Esther’s day got off to a bad start as well.

Why hand brakes are better than foot brakes.

Woke up feeling refreshed this morning which immediately startled me out of bed. I checked the alarm clock and sure enough, I’d forgotten to set it last night and overslept by an hour.

So we all did the fireman thing. Rushing through everything. Wake up the kids. Put breakfast on the table. Brush their hair. Drink coffee. Interestingly, all that stress and the lack of space for any unnecessary movements eliminated all usual morning arguments, and even Gamma got dressed by herself, quickly. I didn’t even argue when the cat barfed, I just cleaned it up myself.

To make up for that, I failed to notice the fledgling bird a cat had barfed in the driveway on our way out. I’ll clean it up this evening, Alpha!!

Gamma was fast getting out at daycare, basically I slowed the car down a little and she jumped out (only kidding). Beta – eh, I’d said something to make her mad so she got out fast at her school too.

On the freeway, then, I finally noticed the gas gauge was low. As in, I was taken back to my studies of economics in college. In economics, microeconomics at least, the outcome of a line of thinking depends entirely on the assumptions with which you begin. This fact appealed to me mightily in college and is one of the reasons I ended up studying economics, along with some other subjects.

So, assuming that the marks on the gas gauge are accurate, i.e. the needle on the one-eighth mark means I actually have one-eighth of a tank of diesel left, and my roundtrip to work is about 90 km, and I get a little over 600 km out of a tank under good conditions, then… whoa, then I’m fucked, dude. Six times eight is, no wait, six times … no, eight times 90 is, um 720. No, wait, that’s not the one-eighth mark, its the just under one quarter mark.

But how much under one quarter? I mean, is this gauge approximate or actually very accurate? The first half has always seemed to last a lot longer than the last half…

So anyway although in a big hurry I ended up going to work at 90 kmH in the slow lane, with all the trucks, rather than at 120 or so as I usually do (speed limit is allegedly 130 kmH here, although few people heed it) in order to save gas, because the Doblo gets its best mileage going 90 in fifth gear. Despite going slow, I made it to work just in time.

The little warning light will come on as I drive home this evening, but will I make it all the way? Will I have to get a few liters at that expensive gas station on the freeway? Will I run out and spend the night on the shoulder somewhere?

Stay tuned.

The scientific German expression for placenta is Plazenta, but the colloquial term is Mutterkuchen, which translates literally as mother cake.

Raising Hell is Yahoo Pick of the Week this week. Yay Raising Hell.

No idea what the cause is, whether it’s some unusually unfavorable juxtaposition of planets or the weather or something in the water, but there has been a rash of accidents on my commute lately. Yesterday a bus load of pensioners on the freeway managed to swerve around a road work vehicle at the last second. A second bus following the first then crashed into the vehicle, killing at least one and injuring 15, and closing down the road for hours. I listened to reports on the radio on the way home (I was driving Alpha’s Fiat Punto, which has a nice radio, as she needed my Fiat Doblo to transport a bicycle, and the radio in the Doblo hasn’t been working ever since Space and Pat didn’t come to Austria and didn’t drive it around). And I had a good opportunity to listen to the radio, because my usual street was really backed up due to another accident there involving three ambulances and another three police cars. Although it’s entirely possible that they only showed up after the accident. Car-sized outlines were spray-painted on the pavement in neon green.

This morning, there was an accident in the opposite lanes of the freeway, and a humongous jam on my side caused by people slowing down to gawk. A BMW was all crunched up in front, leading me to assume it had struck the Opel parked behind it. I nearly got rearended in the jam, which came upon us suddenly. Alpha called me on my cell phone. She was driving a few minutes behind me and so I warned her about the slowdown. She was smart enough to move over into the slow lane and as she drew up even with the accident – which now involved a hysterical woman, she said, and a police officer getting very pissed off with all the gawkers – a car slammed into the rear of the car next to her in the passing lane, which had slowed down to look.

Anyways, I made it to work without further incident, besides close encounters with two idiotic, unnecessarily aggressive drivers. Alpha was stuck in a couple more accident-caused jams. And so the day begins.

New shoes just posted at the Shoe Project.

Do I have your shoes yet?

Miguel: [punches a long series of numbers into telephone, amazed that he can remember his parents' number while simultaneously forgetting PIN codes and passwords at random]
Voice on telephone: Hello?
Miguel: Happy Mother’s Day!
Voice: Why, thank you! How’re you?
Miguel: I’m fine, how’re you? Doing anything special for Mother’s Day?
Voice: I’m watching a squirrel outside the window, on top of the bird feeder your dad put into the big stump.
Miguel: That’s nice.
Voice: We may have salmon later on. It was on special, so I bought four pounds and froze it.
Miguel: We’re having a nice day. I made fruit.
Voice: Oh, a darn fly! I hate it when a fly gets into the house. We’re always careful not to open the doors wide when we come in.
Miguel: Fly, huh.
Voice: Oh, where’d he go? It’s under the table!
Miguel: You’d like it at our house. We live across the street from a pig sty.
Voice: [Loud whacking noise!!] There!
Miguel: Oh! Heh.
Voice: I picked up some roast beef for your dad for lunch. It doesn’t seem to make his feet swell, so I guess it’s low sodium.
Miguel: Anyway, we’re having a nice day…
Voice: Lottery’s $70 million now, have to go over to the mall and get some tickets.
Miguel: Lilac’s blooming…
Voice: Well, I don’t want to run up your telephone bill! Send everyone our love!
Miguel: Same here. Be sure and take it easy for Mother’s Day.