Such a Slacker

I'm sitting here staring at my blog archives. Hard for me to believe that at this time last year, I already had at least 33 entries (and that was only from April to June)! I think the title of this entry says it all.
Last month, I played "dutiful daughter" and went Iowa with my sister for a shin-dig at my mother's alma mater. They had Linda Purl come and sing. Remember her from "Happy Days" (Fonzie's fiance) and "Matlock"? She is also an accomplished jazz singer. I really enjoyed it; her performance was top notch, plus her banter was really funny!
The trip itself started out as a comedy of errors. My sister and I took the red-eye from San Francisco to Chicago on what had to be the most broken down plane in the fleet. And what's up with the distance between seat nowadays? I swear, by knees were almost touching the seat in front of me. Neither of us had slept much the night before, & we resigned ourselves to another night of little rest.
We had an uneventful and more comfortable flight to Omaha, where we picked up our rental & drove to Sioux City (my sister was trying to save money on the flights). As we were pulling out of the lot, my sister said, "Do you smell oil?" Tired and somewhat cranky, I replied, "No, let's just get on the road." She spent the next 90 minutes keeping me awake and entertained while I tried to keep my eyes open and drive between the lines. This is the point where I will publicly admit that I should have listened to her in Omaha. When we were pulling off the freeway on our way to the hotel, the oil smell got a lot stronger. As soon as we slowed down and parked, we noticed white smoke starting to wisp out from under the hood. My first thought? "Oh crap, she's gonna blow!" Lucky for me, the mid-west is full of good people, who are willing to help out when someone is in distress. A bus driver (who was grandfather-type) ambled over and said, "Ladies, I want you to pop that hood." You should have seen the white clouds billowing out of the engine when I did what he asked! Turns out, the rocket scientists at the car rental agency had changed the oil and forgot to put the oil cap back on. What a mess! *Note to anyone renting from Budget in the Sioux City, Iowa area: there is no Budget office in Sioux City and they will not come and pick up the car from you. I ended up having to go to the Hyundai dealership, where they cleaned up the engine and gave me a new oil cap. They were so nice, they didn't have it in stock, so they took it off of a new car!
And my mother wonders why I don't like to travel anymore...