length 4½ feet longer. The CXT weighs twice as much as a fully loaded H2, which makes my tiny little Fiero feel even smaller.

I’m generally pretty tolerant of the country’s SUV obsession, believing that owners of oversized vehicles punish themselves more than enough through the weekly price of filling up their gargantuan gas tanks.

Still, seeing one of these CXT behemoths rolling through suburban streets leaves me not knowing whether I should laugh or cry.

The first day of spring came and went over a month ago, yet people northeast Ohio were dreading this weekend since the weather forecasters started predicting snow for today. Dire predictions of up to six inches of the white stuff dampened everyone’s mood even while the weather was relatively warm.

The snow came late on Saturday night and continued through most of today. Fortunately, it wasn’t as bad as predicted and little actually stuck to the ground, but the sight of tiny, white flakes drifting down brought back the bleak moods of mid-January. Even worse was the combination of the very light snow with the heavier freezing rain and wind that seemed to cut right through every layer of clothing you had on and chill you right into your very bones themselves.

Probably the worst, however, was the fact that besides the outside temperatures averaging around 35&degF we had to deal with a complete lack of hot water in the house. Our water heater had started leaking days before and the threat of water damage caused us to shut off the water supply to the heater.

Today we managed to get a new heater and get it into place of the old one. It certainly wasn’t easy, however, because the water heater was hidden behind a small panel and behind several difficult to maneuver around pipes. But we persevered and the new water heater is in place, chugging away happily at turning the freezing cold water coming in from the city water supply into gloriously hot water.

Probably the greatest reward for all the hard work I had to do to make that possible was the very, very long steaming-hot shower I finally got to take just a few minutes ago.

The cold sucks.

Today’s little bit of trivial knowledge concerns how to tell if that bottle of aspirin in your medicine cabinet has spoiled.

Open the bottle up and take a whiff. If the aspirin smells like wintergreen, it means the contents have started to break down into methyl salicylate and the bottle should be discarded.