100,000 mile commute... :(

You’ve been there.  Those days traveling when things just don’t go right.  Your body is tired.  Your mind is on coast.  And bad stuff just seems to come your way.

So here I am at the end of week #3 in the new job at PAS.  The family still living in Phoenix.  Me living in Houston.  During the transition, I want to get home most weekends so I can do the yard, get the house ready to sell, etc., etc.

I stopped to figure out my annual commuting mileage.  Wrong move.  Who wants to commute 100,000 miles per year?  If only my youngest daughter could somehow – magically – graduate from high school right now. 

Maybe I could wave my wand and … Poof! … she could be a super-genius already graduated from high school, college and everything else that causes separation and costs money. Too bad - it isn’t going happen no matter how much I wave any kind of wand.

Well, in my state of being tired and on coast on the way home on Friday, I returned the rental car and – yip – things started going wrong.  The rental car return kid says “Please go inside to work out your final bill, my automated doo-dad doesn’t recognize your car.” 

Being on coast, I just did as I was told and went inside (this is a big deal, because normally I work hard NOT to do something just because I am told...)

After patiently coasting in the Budget rent-a-car shack long enough to want to get out of line and go to the bathroom, something somewhere in the back of my head fires off a thought – “Hey you! What if this isn’t your line?”  I pushed the processing of this thought just a level higher than the other biological signals fighting for my attention and …. Yip, I am in the wrong line.

So I went back outside, wiggled my car back out of the rental return line and drove her back to where she belonged.

Bye-bye Budget. Hello Avis.

Duh!  Maybe they need to print a sticker on your travel documents: “Warning:  Too much travel causes coasting, leading to stupid actions.”

I think I’ll stay in Houston next weekend and ask my wife if she wants to come visit me instead.