Forward: It has come to my attention that it might be felt that because I force comments to be made on my site instead of on livejournal that I am somehow trying to force you to visit my site. I assure you, this is not the case. I prefer to host my blog on my own terms, and I only cross-post it on livejournal because Danny whined and whined about having to visit some other site to get updates. Thus, I am trying to limit the avenues of different discussion on each missive issued to one site. Sorry for the convenience of being able to read all comments in one place 
I’ll quit using the ‘more’ link so you don’t have to pop over to my site to read the entire story.
Now on to the content…
My poor pickup. It has been through a lot lately. I’ve strived to keep it looking and running great, and so far it has worked out for me. I only use full synthetic oil, and I stay on top of service. 85,000 miles later it runs like it did when it was new.
However, in the last few months, it has had a hard life. Amanda was driving it as her daily vehicle for a while, until we found a Subaru for her, and she managed to tag a pole with the front bumper and smear paint on it. I think that will buff out if I work on it. Then, she decided to be ‘clever’ like me and back it into the space every night, but got nervous one night because of traffic and managed to back into the same pole and put a good dent into the back bumper that will not buff out. She’s probably going to have a cow that I am posting all this, haha. The radio has a motorized front face that pops open when you put in a CD or when you turn off the truck (so you can remove it for theft deterrent). That has started to not work properly for the last month or so. At least everything else is ok, or so I thought…
Friday I went out to the truck around 11pm with Amanda to go over to Wendy’s for a late night meal. Walking up to the truck, I found a mostly empty Natural Ice beer can laying on the ground next to the drivers door, and it appeared to have exploded. My door was covered in a film of presumably dry beer, but nothing seemed amiss. I sat down in the truck and shut the door and found the problem. My mirror was busted. It would seem someone threw a full beer at my mirror while driving past and shattered it. The dried beer on my door contains bits of glittery glass. Mind you, the truck had been parked on the street with about 15-20 other vehicles near my apartment, so I had not thought much of leaving it there (in fact, I figured I could keep a better eye on it…). I took a picture the next day after a motorcycle ride:
I moved the pickup to the parking area behind the apartment, next to where I park the bike. These are unassigned, covered parking spaces. There are many spaces open in the covered area, and many more in the uncovered area. I have been keeping a close eye on the truck every day since when I leave and come home from work (on the bike). After having been parked there for going on 4 full days, I discovered this taped to the drivers window of my truck last night:
I… I am at a loss here. What does it even mean? It looked like there was two different strokes on the H looking character, so I can only assume that the word written is, ‘troke’. I assume they feel this is their parking space? But it is unassigned parking and there is literally 10 open spaces 4 spaces down.
I removed the sign and threw it on the ground nearby. I figure it will at least be plausible that it fell off, so as to give this genius pause before escalating. I look forward to what might appear tonight.
In a related note, I bought a car alarm off eBay last night. One of the kind that has a ‘pager’ key fob that alerts you if the alarm went off, so at least I will get notification. We’ll see what happens. But, seriously, poor truck. Everyone is picking on it, it seems.
I missed the sign signifying the speed up to 50mph, but it didn’t take me long to correct the mistake with a gentle roll on of throttle. The wind rushed past my helmet, and I was still somewhat lost in thought. The excitement of the road ahead pounded softly in the back of my head, but it was too soon to shut off the music, flip up my visor, and give into the pure physics.
… If you always get up late.. You’ll never be on time…
Broken Social Scene crooned softly into my ear, adding more emotion to my thoughts than was really needed. I had just left Albuquerque behind, and for the last 30 miles I had been pondering the things I had seen and said. I woke up this morning on Frank’s couch, in my sleeping bag. His new cat, Zack, finds mostly anything a toy. I understand the mentality; I have a cat too. Of course, it did not help that Frank was cranked up, trying to stir the cat into a frenzy so it would land on my chest. I packed up my things and left as soon as possible. I called Danny, left a voicemail, called Josephine, another voicemail. So, I headed out to Rio Rancho to see Scott. I hadn’t talked to him in a while, not out of malice, just… lack of something useful to say, really.
Today was also his daughter’s birthday party. She is a toddler, and as I walked into his house, I discovered a fleet of toddlers. Scott and Ansley both wore matching Elmo t-shirts. Parents were everywhere, smiling, snapping photos, encouraging and discouraging the kids. I stood by the door, took off my courier bag and leather jacket, and found myself in the sudden possession of a piece of birthday cake. Kids? I don’t want kids. I’m worried if I had kids that I would mess them up somehow, or fail to be able to provide for them. My sister has kids, and she is doing well with them, so at least my folks are not pressuring me to pop out offspring. Scott is full on into the dad thing. Everyone tells me that having kids is the greatest thing, but Danny says they are just trying to make me unhappy like them, haha.
I found a quiet corner of the couch and waited for the excitement to die down. Scott’s folks popped in a DVD of photos from their recent trip to Antarctica. Yeah, that place. Part of me wonders why you would spend the money to just set foot on the continent and leave 30 minutes later, another part of me thinks it would be very awesome. Danny finally came to my deliverance, thankfully, and I ducked out to meet him at Flying Star on Menaul.
Happy Zombie Jesus day! Hopefully he won’t see his shadow and winter will be over soon.
OK, I just bought my ticket to hell there, but what the hey?
Regardless, here I am, 5:30 in the morning, sorting out my favorite pounding tracks for inclusion on my beat up iPod shuffle. I’m planning on going on a motorcycle ride tomorrow up in the hills, roads willing, and I wanted something thumping. I’ve been running Debian on my laptop here and I was pleasantly surprised to find that the iPod was reconized when I plugged it in. I rather expected an hour or two of futzing with it before anything worthwhile happened.
I hope to be down in NM soonish to wrap up some house stuff. Email if you are interested in stopping in and I’ll let you know when.
I know there have been no updates in a while, but I just have not felt inspired. I still don’t know the area up here all that well, except for my commute and the few tangents here and there, and it has been driving me nutty. Just the same interstate commute every day. The bike seems to love the 85+mph rides into work most days, though, and my fuel mileage stays firmly above 40MPG for the most part regardless.
So, recently, we bought Amanda a used ’92 Subaru Legacy 4 door sedan. 146,000 miles, ran good, but the clutch was shot, $700. Bought it, drove it to the shop. I spent a couple of days putting in a new clutch, which wasn’t nearly as hard as some of the ones I have put in in the past. I cleaned it up, fixed a door lock, bought trim pieces from the junkyard to get everything little thing inside looking good. It passed the emissions test no problem, and was running good.
However, the windshield had a crack. Saturday I took it in to get it replaced, and get the safety check. The safety guy was not there so I couldn’t register it. Whups. Monday I sent Amanda down to Salt Lake to have them do the check (for free, no less) so she could get tags for it. I had been at work for about 3 hours when the phone rang. It was Amanda, really broken up, and I couldn’t understand much of what she was saying, except she had been in an accident on I-15. I jumped in the truck and headed north.
Turns out that while attempting a lane change through a mound of slush to get clear of a disabled vehicle on the side of the road, she had lost control of the car and ended up hitting the disabled vehicle, an Isuzu Trooper, at about 50mph. The Trooper was mostly alright, but the Subie folded up, as you can see. More photos here. So, the $700 car is no more.
I’m debating taking the engine and tranny out and hanging onto them for a bit to make a few more bucks on it, but I haven’t decided yet. I gotta take it off to the junkyard Monday, though, so we’ll see.
Ah well, at least Amanda was not really hurt. She’s got bruises, but nothing broken.
So, anyway, watch out for slush this winter
Welp, I still exist. I know it has been a long time since I posted last, but hey, busy and all. So, here is an update.