Maint Req’d That’s the message that keeps flashing on the dashboard of my car. Every time I go anywhere, the little flashing light blinks at me. It’s taken on a life of its own, and now it sort of serves as a reminder of a number of things in my life for which maintenance is required.

• Obviously, my car needs maintenance. Hence the flashing light. I looked it up in the handy dandy owner’s manual, and it means I need an oil change. Technically, I can go another 600 miles before I actually need one, though.

• I think I need new shoes. I’m pretty hard on my shoes, but I usually only buy new tennis shoes (or cross trainers, or whatever the heck they’re called these days) once a year or so. But I recently had to perform emergency shoe maintenance because my left heel was getting poked by something in the shoe. I thought it was a goathead, or else something else spiky, but I wasn’t expecting to find a staple sticking out of the interior of my shoe. Not a good sign.

• A certain crazy driver woman’s head needs maintenance. Drivers like her are the reasons talking on your cell phone (sans horribly unattractive bluetooth or other headset device) is now illegal here. While at the red light, she saw the opposing traffic’s light turn red, but didn’t wait for her signal to turn green before going. One of the opposing lights still had a green light (left turn signal on the arrow), and she just sped off without warning, completely running the red light and nearly getting hit by oncoming traffic. To all those in Albuquerque who think the law is pointless, or somehow an infringement on your civil liberties: I give you this dumbass driver. Frankly, I don’t see how her putting my life and others’ lives in danger without our say-so is violating her civil liberty. She’s an idiot. I don’t even think she realized she’d run the light.

UPDATE 11/21

This isn’t something I need to have maintenanced, but…

• The magnetic bar code scanner thingie at Circuit City, that supposedly keeps people from shoplifting. While walking into the place, I set the darn thing off. And then everybody proceeded to stare at me. Later, when pulling my wallet out of my back pocket, I found what I suspect was the culprit that set off the bar code thing: a sticker with a bar code was still in place on the inside part of my back pocket. And thus my new jeans were inducted in style. I guess.