Mirror, Mirror, now on the wall

A South American, an Englishman, an American and an Australian are in a car. It sounds like the start of a bad joke, but it's actually my Saturday.

Yesterday started off differently to most Saturdays with the sound of the alarm. Normally we don't set an alarm on the weekends, but yesterday we had to get the car to Toyota before 9 so that it could get serviced. I got up, threw on some clothes and walked out the door. Luckily I dressed warmly, because Liz checked the temperature after I left, and it was -2. Fahrenheit. That's just shy of -19 celsius. There was no breeze though, which helped.

I got almost all the way to Toyota when I saw their courtesy van being driven away from the dealer. I hoped he wasn't going too far so that I wouldn't have to wait too long at the dealer before getting a ride home. 10 minutes later the car was all checked in and I was sitting waiting for a ride. I only had to wait about 10 more minutes and the guy was back. I got into the van, along with another customer getting a ride and waited for the driver. He turned up a minute later with another passenger, a British gentleman. So, there we were: a South American, an Englishman, an American and an Australian are in a car.

The other 2 were headed back to Greenwich, while we are about 10 minutes from the dealer in Stamford. The driver decided he would drop them off first, so we started toward Greenwich, me knowing that I was now 30 minutes off getting home. He dropped the Englishman off without incident, and the American girl soon followed. Turning onto a main road, he turned and said to me "I'll head for High Ridge Road." By turned to me, I mean he completely swivelled 135 degrees while driving to tell me which way he was going to go. He's a friendly guy, and likes to make eye contact when he talks to people, I guess.

Then the incident happened. We were sitting at an intersection with some cars in front of us. The cabin started to smell strange. I figured he wasn't using recirculated air, so some exhaust was making it into the cabin. A few seconds later, though, and the smell became more familiar. It was the smell of rotten eggs, and it was getting worse. 15 seconds dragged out, and the driver looked down, muttered something I couldn't hear, and proceeded to wind down his window. I can't remember the last time I was exposed to a rotten egg fart.

He made it to the road he told me he was heading to before swivelling around again to check where to turn. He's a funny guy - he's dropped us off several times, but never quite seems to remember who we are. As soon as he saw the house, though, he hit his head and said "Now I remember!" I came inside and told Liz about the rotten egg fart, because, as I said to her, "When someone does something like a rotten egg fart, I feel obligated to let other people know about it."

The rest of the day was actually productive - being stuck without a car and being too cold to walk anywhere, we got things done around here. We moved in about 20 months ago, and for the entire time we've had a mirror that goes with the set of drawers sitting in our room, leaning against a wall. We finally got around to hanging that. That meant we could tidy up around where the mirror had been sitting, which lead to a tidy up of the entire loft area. It's amazing, with the hanging of a mirror and a quick clean up, the room up there feels so much more homey.

We eventually got a call that the car was almost ready and that they would be sending the driver in 30 minutes. 90 minutes later the driver still hadn't come, so I called Toyota. I guess they hadn't sent him, because he was here 10 minutes later... he took us back to the dealer, and told me that next time he drops us off he'll take us first so that we don't need to wait in the car the whole time. But he didn't make any promises about rotten egg farts.