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Too dumb to be let out on my own
I absolutely cannot believe the stupid thing I did tonight. If I'd actually been killed or maimed (not entirely unlikely) I would have been a Darwin Awards candidate, no question. I'm sure my family would have been sorry I was gone, but they would probably also have been snickering all through the eulogy.
Okay, gonna back up a bit here and get caught up on various happenings since my last entry. The last couple days have seesawed back and forth between very cool and very uncool. And some things were both at once. For example, it snowed and snowed and SNOWED, and then, for a change, snowed a bit more. This was rather exciting for me (in that not-so-pleasant way) since I have a 4-wheel-drive, half-mile-long driveway and a 2-wheel-drive car. I think I am mastering the art of breaking trail by driving really fast. I also spent a couple of hours shoveling off all the switchbacks on my driveway so I don't go skidding off an 8-foot embankment into frozen swamp.
But it's so damn gorgeous. The trees are all weighed down with snow. Driving into town for work is just breathtaking (even when you have to drive 15 miles an hour behind a snowplow). Today, one of my friends at work hooked me up with a neighbor of his who's got a snowplow truck, and he came out and plowed my driveway while I was at work, so I can actually drive home now without being in danger of dying.
I've also been working ridiculous hours ... I was up until nearly midnight on Monday night working at home on a particularly time-consuming ad (which involved drawing a bunch of art by hand ... I actually kind of enjoyed it, but I would have liked to sleep, too). And it's Halloween week, and as the supervisor in my department, I can't just let my employees decorate all by themselves -- although it's kind of been working out that way. (I TRIED!)
All of which has nothing to do with the stupid Layla story I promised at the beginning of this entry.
So, I've been heating my house with an oil heater lately -- I let the boiler go out (intentionally) when I was in Kodiak, and never relit it because I didn't want to spent the time fussing with the damn thing. The trouble with the oil heater is that it doesn't really have a tank, just a 55-gal barrel, and nobody will drive all the way out to Fox just to fill up a barrel. (The minimum amount for a delivery seems to be 200 gallons.) I found a gas station in town that has #1 heating oil (a.k.a. diesel) offered at the heating oil price, rather than the higher diesel price, but it's all the way out by the airport ... driving across town in the snow, blech.
Tonight after work I drove out there to fill up my gas cans. The pump has two hoses, one on each side, but I always go to the same side because I always come into the gas station from the same direction. This time, my aim was off and I ended up pulling around to the other side.
Turns out the gas nozzle on the other side is a different size and shape. It's bigger. I guess it must be for filling barrels, while the one on the other side is for filling cans.
Rather than going around to the other side of the pump, I decided to see if the nozzle would fit in my gas cans. It did, but just barely, and I couldn't get the threaded wire part (you know, that spiral wire that's wrapped around gas pump nozzles) to go into the can. Oh well. The nozzle was in, so I turned it on.
I almost immediately realized two things ...
It wasn't making the usual can-filling noise; instead it was making an ominous hissing.
Close on the heels of this discovery came the realization that it was doing this because the air was unable to escape from the can (or, rather, only a little could get out around the nozzle), and with the fuel pump injecting diesel under pressure into the can, I was making a bomb.
I started to pull back the nozzle to let the air out of the can, and of course it did exactly what any reasonable person would expect: it backblasted a high-pressure jet of diesel into my face.
I realized what was happening as it happened, and shut my eyes and mouth, so the general effect was like getting hit in the face with a hard-pressure water hose. More shock than pain. Of course, it was DIESEL. Lucky for my, my glasses deflected most of it away from my eyes, and I opened my still-functional eyes to find that the nozzle was still on (because I'd locked down the little locking mechanism, like everybody does automatically when they fill up their cars) and I was hosing down my cans and the concrete with $1.81/gal diesel. Which was also dripping off my hair, chin and coat. SHIT.
I shut off the hose, stood in shock for a moment, and then started trying to scrub myself down with the only thing I could find, handfuls of not-so-clean snow from the island between the pumps. I was afraid to open my mouth because I didn't want to get diesel in it. Eventually I went into the attendant's little station to get a handful of paper towels, because of course I didn't have any in the car. (Luckily for me, I don't think he could see my little maneuver from his post ... I was behind the pump from him, and he was watching TV anyway.) Of course, it was one of those little roadside gas stations that doesn't have a rest room. After getting myself at least halfway dry, I took the cans around to the right side of the pump and filled them, feeling like an idiot.
Just to top off my night, not only was it a half-hour drive home, but I had to stop at the store on the way home for Halloween stuff for tomorrow. I wandered around Fred Meyer with my hair matted with diesel feeling like a total idiot and trying not to stand close to people. Luckily it's Fairbanks, so people who smell like diesel don't really stand out all that much.
Then I came home and took a really long shower. My hair still smells like diesel, and probably will until Christmas.
Okay, gonna back up a bit here and get caught up on various happenings since my last entry. The last couple days have seesawed back and forth between very cool and very uncool. And some things were both at once. For example, it snowed and snowed and SNOWED, and then, for a change, snowed a bit more. This was rather exciting for me (in that not-so-pleasant way) since I have a 4-wheel-drive, half-mile-long driveway and a 2-wheel-drive car. I think I am mastering the art of breaking trail by driving really fast. I also spent a couple of hours shoveling off all the switchbacks on my driveway so I don't go skidding off an 8-foot embankment into frozen swamp.
But it's so damn gorgeous. The trees are all weighed down with snow. Driving into town for work is just breathtaking (even when you have to drive 15 miles an hour behind a snowplow). Today, one of my friends at work hooked me up with a neighbor of his who's got a snowplow truck, and he came out and plowed my driveway while I was at work, so I can actually drive home now without being in danger of dying.
I've also been working ridiculous hours ... I was up until nearly midnight on Monday night working at home on a particularly time-consuming ad (which involved drawing a bunch of art by hand ... I actually kind of enjoyed it, but I would have liked to sleep, too). And it's Halloween week, and as the supervisor in my department, I can't just let my employees decorate all by themselves -- although it's kind of been working out that way. (I TRIED!)
All of which has nothing to do with the stupid Layla story I promised at the beginning of this entry.
So, I've been heating my house with an oil heater lately -- I let the boiler go out (intentionally) when I was in Kodiak, and never relit it because I didn't want to spent the time fussing with the damn thing. The trouble with the oil heater is that it doesn't really have a tank, just a 55-gal barrel, and nobody will drive all the way out to Fox just to fill up a barrel. (The minimum amount for a delivery seems to be 200 gallons.) I found a gas station in town that has #1 heating oil (a.k.a. diesel) offered at the heating oil price, rather than the higher diesel price, but it's all the way out by the airport ... driving across town in the snow, blech.
Tonight after work I drove out there to fill up my gas cans. The pump has two hoses, one on each side, but I always go to the same side because I always come into the gas station from the same direction. This time, my aim was off and I ended up pulling around to the other side.
Turns out the gas nozzle on the other side is a different size and shape. It's bigger. I guess it must be for filling barrels, while the one on the other side is for filling cans.
Rather than going around to the other side of the pump, I decided to see if the nozzle would fit in my gas cans. It did, but just barely, and I couldn't get the threaded wire part (you know, that spiral wire that's wrapped around gas pump nozzles) to go into the can. Oh well. The nozzle was in, so I turned it on.
I almost immediately realized two things ...
It wasn't making the usual can-filling noise; instead it was making an ominous hissing.
Close on the heels of this discovery came the realization that it was doing this because the air was unable to escape from the can (or, rather, only a little could get out around the nozzle), and with the fuel pump injecting diesel under pressure into the can, I was making a bomb.
I started to pull back the nozzle to let the air out of the can, and of course it did exactly what any reasonable person would expect: it backblasted a high-pressure jet of diesel into my face.
I realized what was happening as it happened, and shut my eyes and mouth, so the general effect was like getting hit in the face with a hard-pressure water hose. More shock than pain. Of course, it was DIESEL. Lucky for my, my glasses deflected most of it away from my eyes, and I opened my still-functional eyes to find that the nozzle was still on (because I'd locked down the little locking mechanism, like everybody does automatically when they fill up their cars) and I was hosing down my cans and the concrete with $1.81/gal diesel. Which was also dripping off my hair, chin and coat. SHIT.
I shut off the hose, stood in shock for a moment, and then started trying to scrub myself down with the only thing I could find, handfuls of not-so-clean snow from the island between the pumps. I was afraid to open my mouth because I didn't want to get diesel in it. Eventually I went into the attendant's little station to get a handful of paper towels, because of course I didn't have any in the car. (Luckily for me, I don't think he could see my little maneuver from his post ... I was behind the pump from him, and he was watching TV anyway.) Of course, it was one of those little roadside gas stations that doesn't have a rest room. After getting myself at least halfway dry, I took the cans around to the right side of the pump and filled them, feeling like an idiot.
Just to top off my night, not only was it a half-hour drive home, but I had to stop at the store on the way home for Halloween stuff for tomorrow. I wandered around Fred Meyer with my hair matted with diesel feeling like a total idiot and trying not to stand close to people. Luckily it's Fairbanks, so people who smell like diesel don't really stand out all that much.
Then I came home and took a really long shower. My hair still smells like diesel, and probably will until Christmas.
no subject
no subject
I'm just glad it wasn't gasoline. That could have been REALLY bad. Diesel is not very flammable.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2004-10-29 07:07 pm (UTC)(link):D
Glad you--and the filling station--didn't go *foom*. Like you say, it's a good thing you soaked yourself in diesel, and not gasoline.
I actually had a slightly similar problem recently--I was filling my car, and the pump didn't auto-shutoff when the tank got full! I realized the problem only after a gallon or so of gas had spilled out and run down the side of my car. Luckily for me, it *was* gasoline, so all I had to do was wait a few minutes for it all to evaporate and then I could drive away safely.
Rob
no subject
(Anonymous) 2004-10-30 05:53 am (UTC)(link)Dan
no subject
roomie
(Anonymous) 2004-10-31 10:40 pm (UTC)(link)your girl roomie who parked her car in the heated garage that they 4 or 5 of you shared but then her car wouldn't start for a week or so and everyone got really mad at her and finally it came out that she never actually tried to start her car with her key but was actually just using her remote start which wasn't working.
jeesh. you're the one with the good memory, not me.
dan
Re: roomie
no subject