Monday, on my way home from the Evil Day Job (EDJ), I stopped off to get gas. It's been thawing in Minneapolis the last week or so and my car windows were pretty coated with ick from the roads. After filling up with gas, I reached for the squeegee thing and began cleaning them. I saved the front windshield for last. All was well until I lifted the windshield wiper on the driver's side and it came off in my hand. There I am, standing at the pumps at the convenience store with a wiper blade in my hand a metal rod sticking out from my car. Oops.
There's a service center across the street and I considered driving over there, but then I thought, well, maybe I'll see if my dad can fix it for me first. I tossed the wiper into the passenger side and drove home.
Maybe I've been working with engineers for too long, but after I pulled into the garage I began to think, how hard can it be to fix it? Keep in mind that my sum total of knowledge on a car is where to put in the gas, where to refill the washer fluid, and that I need to bring my car in every 3,000 miles to get the oil changed. Not a strong base from which to start. Still, how bad could I mess things up?
I examined the wiper that was still intact, considered the blade from the other one, and figured out what I would try on my first attempt. It worked! I snapped it right into place, and boom, it was done! It was so simple, I can't believe I ever paid anyone to put on wiper blades for me.
Feeling totally proud of myself, I posted my accomplishment on Twitter. No one commented. Okay, well, they don't know me well enough to understand how huge this feat was. I told my dad. He started talking about the new phone he'd bought that day. :-( I called his attention to my mechanical success. Good, he says, and goes back to his new phone. Sigh.
You'd think someone would be properly impressed.
That's when it occurred to me to blog about it. Surely, y'all will understand just how awesome this achievement really was. Right?
