When I sat down at my desk at work this morning I looked down and noticed a bruise forming on the back of my hand at the knuckles of the middle and ring fingers. Took me a second, but then I remembered.
It is an immutable law of the universe that whenever there is a couple, each of the individual satellites surrounding them will seem to gravitate more to one than the other. Daddy’s little girl or the dog will come when called by one, but ignore the other. And it is not just people or pets.
Last night we went out for a drive in the Miata to grab a couple of Motoring Challenge points locally. The Miata was in the garage with the top up. I went to the driver’s side and Donna was on the passenger side and we both reached into disengage the top latches on our respective sides. Mine went easy, but Donna was having a hard time getting it to unlatch. She got it partially open and it snapped back closed, pinching outside of the hand between thumb and forefinger. Not hard enough to break the skin, but enough to turn the skin red and to hurt a bit.
Yesterday I drove the Mini to work to 1) show it off, 2) see how many people would think I’d bumped my head and got rid of the Miata and 3) see how many people don’t pay attention at all. The answers are: 1) a half dozen wanted to know about the car while one wanted to actually see it and sit in it, 2) two people, both today and 3) the other 250 or so.
My lunch box goes in the trunk of the Miata and went in the trunk of the Sonata too, but the Mini does not have an actual trunk per se, it has a hatchback with a spot behind the back seats and a little lid thing to keep stuff out of sight. When closing the Miata’s trunk lid I grasp the loop that goes into the latch mechanism and “throw” the lid down. The Sonata had a nice handle for this purpose molded into the underside of the lid. When I closed the Mini hatch before leaving home I just pressed down on the outside of the hatch and pushed. When I got to work, I noticed that the Mini, like the Sonata, had a handle for grabbing to close the hatch. When I tried it, it was sort of awkward to reach and when I “threw” it down I didn’t get enough force on it to totally overcome the upwards pressure from the 2 struts. The hatch went down 6 to 8 inches and bounced right back up and hit my hand. Hard.
This must be the cause of my bruised hand. And we now know for a fact that the Miata likes me better and the Mini likes Donna better.
The top photo of Fresh Pavement (1 point) was taken Wednesday on my way home, the other three we took last night. The BBQ Joint and Bed & Breakfast were worth 1 point each. The Solar Array is to replace our first attempt, so no points gained there.