Aveo

What's red, made of tuna fish cans, comes from Korea, and smells like a newly-cleaned men's room?

My rental car.

Score one for Wallace and Gromit

The Discover card bill finally posted this morning.

Hmmm. Let's see. Friday to Wednesday = five days for electronic transfer. Speed of light?

Why do I do these things?

This is yet another episode in the "online banking saga."

The lady from Chase Bank called again on Friday to urge me to pay all my bills online blah blah blah. I gave her the whole nine yards of my difficulties, complaints, and experience—that the online banking experience is slow, unreliable, and generally a pain. She promised to stop bothering me.

I felt bad. And I felt curious. So against my better judgment, I did all the stuff to pay my Discover bill online. Sent them over $200. That was Friday. As of Monday, the money had come out of my bank account. Tuesday evening, though, it still hasn't gone into the Discover account. It's stuck somewhere in cyberspace.

So I guess tomorrow I'll call the lady back and ask her to track things down. They do guarantee that it will work, after all.

I think Wallace and Gromit have lost this round. Maybe I needed one more attempt to convince me that the paper check is still king.

One lingering question concerns timing. When I post grades online, the students can see them instantly. The second I click "OK" they can find out how they did. Except for a few poor programs, most e-mail moves within a minute or so too (then there's the one that takes an hour or more). So why on earth should wire transfers of money take a week? If I had mailed the payment to Carol Stream, Illinois (Discover's billing office) on Friday, the check would have been there Monday or Tuesday, and the payment would have posted 24 to 48 hours faster than electronic transfer.

Assuming this one works.

$2000 gone missing

I was in a panic tonight after using the ATM. I knew how much money was supposed to be in my checking account, and the ATM slip said it was less. A lot less. Like nearly $2000.

Fortunately, before I phoned anyone to call them names, I got home and found the latest account statement in my mailbox. Problem isolated: a missing deposit. Where did it go??? UAkron direct deposit, usually very reliable.

Another statement from another bank. There's the money. Apparently I'd changed over the direct deposit last June and forgot that I'd done it.

Now if I can only find my missing fountain pen.

Finally getting out of jail

It's nearly three weeks since I began to feel ill. I think it was the flu, but not the swine variety. For about two weeks, I moaned, coughed, and dragged myself around with zero energy. Just barely enough of me to get the minimum work done.

I'm better now. The upside is that I can actually go places and do things. The downside is that I'm still so behind in basic stuff like grading papers that I have to do marathon sessions (often lasting until 9 p.m.) to try to catch up. And I am caught up! (Unless you count about half a dozen revised papers and a pile of short homework quiz-type assignments) It's 11:34 a.m. now. By 12:30 I won't be caught up any more. The first of 75 papers will come in.

But I'll make it. Tonight, no work in particular. Tomorrow, I'm off to the gym for the first time in three weeks. Then Saturday, I begin grading again.

The Tin Goose

According to Father Capon (author of Supper of the Lamb, among others), a tin goose is an article of kitchen equipment that is manufactured primarily to be sold, not to be used. His number one candidate is the electric stove. Not a bad nominee, though I don't mind electric ovens. Just not the stovetops elements.

I've got my own list, and it's going to grow.

Glad Wrap and Saran Wrap. It looks so fine in the ads, and I know that somehow, somewhere people actually make it work. They must. When I go to the coffee shop, I see muffins and bread that's been wrapped in some kind of clear plastic. The problem is that the stuff I buy simply won't stick to anything once it's come off the roll. My best shot is to use masking tape.

Most kitchen choppers. Flimsy devices made to sell on late-night TV. They claim to allow you to cut up an onion, but they don't actually do anything at all.

Teflon pans. First they lose their non-stick quality, then they begin to flake into the food. Why wasn't cast iron good enough? In daily use, a Teflon pan works for about a month.

The average knife. No more needs to be said.

Most kitchen coffee grinders. A batch contains fine powder, good ground coffee, and whole beans that the machine can't be bothered with.