This Happened

[Phoebe]

This happened: I have the best dad. And mom! I know that some of you may think that you have the best dad and I can appreciate and sympathize with why you think this but mine is the best. That is all.

[Phoebe]

Things that have "happened" this week due to lack of sleep:
Put coat on inside-out and went to work (caught it at last minute!); left entire car full of groceries in the car overnight, ruining about $20 worth of stuff that was either too warm or too cold as a result; went to great lengths for totally unnecessary trip to purchase dog food we already had; developed skull-crushing migraine that will not leave even with coffee.

[Zen]

Well, we're back to having an empty nest after a month or so of having one or both of our kids at home. (Plus one with my son's roommate there as well...)

The good news: I have unfettered access to my computer again! And the larger of my TVs... and the good sound system... AND a new computer chair to replace the one that broke in late November! (I had been sitting on a chair with no back for a while... It's was nice to have my son at home to do the bending and crap to put it together for me... and to carry it home from the store, since I'm sure it's way above my lifting limit due to my arthritis...)

The bad news: I sat in front of the story I'm working on last night after our gaming session was cancelled and stared at it like it was a foreign language... then watched an anime episode... then played a game... sigh... It seems that I've reached the point in this story where I've run out of gas... Sad, since I was really writing this one to try to kick start my creative juices so I could actually finish the third volume of the trilogy...

[Phoebe]

You could do something artificial to prompt a direction, and then if you hate it, maybe the experience will send you back in the right direction, or if you love it... you love it. You know, arbitrarily decide that you're going to write the next bit involving the ocean, or someone breaking up, or a new animal, or ... whatever.

[mimekiller]

A duder who has been lost in the open waters of step father nightmare zone with some shrieking harpy has finally come to his senses and left that den of insanity and will be crashing on my couch this weekend for some much needed football bro time.

[mimekiller]

Turns out this is his last free weekend before doing 3-16 for a unspecified crime. uhhhhh I hope the football games are good and hell he can even have some of my good beer.

[Phoebe]

Sad story of sad person:
I went to the, ah, quilt store. I was talking to myself about quilts, you know how it is, when some woman came up and joined my conversation-in-progress, but not in the usual way. (The usual way is, oh, ha ha, are you talking to yourself? Ha ha, now I will ask you a question to rescue you from that fate.) Instead, it was pretty clear she had interrupted her own conversation with HER self in order to temporarily intersect my conversation, and y'all, she was hilarious. I am not one to drop such a ball thrown to me, so we conversed for a while, and then we inflicted our conversation on another woman who innocently wandered by. This amused us such that the first woman instructed me to go on the internet and find her quilting group, which I did. I signed up, I gave my email address. But then... there are too many women in the quilting group for me to know which one is the one I met, so it is hopeless and my efforts to make friend have failed. I do correspond with the out of town friends and I do think I have a couple friends here in town now, really, this is good. One maybe thinks I am a nut but is ok with it, hopefully, and the other is great but she is single and I find that it is hard to hang out with the single friends (there are a few of these now) because they have different needs at cross-purposes to one's own. Anyway, we keep at it, you know, we try.

Also, I have switched dentists because dentist #1 has bad breath and does not adequately deal with husband's cigar issues, and dentist #2 is an old, paunchy balding guy with some tufts of white hair, but he is bizarrely attractive and pleasant and his inner light bulb is lit more brightly than most one encounters. He convinced me dentist #1 is silly in the ways of dentistry, though - good marketing effort there, with facts. We patients like those facts. Anyway, being smart and helpful and better is a good reason to choose a dentist, so it's not like I LACK good reasons, but is it wrong to choose a dentist because he's cute and appealing, in addition to the other reasons? It's a weird place you get in the "middle" of ages (middle for whom? we don't know) when suddenly anyone who is non-retired from their job is in a totally reasonable age range for being attractive and cute. Recalibration, maybe pheromones. Who can say.

[Eliahad]

So on Friday I went to a museum to look at some art. That was fine, but on the way home my car, which drove there just fine, started going crazy on the drive back down the parking garage. Like it kept wanting to stall out in low gear and was bucking like crazy. Rough, very rough. Every stop light, same thing. Once it was at highway speeds, it was better, but still present. As soon as it got back down to low gears, same thing. It felt better when I put it in neutral, but oi. Then yesterday morning when I tried it, it didn't even want to start. It would buck and try and start, but nothing. I'm taking it in to get it looked at, but I'm anxious as hell. I'll know more later, I guess. I don't really want to have to look for a new car right now. But I suppose that's a possibility. AHHHH! (I should just get a blog.) I think I'm just looking for reassurance that it's going to be something simple and I won't need to get a new car.

[Zen]

My car knowledge is minimal, but it sounds like it's misfiring to me. It may be something as simple as a tune up... or it could be a new (ro rebuilt) transmission. I doubt that it will require a new car.

I hope it's something cheap.

[Eliahad]

It's not. The timing adjusters are all oil pressure based, and since this thing has an internal oil leak, the well was dry, even if the oil sensor never came on. So. $1600 to replace all the things.

[Phoebe]

Bah, that sucks!

[Mike]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

[Eliahad]

Thanks, folks. Is okay, I can deal with it.

[Zen]

Well... cheaper than a NEW car... and most used cars... at least most used cars you'd want to buy...

[Phoebe]

Well, what happened with the car? If you were going to get a different car what kind of car would you get? Two people I know have a Subaru Forester and love it. A sample size of two is plenty when you already like the thing.

[Ronster]

I have over 1 million miles spread across 4 cars. I live by the idea that" a new car payment is the most expensive repair." However peace of mind is worth a lot if you drive a lot. I mostly fix my own stuff, but I have some definite killer problems that if left unchecked will strand me.

3 things you can check that will keep you from killing a car:

1. check oil level
2. check anti-freeze/coolant level
3. check transmission fluid level.

With older cars this should be a fill-up inspection. once you have a base value by doing this a few times you will notice any fluid consumption.

I have one vehicle that is a high consumer of oil, One moderate one, and two low ones.

Good thing you took it to a shop, Eliahad, because that problem could have been easily misdiagnosed if you used google or youtube for reference (like I do )


Yeah, I am always on the prowl for a good used car. Circumstances dictate that this must be so.

[Eliahad]

I know very little about cars and I am a gremlin when it comes to the repair of mechanical things. I have attempted such, but it is not a skill I possess, and thankfully one that I have realized I should leave to people who DO know what they are doing. (I think the most difficult thing I have done is install a dimmer switch and one ceiling fan. I attempted a second that had too many wires, which was actually okay, because when the electrician came he told us that I would have burned down the house whether I was successful in my attempt or not. The house had bad wiring done by the previous owners.)

The car is getting repaired, because I need the car right now and if I get a new one it has to be on my terms. I did attempt to look up what was going on on the google. It would have been incorrect. Which makes sense, because I have no expertise and none of the necessary tools even if I had known what it was. I can attempt to be more vigilant. The man at the shop thought the car was generally in good shape and I probably could get another 50,000+ miles out of it. Which is another year and a half or so, and that's not too bad.

It occurs to me that in 12 years of being a musician for a living I'm closing in on 420,000 miles driven over the course of 2 vehicles. One I drove all the miles. The other had 90,000 when I got it.

[Zen]

[Phoebe]

The nonstop work and stress of it all has become very unpleasantly excessive. I could probably handle it without the veneer of dealing with white supremacists smeared on top.

[Zen]

This seems to happen more often than not, and happened again today:

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9:10 am: Text message received: Delivered: Your Amazon package with The Legend of Korra Turf Wars Part Two was delivered. More info at... blah blah blah

9:16 am: Text message received: Arriving today: Your Amazon package with The Legend of Korra Turf Wars Part Two will be delivered by 8PM. Track at... blah blah blah
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It seems like at least half the time I get the "Delivered" message on the day of delivery BEFORE the "Arriving today" message...

I find it funny...