Category: January 2019

Mini Issues

I called AAA to get my Mini Cooper towed to the mechanic’s, and at the end of the call she said, “Thank you for your 27-year membership with AAA” and I’m thinking, 27 years? How can I be that old? I haven’t been a 27-year member of anything except maybe the human race. Oh, and motherhood.

Plus, I’ve have two or three different last names in 27 years, so I couldn’t possibly be a recognized consistent member of anything that long. Back before the internet got so scary (back when Amazon didn’t know more about you than you even know yourself) a last name change was pretty much a restart in life. So there’s no way I’ve been a known member of AAA for 27 years. I guess John must have joined 27 years ago, and I must be on his membership. So it’s John who’s old 😉

I suppose you’re all still thinking about the fact that I just said, “towed to the mechanic”. Yes, this car has been a bit of a problem lately. I still have high hopes for it. It’s not my car’s fault that the dealership was incompetent, and I took it there several times before finally deciding they were worse than nothing. I only just recently found a good mechanic, and it’s going to probably take a few rounds of visits before all the various things are dealt with.

And it’s not my car’s fault that when the engine warning light went on a week or so before Christmas, instead of driving it straight to my mechanic, I waited until the weekend so John could use his code reader to diagnose the issue. And then he ordered the required part, but we hadn’t yet managed to get it installed when I got a much more serious engine light, and it quit working altogether and I had to tow it.

Here’s the warning light when I had to tow it. This one doesn’t need a code reader to figure out. Although I briefly imagined it was the snowflake symbol, which has been coming on way too frequently recently (more about snowflakes in an upcoming post). But unfortunately, that’s not a snowflake symbol.

Luckily, my new mechanic got it all fixed up! For less much money than I imagined it would cost. It did not need a new transmission, yay, whew! Among other things, he said there was rodent damage (Grrrrr. I’m never parking it in Placitas again.)

But then a couple of days later, it did the craziest thing I’ve ever heard of. The oil pressurized somehow and unseated the dipstick and spewed oil all over the engine compartment. The dipstick was hanging half out of its slot with oil everywhere. Like how did that even happen?

So John took it to jiffy lube and had them do a complete flush, and he replaced the O-ring on the dipstick so it seated better. So far, so good. All I’ve been doing is driving to work and back; no big freeway trips yet. Because the Mini isn’t going to Placitas anymore!

The only current annoyance is it does need warmed up in the cold weather, or it will stall. There was a time when I’d just shrug and say, “Well, it’s an old car.” But it’s not that old. And my truck, which is older and has more miles on it, does not need warmed up in the morning.

John thinks we should replace it (My dear, precious Mini Cooper!) but we just got him a new 4Runner and I’m fond of my Mini. We’ve had some bad luck with it, but I’m optimistic that my new mechanic can keep it running smoothly for a lot less money than another new car would cost!

Here’s pictures of me and my Mini bonding 10 years ago. Yes, it’s been 10 years. The Mini was 2 years old at the time, and I was, well, never mind. Something-else-2.

I’m not taking any photos of me and my Mini right now. It’s 16 degrees out and neither of us are feeling our best today. So here’s some photos from younger, warmer, times.

Someday we’ll replace it with an electric car, but until then, here’s to another bunch of good years.

The end of the Corrales story

Remember when I applied to a job in Corrales? Corrales is a cute town down by the river near Albuquerque, with tree-lined acequias running through it.

I applied to the job on a whim, mainly because someone had asked me to apply. (If I had gotten the job, I would have been his boss.) I met him when I called to ask a question about a house we considered buying in Corrales this summer.

My question was whether a small, foundationless structure on the property qualified as a “guesthouse” or whether it was just a shed with a piece of carpet on the floor.

And I wanted to know whether it was built with a permit. So I called the Corrales Planning and Zoning department, and got to talking to one of the employees, and ended up sending my resume. As you’re probably aware, we did not buy the house. But I did, eventually, get called to interview.

I interviewed for the Corrales job last Friday and I thought the interview went horribly. I totally bombed the questions; they asked a lot of detail about Corrales that I didn’t know, and they gave me almost no chance to speak about my leadership skills. I assumed they had written the questions like that because they had a favored internal candidate, who would do well with detailed questions about Corrales. From my perspective, however, they learned next to nothing about how I would actually perform in the position.

I was also unhappy that they refused to answer any of my questions about the job, saying it wasn’t the forum for that. Excuse me? Aren’t interviews supposed to be a mutual assessment?

Another concern for me was that the hiring manager didn’t play a role in the interview at all. She was in the room, but she never spoke once. I felt like she was completely sidelined, when, in my opinion, she should have been the lead in the process, regardless of the rank of the others in the room. I wasn’t sure I wanted to work in that environment.

By the way, Friday was the same day as we tried to buy a house in Santa Fe and lost the bid to a higher bidder. I just wrote it off as a defining day. In hindsight it wasn’t worth taking the day off; I worked overtime for two weeks to earn that day!

Then Wednesday I was stunned to get a call from Corrales asking for a second interview. Luckily I missed the call and they left a voicemail, giving me time to come up with something more intelligent to say than an astounded sputter and indecision. When job hunting, you always want to present the utmost enthusiasm – all the way right up to the point that you turn them down. Which I did. I called them back, declined the second interview and wished them luck in their candidate search.

I still don’t think they really wanted to hire me. I think they had an internal candidate and just needed some arguably qualified additional people to interview so they could satisfy their process requirements. But if they did actually want to hire me, they blew it.

Tell you what…

I try not to post anything too political, but I thought this cartoon was clever and not too objectionable for anyone. Thanks, John, for sending it to me.

Bugs to the rescue

Here’s a fascinating article from the Economist about a particular gut bacteria, Lactobacillus reuteri, that reduces symptoms of autism in mice. https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2018/12/08/gut-bacteria-may-offer-a-treatment-for-autism

We all have this particular bacteria in our guts already. But it’s known that the intestines of people with autism have different mixes of bacteria than those without autism, and that those with autism are three times as likely as those without autism to develop serious gut issues during their lives.

Of course, mice aren’t people, and human trials would have to be conducted. But as the article points out, this bacteria is “easily obtainable for use as a pro-biotic from health-food shops”, and “The general availability of L. reuteri does, however, bring with it another possibility – that people will conduct their own, “off-label” trials, either on themselves or on their children.”, and “In practice, it may be hard to discourage people from testing L. reuteri’s effects themselves.”

Oh, yeah, no kidding. I hadn’t even finished the article before I was on amazon.com buying it for myself and both my kids. $20 for 90 capsules. We’ll give it a try and let you know.

Pursuing multiple options at once

There’s no one, clear, guaranteed way to achieve our current goal of figuring out how to pursue our careers while living together in the same house. Which is how I found myself, yesterday, interviewing with the Village of Corrales in the morning and bidding on a house in Santa Fe in the afternoon. We weren’t going to implement both – the house in Santa Fe is too far from the job in Corrales. If I got the job, we’d back out of the purchase of the house, if we went with the house, I wouldn’t accept the job. It was going to be one or the other. Or as it turns out, neither.

I did not do well in the interview. They wanted far more knowledge about the village than I possess. Either they already had a favored internal candidate and biased the questions toward him or her (quite likely), or they simply wanted us to have done a lot more homework than I had managed to do. They also annoyed me by refusing to answer any of my questions about the job, which I did not think was a respectful way to treat a candidate. An interview is for both sides to assess mutual suitability, not just for their own assessment. So I would not accept the job even if it were offered, because I don’t want to work for them.

I was not particularly disappointed about the job. It was just a waste of a morning and a bit of an annoyance. Luckily, I really do like my current job, and I love my team and don’t want to leave them. The primary reason I applied for the Corrales job is that it is a lot closer to John’s job. And there are some nice houses in the north valley (along the river), that are somewhat affordable.

Meanwhile, the previous evening we had bid on a house in Santa Fe. By yesterday afternoon there were multiple offers, and they called for “highest & best” (final bids). We looked at the house again and studied our comps (prices of comparable houses that had sold). I was confident that the house was under priced (unless the market goes down in the future, which is hard to predict). Even though we bid over list price, apparently we did not bid high enough, because our bid was not chosen.

This was a disappointment for me because I really loved the house. It was a block from the major bike trails that go through the town, which we love to use for biking, jogging and walking the dogs. Even better, it was also a block from the train station! The train goes from central Santa Fe down to Albuquerque. I could have walked to the station every day and taken it one stop north to my job, and John could have taken it south all the way down to Albuquerque. The house was also pretty inside, with a large backyard.

John wasn’t as impressed with the house as I was (which is why we didn’t bid even higher). So maybe it’s a good thing we didn’t get it.

However, it leaves me with lingering anxiety, because we aren’t on the same page about what we want in a house. It’s hard for me to be optimistic about finding something that we’d both like. We can’t just buy something that has the attributes that he wants as well as the attributes that I want, because they are contradictory. I want to live in town, close to everything, and he wants to live out in a rural area.

The first house we bought together, in Albuquerque, was a compromise, but in the end, neither of us was happy with it. The suburban neighborhood lacked the “vibe” that I like, and was predominately older people with a different political and social culture as my own. It also was an annoyingly slow drive, through dozens of stoplights, to get into the main part of town. I didn’t like being way out on the edge of town. But for John, it wasn’t far enough out, and he chafed at having neighbors right next to us on both sides, even though we had managed to find a house with open space behind it.

Since returning to New Mexico we’ve been oscillating and without a clear direction of what to do next. Then I found a job in Santa Fe that further complicated everything. We are missing a clear, united goal, and are failing to imagine a specific solution that we could then implement.