The Weather Strikes Again, as well as the unthinkable

Do you know those things that never, or hardly ever happen? Why do they have to happen when they just can't? I know, Murphy's law, right?

Sure, the weather situation is not as complicated as it was on K's first interview with the blizzard and all, because it's just raining. However, since he was flying, the flight was delayed over two hours and he was going to get there late for his talk.

So... he decided to get another rental car (he was returning the one from yesterday's interview) and drive there.

And, guess what? Sigh.

He stopped quickly by the house to get an umbrella and hug the boys (who'd been asleep when he left for the rental place) and he left the car running on the driveway with the door slightly ajar. Of course the door closed and the car locked itself up. How wonderful! With the laptop and all his things inside (he couldn't even drive our own car if he wanted to). We had to call our insurance's roadside assistance which took over an hour to come and now he's on his way. With barely a minute to spare. If he gets stuck in traffic, he won't get there on time. Sigh.

I couldn't bear to blog about this earlier, I was so nervous, and nor should I be blogging about it now, but I guess that by now you're used to our roller-coaster lives, aren't you?

K is really calm and confident that everything will turn out fine. At least he'll have a lot to laugh about and decompress when he has dinner with the search committee folks tonight. At his first interview he was introduced everywhere as "the candidate who drove 9.5 hours from Philadelphia" to be there and it became an effective ice-breaker (as well as a sign that he was really interested in the position). I hope the same happens today. We've got to try to find a bright side, otherwise it's just plain old stressful.

I think this car-locking-with-keys-inside had never happened to K, but I'd done it at least three times before (never with the car running). The first time was at a store parking lot (K came to get me), but the second time (in 2002) was freaky and really scary. I had put baby Kelvin (4 months old) in the car seat so I could go teach my summer section course and after I closed the back door of our Civic and went to open the driver's door, the doors inexplicably locked!! The key/keyless entry pad was on the driver's seat. No cell phones yet back then, but my neighbor was home and I called K to come from the university (we had two cars). Brave Kelvin never cried. I kept talking to him through the car windows (all closed) and fortunately it wasn't that hot and he was just a bit sweaty when daddy arrived 25 minutes later. Phew!!

The last time, back in 2006, I locked our whole family (including my parents) out of the car back and we had to wait a while for the roadside assistance (we always get it with our car insurance, it's really useful). Good thing we were at a church function with my in-laws, so it was OK, we had a place to wait. I'll let you know next time it happens. :-P

I'm always relieved that our old Odyssey has no keyless entry anymore (it was basically broken already when we bought it) and that I always need to use my keys to lock and unlock it. And we also have tons of spare keys. The rental place does NOT have spare keys and they can do nothing for a customer in a pickle like that. :-( What if the customer loses the keys?

OK, I won't be live-blogging this trip, even because we're leaving for piano lessons right now. But I'll keep you posted.