Karma

It’s weird how karma works. With most things for me I either have a really good day followed by a really bad day, a bunch of so-so days, or a day mixed with good and bad things. Today was the third variety.
The full time staff at work all had a mandatory meeting all day so my area was closed and I had to work at the helpdesk. The day at work went pretty well. It was a nice change of pace for a day working in a different place (where I work during the school year) and doing different work for a day.
The day ended at 3 (w00h00!) so we could drive to Look Park in Northampton Mass for part 2 of the mandatory staff meeting, an OIT picnic. The drive over from Amherst to Noho is where the troubles began. I was driving on route 9 and almost at the Coolidge Bridge when I started to wonder why my air conditioning was not cooling my car off. I take a look at the temperature gage and of course since this is my car it is up all the way! After opening my window and turning the heat on full blast I was able to get the lever back down to an acceptable level and finish my drive to look park, just before it went all the way up again and the car started beeping at me.
[As a side note, I got my car back on Friday after they had it for 16 days fixing an oil leak.. stupid head gaskets. ]
Ok, so end of bad news, onto good news. I didn’t expect the picnic to actually be good, but it turned out to be fun. After saying hello to a bunch of people that I knew Elliott, Dan, Liz, Liz’s kids, Liz’s friend, and Liz’s friend’s kid all hung out together at the park. It was cool going back to a place where we used to go in elementary school at the end of the year. We first talked for awhile while the kids played on the playground, then got some grub. After dinner I challenged Elliott to a chess match but after each of us moving two pieces we got kicked out since a tournament was about to begin. At this time we left and headed to a new edition to Look Park since I was there last (~9 years ago), the sprinkler area.
At the sprinkler area we all got wet, especially Elliott and the kids who got soaked. The sprinkler area had water shooting out of the ground and on various structures such as flowers and towers with buckets. If you wanted to get wet this was a great place to do it. After we left there we were all much cooler.
The next stop was the train. This was one of my favorite memories from when I used to visit Look Park when I was young. Of course it wasn’t all the fun I remembered it being but it was still a good ride. We had just missed the last real ride of the day, but got to ride for free as they were bringing the train into the tunnel for the night.
After the train ride we took a tour of the zoo area where we saw, among other things, two bald eagles. Upon completing the self-guided tour we started to leave. Liz’s friend and her kid actually left but the rest of us headed over to where I was parked to take a look at my car. We ended up adding a small bottle of water into the cooling system of the car hoping that would help and then just chilling.
At one point while Dan Elliott and I were talking Liz-n-crew went to the bathroom. It was light when she went in, but dark when she came out. Right. I guess you really don’t care about that, but I just though I should let you all know. 🙂
Anyway, we just hung out in the parking lot for a while more while Elliott tried teaching Liz some self defense moves.. and I was the demo person. I got tossed on the ground a few times hehe.
It was about 10 when we got kicked out by the park rangers saying that the park was closing. We all had a good time as far as I can tell. I’m sure I did. The car ride home proved uneventful (that