Inauspicious start
Jan. 17th, 2017 08:24 amLast night I lost track of time and got to bed later than I had planned. At least I had some reasonable sleep before the alarm went off this morning.
The first challenge was coaxing the house's hot water heater back on. It is an on-demand gas heater: we let the landlord know a month ago that is is becoming temperamental again but they have had difficulty arranging a plumber. Last week they said that they would let us know when the plumber is to come this week. Now the heater often doesn't stay on after coaxing so this may yet escalate to an emergency callout.
Then, the car didn't start: this is the 1995 Peugeot 306. Lights come on, engine doesn't turn. So, I moved my stuff over to our 2004 Vauxhall Astra and drove that into work. So much for![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mst3kmoxie being able to take it shopping today. However, on the way into work I discovered that I could not find where I had put my campus parking permit. Time wasted trying to park causes spaces to fill up at fallbacks so I parked on a side street, found the pass down the far side of the passenger seat, but walked from there into work anyway.
Given sufficiently clement weather I will probably move the car over to campus at lunchtime when some spaces often open up again. (The ratio of parking spaces to university staff members has declined for some years now.) Then I can load the Vauxhall with my equipment after work today so that I am able to work from home tomorrow, assuming that I have managed to arrange a mechanic callout for the Peugeot.
I had separately wondered if car leasing may work out to be comparable to owning given the ongoing maintenance cost of older cars but the cheaper deals I see do not allow for as much annual mileage as we drive. (The garage that we use for repairs are able to lease cheaply as they do not have the overhead of a fancy showroom and smooth salespeople.)
The first challenge was coaxing the house's hot water heater back on. It is an on-demand gas heater: we let the landlord know a month ago that is is becoming temperamental again but they have had difficulty arranging a plumber. Last week they said that they would let us know when the plumber is to come this week. Now the heater often doesn't stay on after coaxing so this may yet escalate to an emergency callout.
Then, the car didn't start: this is the 1995 Peugeot 306. Lights come on, engine doesn't turn. So, I moved my stuff over to our 2004 Vauxhall Astra and drove that into work. So much for
mst3kmoxie being able to take it shopping today. However, on the way into work I discovered that I could not find where I had put my campus parking permit. Time wasted trying to park causes spaces to fill up at fallbacks so I parked on a side street, found the pass down the far side of the passenger seat, but walked from there into work anyway.Given sufficiently clement weather I will probably move the car over to campus at lunchtime when some spaces often open up again. (The ratio of parking spaces to university staff members has declined for some years now.) Then I can load the Vauxhall with my equipment after work today so that I am able to work from home tomorrow, assuming that I have managed to arrange a mechanic callout for the Peugeot.
I had separately wondered if car leasing may work out to be comparable to owning given the ongoing maintenance cost of older cars but the cheaper deals I see do not allow for as much annual mileage as we drive. (The garage that we use for repairs are able to lease cheaply as they do not have the overhead of a fancy showroom and smooth salespeople.)
