My son got his learner permit today. He turned 16 on Friday, celebrating by skipping school and doing... I don't know, I was at work. He spent the day with his mother. He politely asked that I not take him to a government office to deal with paperwork, so we did it this week instead.
So, my 'technically' driveable car that's not going to pass inspection? Yea, he can learn to drive in that. If he absolutely wrecks it, I haven't lost much. No pressure really means no pressure this time.
I brought my car in to get the exhaust fixed, and they politely rolled it back outside and declared it dead.
Hold up.
So they told me that the thing I knew was broken was going to cost a mint to fix, which I more or less expected. But then he said not to bother because there was more rust than frame holding the back end together.
You know those car guys that get old rusty buckets from the 60's and spend years and a fortune putting them together and making them driveable? Yea that's what it's gonna take. He advised me to not hit any potholes on the way home.
It's still technically street legal until August, so I have time to figure this out.
Remember when I was told about the timeframe for getting the van back, the guy on the phone said "a couple of weeks"? I was told I can get the van today. I can always appreciate when things take less time than expected. This also means I can get to work on the other car problem. My car exhaust is broken somewhere. It's still drivable, I just can't sit idle for awhile otherwise I get gassed out.
And it's loud. Go figure it's always a daisy chain of problems all hitting at once.
Last year when I had my van inspected, the rear springs needed to be replaced for it to pass. I could see the back end was hanging down, it was a no brainer. But the dealer that was doing the inspection didn't have a set of springs. They couldn't *find* a set of springs. A couple of weeks later, they had found and purchased a full rear assembly to get the springs out of it to put in my van so they could get their loaner back.
Well I finally got a call about the van door. The good news is that everything is covered by the warrantee. The bad news is that they have to replace the door motor (which I believe should be easily bypassed so you can just, you know, open the door on your own), but the motor is on back order and will take a couple of weeks.
Everything with these people is either on back order or unobtanium. The next time I need to buy a car, I'm going to look at where they're built and where parts are sourced, making sure it's domestic. That way when they say they can't find one, I'll just go get it myself.
I avoid energy drinks. A mere cursory glance at the ingredient list suggest half the can should be a controlled substance, but here we are. This past weekend a friend of mine left one, unopened, in my car. I elected to ignore it, but then we lost an hour.
Normally I just wing it. This morning, however, I was not having it. I forced myself out of bed and slogged through getting up. I was not going to let some bureaucrat that won't end this silly practice to get the best of me. I was going to the gym no matter what.
Then I got in my car and thought "Can't hurt". I had a very good workout.
Work turned out to be very busy. I was the only one that could do shipping, so I did everything. It was just over 400 pounds of stuff that needed to get moved around and packed, then moved around again. Done, ezpz. Then a truck with a literal ton of product arrived, and I'm the only one that can unload it. Again, done. I have been buzzing around like a hummingbird all day. The most caffeine I'll have in a day is a sugar free 53mg. I looked at this can and it has 200mg.
oh
At least I had it on such a busy day. I'd have been bouncing in my office otherwise. I still kinda am.
You read the title correctly. My van has those doors that have a motor. You can't just grab the latch and pull it open. You pull the latch, then back off and wait while it slowly opens by itself. You can't bypass this, you just have to wait. You can use the remote to open the door when you're approaching, which is handy if it's raining and you don't want to get any wetter. It was also handy when dropping off the kids and they, for some reason, just open the door and run completely forgetting to close the door.
They don't do that anymore.
The downside is that it's just another thing that can break, and guess what. It did. First time, I was able to just pull it shut. Same with the second time. After that, we told the kids to stop using that door until we could get the issue settled. I should have seen it coming, because every single time we would use the van I had to stop a kid from opening that door.
Until I missed one.
Then of course it was wide open, only this time, the roller broke free of the track and broke the adjacent window. Now the door won't close at all. Sure you can still drive the van, but nobody likes cosplaying as a Jeep Wrangler in March.
It's cold.
There's also the weather to deal with. Fortunately, I was able to move it into my grandfather's garage next door to avoid any issues, like the three inches of snow that fell that very night. The service center at the dealership can't see it until the 12th. Meanwhile my parents had a spare car kicking around they're letting my wife borrow so she doesn't have to listen to the van scream about how the door is open while the cold wind freezes her out.
Honestly she would hate that.
No, not United Nations birthday. A Mad-Hatter / March Hare UN-Birthday as in it's not your birthday but whatever we're gonna party anyway.
That's what my wife gets three out of four times. Her birthday isn't today, and it isn't tomorrow. For a brief instant, her birthday will exist and immediately end as the clock strikes midnight. She keeps it pretty tame (not like the previously mentioned lunatics), but it gets suppressed right until the real thing comes around, then she gets four years worth of party all at once.
So yea, this year is low-key.
It's been snowing a lot. This weekend it dropped a foot, then rained ice on top of it. I got that cleared off Sunday morning, but it was still bad enough that they cancelled church.
God says stay home.
But then it kept snowing. I got up early this morning to clear off the snow so I could go to the gym. (I NEED MY ENDORPHINS) With my hood up and my tall boots on... my snow brush broke. The brush head snapped right off, leaving me with a looooooong stick. Undaunted, I turned around and raided the van for that snow brush, and cleared them both right off.
Don't worry, I put it back.
My street wasn't plowed, but if it was there would have been a huge mountain of snow at the end of my driveway that I couldn't have simply driven over. So thank you, Town of Salina, for slacking this morning. The streets were covered with hard packed snow, and it took me longer to get there than I care for. Three of us were outside the gym when the lights flickered on. Steve, the guy at the front desk, was applauding us as we walked in.
Of course, he deserves the same. He got there before we did.
It was empty at the gym. There are some people that I see every single time I go there, and one of them wasn't. I was about to send a dog sled team until they got in late. I have seen this person almost every time and we've spoken maybe three times, and it's all been a variant of the phrase "are you using that". I don't even know her name, it's great.
I had tennis elbow. Right arm. I was informed that the only way it would resolve was if I stopped using my right arm for anything. No working out, no typing, not even moving a computer mouse.
Yea that wasn't gonna happen.
Well I broke my wrist and elbow and what do you know - my tennis elbow is gone!
Last week, I had my latest appointment with the wrist doctor. I found the splint in the back of my car and brought it inside to warm it up before putting on a show for the doctor. They had me remove it for x-rays, and keep it off to look at my wrist.
Long story short, he said I didn't need it any more. He wanted a CT scan, but I pushed back, pointing out that even he made it sound redundant. His look of resignation was immediate. I have good insurance, but come on, I do not need this.
So, yea. I put the splint back on just for the doctor. I initially thought I would keep it on simply out of caution (its ice season), but once I had it off, the mere thought of putting on another restraint was so distasteful that I didn't bother. Ever. I left it in my car just in case, but 'in case' never happened.
I regret nothing.
Wanna know how long it's been since I took a weekend away with some friend just for fun? Twenty years ago. Yea, it was January 2005. There were six of us, and we went to Niagara Falls. Most of the group hadn't been, and didn't know if they'd get the chance before life took them other places.
So off we went.
The following year, I got married, and then every single trip I went on involved my wife. She's gone on a few without me, and the only two times I'd even been on an overnight were for what amounted to business. One was a funeral, and the other was apartment hunting. And the reason for this isn't because I was being held back, it was more of a lack of opportunity. My friends and I just don't do that sort of thing. Well an opportunity came up and some of my friends figured 'why not?'
Why not indeed.
It was agreed that the guy that used to work in hotels should be the guy to book it, and the logic was sound. I knew what to look for, and what to avoid. Friday came and I thought it was indigestion. Took a pill and shrugged it off. We got into town and I was exhausted. I had, and not incorrectly, figured I was tired because I go to bed earlier than everyone else, and was kept up until 10.
It's not wrong, but it also wasn't the reason.
Saturday morning I assumed it was a lack of sleep and continued indigestion. Took another pill and some caffeine and decided to push through it. No, by 2pm I was about done. Thankfully, we were all disappointed with the event and weren't disappointed leaving when we did.
I barely made it home. During the two hour ride home, I felt progressively worse, and it all manifest once I got out of the car. Just trying to move was torture, I had the shakes something fierce. I was glad to be the first one dropped off (benefits to living closest to 90, I suppose), but I barely made it to the door. For the next 48 hours, I slept 30 of them and ate probably 500 calories worth of lightweight carbs.
I then proceeded to miss the next two days of work because I get dizzy when I stand up, and I'm still coughing.
This was *supposed* to be a fun weekend, but nooooooooooooooooooo...
I do my meal planning on Sundays. Alright, the planning is done, I just do the cooking. In my efforts to maintain a low calorie, high protein diet, I eat a lot of chicken. In fact, every day for lunch I have chicken breast.
It only gets boring if you make it the same way every time, but you can spice it up so many ways.
So on Sundays, after cooking the chicken, I would put the containers on a food scale and measure it out, marking how much was in each so I could properly log it day by day. (Yes, I have to be that careful) And this always made for leftovers. My third born and hungriest son would always hang around hoping for the leftovers, which I would happily dish out. His enthusiasm was not unnoticed by his siblings, and soon they all wanted in on the chicken. But the leftovers were, perhaps, a single serving.
Now, the weekly grocery shopping has twice as much poultry. And on the weekly menu board, it simply reads "Dads chicken", a meal they all eat with no reservation and no leftovers. They all look forward to it, they all go for seconds. Yes, I am bragging. This is a win and I'm taking it.
I have a toaster oven and I prefer it. Yes I understand that the microwave is faster, but I also understand that the magnetron operates at the natural frequency of the water molecule, and thus it doesn't heat your food evenly.
You heard me. Your food will never heat evenly in a microwave. It only heats water. The water simply transfers the heat to the other parts of the food.
Now for a lot of foods, that isn't necessarily a problem. For other foods, you can have a mixture of warm and crunchy with hot and soggy. No bueno, me no likey. My toaster oven, while using a lot more electricity, heats *everything* at the same time.
And the icing on the warm cake? The toaster oven simply goes ding when it's done. My microwave gives this passive aggressive beep a minute after it's done if I haven't opened it yet. Like excuse me, are you in a hurry? Do you, my microwave, have somewhere to be? You think I forgot about the delectable meal you probably butchered in your limited functionality?
No. Now shut up and watch as I use my toaster oven instead.
One of my new years resolutions this year is to lower my caffeine intake. There have been times in my life when I had none at all, and it makes napping easier. Other times I have entirely too much. Either way, I like naps and my blood pressure could use far fewer stimulants.
But New Years day is not the time for it. So I decided to push it back a few days. Having the new year start on a Wednesday, it feels fair to push it back to the next Monday. So here we go.
I can't sleep in anymore. I wake up naturally sometime between 3:30 - 4, regardless of when I actually need to be up. I didn't think that would be a problem until I stayed up for new years, dropping off to bed at 12:30 (what, you think I went out?) and waking up at 3:30.
At least I didn't have work. I still went to the gym, grateful that it opened late. My compulsion to be there when it opens would have ruined me.
Our yearly tradition of doing fireworks on NYE was made pleasant with the warmer weather, and more fun because we had so much extra. We get them for July 4, but my two older boys were at camp that week, and half of my remaining kids had fallen asleep by the time it got dark. My daughter isn't as excited by them, so we cut it short and told ourselves that new years was going to be big.
It was. Took us a good long while to get through them all, and we weren't even cold. In fact, when I was on my way to the shed to get some setup supplies, I spotted this in the yard:
He wasn't alone, but it's certainly unseasonable.
