Audi’s Emergency Key

If you lose your car key, Audi has a backup system.

Keep this tiny key on you always, store in your wallet.

It will open the driver’s door.

Climb inside, open the glovebox.

1 – grab that
2 – insert the tiny key into it
3 – now you have a fob that fits into the ignition. Peel away.

 

 

 

I’m like a Squatter with a Mortgage

It’s 2 months now, July 25, that I’ve been living like this.

You know how much I like order and clean, remember my minimalist, pure-white condo?

My office looks like that, it’s the only room that’s finished. Figured I should focus on the part that pays the mortgage.

But like, Friday I worked from it… while a guy worked with a sawzal in my den.

Living like this is reeking havoc on my mind.

Squatter with Mortgage

The “To-Do” List never shrinks, and there’s a new urgency to it, the “Before the Snow Comes” List…

… I travel a lot and used up my newspaper vacation time for Targa… to go from 1 bill a month to 20 woah… next up is learning everything about hot water tanks and softeners…. if I don’t soon gravel my driveway it’s going to become “press car mud pit of despair”, and wow this home-owning thing is a steep learning curve. 

Look at the deplorable condition of my floors * But here comes another trade through, what is even the point anymore.

Finally this weekend I escaped the air mattress though, into a real bed.

And I have a ceiling again.

Had to cut the kitchen apart to insulate the attic, that was Phase 1 of winterizing-the-cottage-I-bought. Drywall dust gets into eeeeeverywhere eh.

The purple stuff: that’s the insulation! It’s spray-foam, so cool, weighs nothing, is highly effective, and helps increase the structural rigidity of a house, even.

Blog tag = house

 

 

I Re-wrote Instructions for ‘What to do After an Accident’

After a collision your mind is a mess, when it needs to be laser-focused.

The objective is to gather as much information as possible. Past advice suggests sketching and jotting notes, but instead, I say use your phone to document. The following is a set of instructions.

Print this list & stuff into glovebox:

– turn on “Location Services” so GPS coordinates will be attached to all photos
– photo EVERYthing, take like 100+ photos
– along with a 360º of the damage, photograph drivers’ licence and plates, tires, external conditions
– video witnesses, video interactions with the other driver
– use the voice record app while you walk around, narrating what you see

I hope you never have to use this list.

Read it online at Autonet.

Favourite line: 

The second last paragraph, the list of external conditions to take note of.

***

Back to ‘Keri on Driving’ – Index

 

 

I’m in an Ikea-Building-Party Nightmare

Remember when I bought a house-worth of furniture yesterday? Took delivery of 17 pieces at 1pm.

Was most looking forward to the bed.

2 guys kindly came to help, thought we’d have everything built by tonight.

Was that ever delusional.

It’s going to take 4 times as long as I estimated.

And was delivered the wrong slats for the bed bottom.

I took my shopping list to the store too, to order everything with a human and avoid this. And they’re not just the wrong slats wait, this type isn’t even for sale on the website.

The slats that came out of the ether.

I was so close to getting off an air mattress guys. It’s been 2 months now.

(if we’re just meeting: I bought a house, picked up the keys on July 25 and never went back to my condo downtown, been living out of a suitcase since, blog tag = house)

Ikea couldn’t have been nicer about it, almost over-compensated, so tomorrow I’ll swap the slats, plus… omg plus:

Tomorrow: 2 newspaper deadlines Friday morning, conducting an interview about auto security at 11am, then a Porsche 911 event at the Manga Golf Course tomorrow night, and it’s the last day EVER to drive my beloved Jetta because it failed the smog test so hard, and I have surgery Tuesday morning and haven’t been able to figure out how to hide that from you…

… so I’m going to sleep on the idea of putting my blog on pause for a week …. need to get this house stuff in order because the snow comes soon, which’ll be perfect blogging weather…

TTYT XO