24 Hours

On Monday evening after the kids went to sleep, I got the mail which included a rather significant check from all of the games I worked as a soccer referee this fall. Wooooo! Then, I took the 2016 soccer referee recertification test online. (Please note that the next portion of this blog post is about soccer ref stuff, but there's non-ref stuff below.) This 100-question, multiple-choice test is painful. Some of the questions are poorly worded, and there are plenty of others where they are trying to fool you. Here are some questions:

#1: A player, while in an offside position, is guilty of interfering with the opponent and therefore guilty of offside if he does the following:

A) blocking an opponent’s view of the ball but not involved in challenging for the ballherefore guilty of offside if he does the following:
B) running beside the opponent towards the ball without making contact with the opponent
C) making gesture of not playing the ball obvious to everyone
D) none of the above

Does no one proofread this? Although the answer is A, I answered none of the above since I had no idea what the wording in A was supposed to be.

#2 True or false. The ball is in play on a corner kick when the ball is kicked, moves, and leaves the corner arc.

Fortunately, I've taken the recertification exam enough to know some of the quirks. While it's true that the ball is in play on a corner kick when the ball is kicked, moves, and leaves the corner arc, they are asking if the ball is required to leave the arc to be in play. Therefore, the answer is false.

#3 Red #20 is ready to take a throw-in. White #31 pushes a Red attacker down inside the penalty area while jostling for position. You stop the throw-in and caution White #31 for unsporting behavior. The restart is

A) Dropped Ball
B) Thrwo-In
C) Kick-Off
D) Corner Kick
E) Gaol Kick

Is it too much to ask to spell throw and goal correctly?

It took me nearly two hours to take this exam, but I passed with a score of 87%. I don't feel bad about this score either. After the exam, I watched the end of the Detroit Lions-New Orleans Saints Monday Night Football game almost entirely for fantasy football purposes. In a semi-final match, one guy (we'll call him Mike) had a slim lead late in the fourth quarter. His opponent (we'll call him Michael) still had Saints RB Tim Hightower and Lions WR Calvin Johnson. On the last play of the game with victory certain for the Lions, Hightower caught a meaningless 18-yard pass. However, with a half-point per reception and .1 points per yard, this play gave Michael a victory by .1 points. Oh, this play happened just a minute after this rant by Michael:

I *#(@ing don't make the finals because some fat &*^% can't rember to tell the official he's eligible on second down after he remembers to do it on first down. That's the biggest bull &$*# ever in the history of fantasy football.

I feel like the fantasy gods will (or at least should) look poorly at Michael in the championship. Of course, now that I shared this, perhaps the fantasy gods will look poorly at me for the two leagues where I'm still in contention.

On Tuesday morning, I had my regular dentist appointment. I'm sure that I've mentioned this before, but I have a great relationship with my dentist. She knows that I don't floss and never says anything about it. (She also got me an electric toothbrush as a wedding gift.) However, the dental hygienist apparently doesn't know this deal. She asked how often I floss. I replied about once every 6 months which basically corresponds to when the hygienist does it during my appointment. So the hygienist made sure to give the spiel that I need to floss. I'm still not going to floss. If flossing was so important, the dentist should include some with the free toothbrush & toothpaste bag. On a different topic, I need a filling though this is nothing that flossing would have prevented.

This is turning into a very long post. Thanks for staying with me. After the dentist, I took my car to my mechanic for the required state inspection. I've been dreading this since I knew my car wouldn't pass due to an always on airbag light and my driver's side window not working. My 2003 Honda Civic only has 118,000 miles, and I only drive it about 5,000 miles per year. While I definitely need a car, I don't want to put too much money into it or start with a new car payment.

It turned out that the air bag light wasn't a problem. However, my headlights were. Another Honda was there, and I could see how clear they were in the other car compared to my foggy lights. Then, I needed a new window regulator and motor driver. I'm just happy that Warren G is involved with my car.

So my car is now fixed and passed inspection but the soccer referee money is gone.

Finally, I had my soccer referee recertification class. With the class scheduled for 3:30-8:30, I brought snacks and hoped they would provide pizza like they did in previous years. No pizza. I was hungry when I got home but I knew I couldn't eat too much so late. Therefore, my dinner consisted of a cheese stick, clementine, and mint chocolate chip ice cream. Dinner of champions!

Car Rant

My 2003 Honda Civic is slowly falling apart. While the car runs fine overall, it's the little things that are adding up. The passenger side rear window hasn't opened in a few years. Last month, my driver's side window stopped working. You can hear the power window mechanism trying to work but the window doesn't move. While this usually doesn't bother me, it's quite awkward to open the car door to enter and exit parking garages. (Fortunately, I haven't gone to a drive-through in my car yet.) However, this inconvenience is not enough to spend $500 to fix this. I miss my Plymouth Acclaim where I could roll down the window.

Now, I have a bigger problem. The airbag light now appears and stays lit on my dashboard. I took the car to the local Honda dealership on Wednesday to determine the issue. A little later in the morning, I received a call from the service department informing me that the airbag is fine (there was actually a Honda recall on this earlier this year) and that the issue is the seat belt buckle switch. The cost to repair this: $545. I declined the repair.

However, I still needed to pay $132 for the diagnostic. Um, what? I did not get this quote when I left the dealership. After some complaining, the representative said that he would help me out. So when I arrived back at the dealership in the afternoon, I learned that I had to pay $112 instead. The staff seemed to feel like I got an amazing deal by having this diagnostic charge reduced by $20. Without much of a choice, I paid the $112 and left. Oh, I also learned that Honda used to replace this at no cost, but apparently, changed their policy a few years ago. If the problem was mechanical, they would repair the airbag stuff for no change. Any electrical issues, though, would need to be paid by the customer. Great.

Finally, it sounds like my car won't pass the state inspection in December with this light on. Wonderful. So I'm going to need to put about $400-$500 into a 12 year-old car (or more if I choose to fix the window) or face the decision to try to sell the car if it fails inspection. Ugh.

By the way, considering that the car is over 12 years old, 118,000 miles really isn't that much. It's still a good car. Well, don't be surprised if I try to sell this car on Sean's Ramblings later this year.

Weekend Review

- Virginia had no sales tax on clothes this weekend, so I ventured to Kohl's with dozens, if not hundreds, of my closest friends. After trying on probably eight pairs of pants, I settled on exactly one pair along with a few shirts. Then, I ventured upstairs to buy some kids' clothing. I happily found 3 pair of size 4 boys pants. They seemed a little big, but I figured that my older son would grow into them. Apparently, the growing into them could take a long time. I needed to buy size 4T pants not size 4. Who knew there was a difference between the two? I later returned them to Kohl's but did not stay to search for 4T pants. I had my fill of shopping for the week month day.

- I own two suits but wear them only a few times per year. However, between a conference, a wedding and Rosh Hashanah, there's a period in September when I'll need to wear a coat and tie nearly every day for a week. I tried on both of my suit coats recently and noticed that they are huge. They were slightly big when I first purchased the suits, and then I lost about 30 pounds over the years. So I went to Men's Wearhouse over the weekend to see if they could help me. They refused. I had the same result at the place where I take my dry cleaning. In both cases, there would be too much to do, and the arms and shoulders would still look awkward. So now I'm stuck looking like this:

Of course, the Men's Wearhouse guy offered to sell me two suits for $500. I declined.

- Another weekend highlight was my driver's side car window going off track. I was able to close the window but now it won't open. You can hear the power window mechanism trying to work, but the window doesn't move. I called the dealership to get an estimate, and they believe that they need to replace the regulator. (Who knew there is a car part named after the legendary Warren G song?) The estimated repair cost is $491 or the cost of two suits. I guess I'll just open my car door if I go to a fast-food drive-thru or ATM or when exiting the Metro parking garage.

- My 4 year-old could be a photographer one day judging on how much he likes taking pictures with my phone. This picture of Ziggy came out rather well.

Of course, then there are dozens of pictures of the TV and floor like this one of the remote, so he still has some work to do before becoming the next Ansel Adams.

(Though perhaps there's some meaning behind this picture. Maybe it's a post-modern reflection of society's need to have the remote control and how lonely things can be with the remote on the floor. Or something.)

- If you're a fan of all Pittsburgh sports, I hope that you watched the Pirates regular season game on Sunday evening rather than the Steelers pre-season game. The Steelers didn't even play Ben Roethlisberger, Antonio Brown, Le'Veon Bell, Maurkice Pouncey, James Harrison, and Martavis Bryant. Meanwhile, the Pirates scored 9 runs in the 7th inning to defeat the Dodgers 13-6. Naturally, I fell asleep with the Dodgers leading 5-1, so when I later woke up to see the Pirates leading 12-5, I was shocked. Let's Go Bucs!

Stolen Car Tire

After learning that someone stole my car tire yesterday, a family member jokingly said that they would read more about it on my blog. Am I really that predictable?

Anyway, let’s go back to that stolen car tire thing. When I went to my car Wednesday morning, I noticed that the car seemed a little lower in the front. My parking lot slants slightly downward, so I didn’t think much of it as I strapped my child into the car seat. I started the car and decided that I needed to scrape frost off of the windows. Although I cleared ice from the front windshield directly in front of the steering wheel and all of the windows, I didn’t touch the portion of the front windshield in front of the passenger side. I quickly returned to my car to avoid the cold and put my car in reverse. Unfortunately, the car didn’t move. I stepped on the gas with the same result. It was then that I walked to the front of the car and noticed that I was missing my front right wheel.

(This is not a picture of my car.)

Sometime probably Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, thieves took the tire and rim, but left my hubcap and the lug nuts (heh, heh) on the pavement. Although the hooligans didn't put the car on a block, according to the tow truck driver, it appeared that they gently placed the axel on the ground. There was no additional damage other than needing to replace the tire and rim.

I informed the police about the incident yesterday morning, and they indicated that they would let me know if this is a trend. When I posted information about the stolen tire on the community message board, I learned that another car in the neighborhood also had a tire stolen. Seems like a trend to me!

Of course, the police probably (and rightly so) don’t really care about a stolen tire. I’m not going to contact my insurance company about this either. Basically, I’m out a couple hundred bucks, but at least I found a topic for a new blog post!

Fame

It seems like only yesterday that I wrote about the issues with our car and the "Maturn" dealership. Actually, it was Monday. Anyway, my story was picked up the website Jalopnik which has the tagline "Obsessed with the Cult of Cars," and I had 190 hits yesterday. That is a new record breaking the previous record when I was featured on a West Virginia University fan site for writing about Kevin Pittsnogle.

Here is the link to the “Blog Hoonage” where I am one of the featured links. I have no idea how (or if I should) respond to these comments:

Wow! News flash, the automotive service industry is corrupt, and you will pay alot to "fix" your car unless you find someone you trust...
I do have a small portion of sympathy for those who refuse to learn mechanics on their own.

AND

Wellll... that and, it's not unlikely that his car was at the timing belt and water pump service point. And those aren't cheap (or easy) to do. Is the second mechanic he took it to going to fix it for free if/when the belt pops or the water pump fails and the motor is a big paper weight? The dealership would likely be expected to if that happened shortly after they worked on it. So it's easier for them to say "this needs done" versus paying out the nose later to fix a problem they didn't cause.
That's not to say that shops don't "upsell"; they most certainly do, the jerks. But just because one shop recommends more service than another doesn't mean that's what's happening.

Car Repairs

Last week, we took our car to the dealership to fix the windshield wipers and to get an oil change. In its review of the car, the dealership (I do not want to give the car company name but it is a name of a planet and rhymes with Maturn) found that the water pump and belt needed to be replaced. Along with a few other things they found, the grand total of repairs was $1,350! The car is barely worth that amount. Therefore, I took the car to a local mechanic who is a family friend of a friend. After looking at the water pump, belt, etc., they determined that the only thing that needed to be replaced was the idler pulley (whatever that is). They said that the water pump and belt looked fine. The total of today’s repairs: $182.45! That’s quite a difference.

A few things. First, the new mechanic will be getting a lot more business, while the Maturn dealership, well not so much. Look again at the prices again. Instead of looking into buying a new car, we can now wait and try to save a little more money. I don't know about you, but we know very little about car repairs, so you put so much trust into professionals. I feel violated, although it could have been much worse. We could have paid $1,350 and been in even more debt.