Frustrations

I am not a good communicator.

Well, scratch that. I am, but I have some caveats. The big one, first and foremost, is don't ignore me. And if you are going to ignore me, at least tell me that you're going to ignore me, instead of just disappearing or being passive-aggressive about everything, keeping all of your disapproval of me as a person bottled up.

Note: this isn't directed at any one person; this is a continuing trend I've noticed with the people in my life over the past few weeks and months. At least four people, some of whom may or may not read this blog (I'm never sure) have done something along these lines in that time.

Another one of my caveats is that I communicate much better in text than I do in person. It's just the truth. I used to write really long, detailed, intricate letters to Lady when we were out of contact, for example (that has since stopped, obviously). While I do not text that much, I very much value the Facebook message system...when it wants to work, that is. I used to value the various messenger programs, like Yahoo Messenger and AIM, but since Lady stopped talking to me, and since Andrea and I are no longer friends (long story there, if you didn't already know it), I haven't even logged in to any messenger program in days. I no longer need to, really. In text, like in my writing here and elsewhere, I can sort out my thoughts. I can think more slowly. I can better articulate myself. In essence, I can make myself sound much more intelligent and appear much more formal than I actually am. I can't do that in face-to-face conversation -- usually I end up looking (or feeling) like an idiot, and I am much more prone to become irritated or otherwise openly take issue with something someone says.

My personality is like an on/off switch -- when I'm done talking to someone, when I'm done hearing what they have to say, I'm done. I flip the switch off. Face-to-face with someone, I just can't do that, because social interaction doesn't work that way. It's one of the major reasons that I don't go out and do anything social with anyone I know, aside from the anxiety factor -- because I know that once someone says or does something that trips that switch, I'll be like "yep, this conversation's over, bye, I'm going home." That may sound childish, and to some extent it probably is, but to a much greater extent I have found that I am no longer tolerant of people for the most part, not even on a basic human level, and certainly not on any sort of normal social level. In the past, I've had to force myself to stay in such situations many times due to factors out of my control -- namely, when the ex and I were together, and I was forced to be social with her, we couldn't go home until she was ready to go home. I can't tell you how much that irritated me. I do not like not being in control of my own social endeavors.

I have a very short fuse, so to speak, and I mean that in the sense that it doesn't take much for me, one way or another, to dismiss myself or take my leave from any sort of conversation or social situation that I do not see ending well. For example, if I am insulted or otherwise talked down to, even in a playful fashion, it trips that switch. Very quickly. If I am disrespected, shushed, or otherwise pushed aside, it does the same thing. I no longer have patience for this, and I used to have a lot of self-control and endless patience for it. In the past year or so, however, I have realized that life is too short to deal with people who are not pleasant to be around, or people who think themselves above or better than me and have no qualms about showing it.

Of all of the things that set me off, few things set me off more than being called stupid. It's the word more than anything else, not the stigma that goes along with it. There are very few words anyone could say to me which will make me go from zero-to-angry faster than being called stupid.

I was reading at a little older than age three. I tested something like a 160 IQ when I was four years old. I was the first person in my family to graduate from a university with a full four-year bachelor's degree. I worked for over five years in a microbiology research laboratory, not only assisting with research but keeping the laboratory itself running smoothly. I designed, and still currently run, a fairly successful nerdy clothing company that turns a profit every year. I have been a reporter for not one, but two different newspapers, and at the last one I was the webmaster as well -- which means I was in control of, and did upkeep and layout for the entire website, including every advertisement, news story, and link on it. In the years since, I have been a graduate student, furthering my education not because I have to, but because I want to, and in that time I have read over 100 books and written close to 30 papers. I have been teaching students English composition in eleven different classes now over the course of almost three years, and have been regarded by both my bosses and many former students as one of the best instructors in the department. I have published poems. I have written and self-published a 500-page memoir of three years of working in retail. I can take apart your computer, fix whatever's causing it problems, and put it back together again. And finally, in order to continue surviving in this world that doesn't seem to care about any of those things, I've made more sacrifices and tough judgment calls than most people will have to make in their entire lives -- all before the age of thirty.

I'm not saying any of this to wave my proverbial dick around. The point I'm trying to make here is that I may not look it or act it, but I am probably more intelligent than most other people I know, or most other people you know, regardless of age. And because of that, I don't like being talked down to or dismissed, and I absolutely cannot stand being called stupid. For any reason. It's one of my biggest pet peeves. I also believe that it's not simple impatience or frustration with social situations, but it is that intelligence that tells me I'm much better suited for a life away from most other people, a solitary existence. In a sense, it's my mind telling me that trapping myself in situations or conversations that are less than productive or ideal is, in essence, a waste of my time and energy. Look out for number one, Brandon.

It's reasons like this which make me fairly sure that I'll never marry or have children; I've yet to meet someone who did not become quickly irritated with me and end up leaving me, whether they left sooner or later. I don't fault them for it; they just didn't mesh with me. I'm not sure I'll ever mesh with anyone fully. I see myself as an enigma, a strange fellow; I'm not normal by any stretch of the imagination -- I just fake it well enough to get by in normal society. In reality, I am a deeply introverted person, and that introversion has only grown deeper over the past year or two. It's not a depressive thing, but it's the slow realization that nobody has ever, or probably will ever be able to completely "get me," to understand me as a person and fully accept and/or love me as I am. My past three (read: only three) girlfriends have shown me that; there are always issues, always caveats, always things that I "need to change" or "should change" about the way I am. I used to think this meant I was flawed or that there were things mentally or mechanically wrong with me, but I now realize that's not the case -- they just didn't want me for who I was, without caveats or issues. The long-term ex had multiple problems with me which apparently grew larger over the years. With Lady, I was too picky with foods and she didn't appreciate (putting it mildly) my sense of humor, amongst other little things. With Daisy, during the short time we dated, she wanted me to stop smoking and become vegan. Daisy doesn't really appreciate (or, really, understand) my sense of humor either. Issues. Lots of issues, different ones, for all three of them. Again, this is why I'll probably remain single and unmarried for the rest of my life. I have finally broken through the proverbial clouds and realized that all I really need is myself, whether that self is happy or unhappy.

But Brandon, you may be saying, what about your friends?

My friends, for the most part, accept me for who I am -- faults, eccentricities and all. But the ones who do, and the ones who truly care about me as a person, are few and far between. Most of them I haven't seen in over seven years, as they reside in West Virginia. Some of these friends I may never see or talk to again, which makes me question at this point whether or not I should even classify them as "friends" anymore. As we all get older, people slowly spread out and move out of our lives. The old saying goes "the ones who are worth it will stick around," but at least with me, this hasn't been the case (again, for the most part). I have also realized as I am now on the downhill slide-into-home, so to speak, for my Master's degree, I have increasingly less time for friends in the first place -- so I've become sort of a hermit in that regard, as well. It used to be that whenever my computer was on, my Facebook and Twitter feeds were both up and running. This is no longer the case most of the time now. As I told Zedral the other night, I've been trying to actively ignore everything but my work and have spent little time doing anything but working and sleeping, or running errands. For example, I have to go to the post office in the morning before I go to campus in the afternoon so that I can mail a few packages and get some stamps. Aside from a little grocery shopping, when I'm home, I rarely leave the house because there's always something else to do, something else to take care of -- and most of the time that doesn't entail being on my computer.

Conversely, I have already run into that mid-semester slump -- a full month before mid-semester. I'm constantly tired, I'm constantly frustrated with life, and (as mentioned before) I no longer have patience for anything. I'll yell at my computer if it takes too long to load a web page, or I'll yell at my water filter when it takes forever to fill the pitcher up again. I'm bursting at the seams with frustration, with needless anger, and I don't know where it's coming from or why I can't shake it. I can't relax, I no longer take enjoyment in the little things in life, and I can't even focus enough to read a comic book or one of the two magazines I still subscribe to (Playboy and Entertainment Weekly), much less force myself to sit down and read/grade papers or anything else for my classes. I can't concentrate on anything. All I really want to do is sleep, sleep for as long as I want without having to worry about waking up or doing things on a set schedule, a schedule that is not my own and not my choice.

It used to be that making tie-dyed clothing soothed me. It calmed me, centered me, let me relax a lot because I was doing something fun and creative, something artistic that I could show off or otherwise gift to friends and family. Now it doesn't have the same effect anymore. I still do it, but it's more out of trying to cling to that former feeling, like an opium addict chasing the dragon. And more often than not now, I feel even more frustrated when a design doesn't come out the way I want it to -- like I've failed to even be creative anymore.

A lot of this probably sounds like depression, doesn't it? It's not. I'm not depressed in the least. There's a difference between depression and just plain being unhappy and frustrated with one's life. As I've written before, there is a difference between depression and cynicism/fatalism, just as there is a difference between pessimism and realism. Pessimism is thinking things will always get worse, or never being happy about anything because something else bad is bound to happen. Realism, for me, is being able to tell that this is probably as good as things are going to be (or get), and while there's always the possibility that I'm wrong, and that things may end up wonderful and I may be happy for the rest of my life, the former scenario is more likely. I am a realist.

"What if this is as good as it gets?" 

And yet there's always that little voice in my head which asks "well, if things aren't going to get better, why even keep doing what you're doing now?"

Routine, mostly. I don't call it "hope" or anything optimistic like that. Most, if not all of my true optimism packed its proverbial bags and left a long time ago. Right now, as it has been for the past year or more, is all about survival. All about keeping my head down and just slogging through, going through the motions. I don't know what I'll be doing once the end of May rolls around. I have no true life goals, no life plans for the future anymore. A large part of me can't even think that far ahead. My only true goal right now is to finish grad school, and that's mostly to say afterwards that I did it, that "I have two degrees," etc. After that, who knows.

I've considered spending money on things to see if I get happier. Retail therapy, so to speak. It's worked in the past, and I do have a bit of money that I can actually use from time to time on things I enjoy -- but with the recent expenses on the car, attempting to pay off the Citi Card bill that I ran up this summer just so that I could eat, and still needing to pay my parents back their loan they gave me in July, even that wouldn't exactly make me feel better at this point because I know how many financial obligations I have. I still have $200 on the Citi Card to pay off (and $200 exactly, mind you; I paid the bill down to that today), and rent will be coming due again soon, so I'll have to deal with that too. I'd originally planned to go to the AWP conference with many other members of the department come February, but even that doesn't sound like it's something I'm going to be able to do because of finances. Yes, I'll get the other half of my student loan money for the year shortly before the conference, but I will be saving every scrap of that I can over the course of the spring semester so that I can move out of here after graduation. Again, with all the problems the car's had in the past few months, driving back home to visit my parents over Thanksgiving was thrown out the window a long time ago -- the last thing I need at this point is to blow a major part on that car during a 2,400-mile round trip, especially after I just spent almost $1,400 getting it fixed, and especially if I may need to drive it farther than that when I get out of Kansas. My mother has already asked me if I want to, or if I am able to, come home for Christmas -- as it would be the first Christmas since 2005 that I would be able to spend with the family. That, of course, will depend on my finances then, the weather of the season, and time.

Mind you, many months ago I'd made plans for the holidays this year; they were long-form, intricate plans involving a lot of travel -- at least two flights and one train ride. Now, of course, those plans will not take place. I shouldn't have to go into detail about why not; I'll let you figure it out. Read between the lines a little, folks.

Truthfully, I just can't wait for 2012 to be over. It has not been a great year; it has, in fact, been another one of those horrific, bad-luck years, in case you haven't been following this blog for very long. Between losing no less than three good friends, having two relationships that failed (mostly my fault), to the worst financial troubles I've ever had this past summer and spending a total -- over two sets of repairs -- of about $1,700 on the car, it's been a bad year. Add to that all of the other, smaller things that's gone wrong since January 1 and I already have a year that was worse than 2011 -- a feat that was very, very hard to accomplish. Yeah, no wonder all I want to do is sleep and hole up in my house until everything is just over.

My parents will probably read this blog, and -- as my dad emailed me the last time things were sounding bad, say that I'm "sounding grim." I'm not grim, really. Overall, I'm content enough. I'm surviving. I'm living. I'm getting up every morning and taking care of the things that need to be done, and going to bed every night once they are done. But I am frustrated about where I am in life and what I'm doing with it, and how it feels like every day I'm doing nothing but treading water, slowly wearing myself down and tiring myself out. My mental state is a mess, in case you hadn't gathered from reading the rest of this post. But really, I'm okay. I'll be fine. I am just not happy right now. Whether that changes or not is irrelevant -- the point is that I'm still doing it, that I'm still chugging along. It may not be fun, it may not be glamorous -- few things are. Yet, I'm doing it. I'm still trying to better myself a little more every day, and for the most part I think I'm succeeding. But sometimes it's hard to see the forest for the trees, as they say.

$48

I did a search this afternoon -- because I was curious -- to see what my Monte Carlo was worth if I were to sell or trade it for a newer vehicle at some point.

Mind you, I do not want to get rid of the Monte Carlo. I love that car. But eventually, once I get ready to make my move to wherever I go next, if the car is falling apart again by then and it would be cheaper and/or easier to get rid of it and get something else, well, I probably will. That will be a very sad day for me, but it's not one that isn't eventually coming anyhow.

I went to Edmunds.com and looked it up. I put in the color (black), the fact that it's a Z34, and added all the options it has (power seats, leather interior, anti-theft system, rear defroster, etc). And then I put in the miles: 223,000.

Side note: it's about 223,400 at this point.

After that, it asks for condition. The conditions range from the equivalents of  "basically perfect" to "pretty much totaled." From all of the work I just had put into it, I initially wanted to list its condition as "average," which is one of the options. But I know that no car dealer would judge that car as "average," not with the fact that I only have one key for it (which means I can't lock the doors, or open the trunk from the outside), the power windows are off-track, and the inside handle on the driver's door doesn't work. Its emissions system is also out of whack, which is why the "Service Engine Soon" light remains on. Therefore, I listed it as "rough," which basically means the car is roadworthy but needs some moderate cosmetic and mechanical repairs. It's the most accurate label I can give it.

The trade-in value of my car is $48.

Yes. You read that correctly. Forty-eight dollars.

I've bought cartons of cigarettes that were more than $48.

When I put gas in the car last weekend, after receiving it back from the shop with a nearly-empty tank, it cost $49 to fill it up. It cost more to fill it up with gas than I could get for it in a trade-in scenario.

$48 is about 1/4 of what I spend on groceries every month. $48 doesn't even cover one month's cable bill for my internet service -- that's $54.

In case you think I'm kidding, I screencapped it:

The picture is my exact car, by the way, other than the fact that mine has a spoiler.

Note that a dealer couldn't even sell my car as it is for $1k. $909 is their "Dealer Retail" quote. The "private party" sale price, in case I wanted to list it for sale myself, is $366....which is about $1k less than I put into it this month to fix all the shit wrong with it.

The tires on that car alone are worth about $150 each. $48 is a ludicrous number. The metal in that car is worth more than that, as is its stereo system, as is, well, the gasoline in it.

The car's registration alone (which I had to renew this month, and will put the sticker on the plate this weekend) was $63.

People have asked me "why don't/didn't you look at dealerships for cars?" Stuff like this is the reason. I'm not getting jacked. Kelly Blue Book lists the car in the condition it's in as $1,598 to sell on my own, and $793 for a trade-in. That's much more accurate and reasonable. The problem is that most dealerships don't go by Kelly -- I was outright told by a dealer that not even banks go by Kelly anymore. So, um, who does then, exactly?

Again, yep, another reason I'm not a big fan of car dealers. When I was looking at cars to purchase, I would outright call them out on their lies. For example, one time I was looking at a 1998 Mercury Mystique. The dealer wanted $2800 for it. I looked up its real value on both of those sites (including what a dealer should sell it for, which was about $1900 at most), and called him out on it. He gave me some line of bullshit about how they use some other pricing service/etc and clammed up on me. Uh huh. Sure.

I bought my car from Craigslist for $500 and have put about $1500 of work into it since then. While I doubt a dealer-purchased car would have required that much work in the same amount of time, that's not a justification for jacking up the price by almost a full grand. To put this into perspective, I put my mother's vehicle into Edmunds.com as well, and they say hers is only worth $5400 on trade-in. I somehow doubt that; she'd be able to get about $10k out of it in the condition it's in with its low mileage.

So yeah. Onward. $48, hm? I'm getting my $48 out of that car, that's for sure...

The Week

Fall semester: day twenty

Well, I remember most of this week. Most. This is important, as up until this point I have been severely sleep-deprived through a good chunk of the week. As you know, for me this is never a good thing. I tend to get more accomplished, yes, but at the price of short-term memory loss.

To rectify this (and I have) let me do a little math for you. I got home yesterday after class at around 1PM or so, roughly. That was, at present time, 25 hours ago. I went to bed around 3:30, after eating lunch, and got up at 11 or so. I stayed up for a few hours because nobody was around, awake, or online, responded to a few student emails and balanced my checkbook, and then went back to bed around 3AM. I slept until 12:30PM today.

That means out of the 25 hours I've been home, I have slept 17 of them. Roughly, anyway.

Again, as I've no doubt said over the past few weeks several times, welcome to fall semester, folks. This is what happens when Brandon doesn't get enough sleep during the week -- it all catches up to me once I get just a little bit of downtime. This is also probably a large part of why I don't have much of a social life.

The car is holding up well. Yes, she's still squeaking a little and I don't exactly know what that is, but otherwise she's running quite well. I've been able to double her gas mileage with the new spark plugs and other repairs last weekend -- the car is getting about 20 miles per gallon now, if not a little more, when previously it was about 10 or 11 with the bad plugs. No, that's not a joke. I did the math. Last Friday, I put over 13 gallons in the tank. Yesterday morning, I put 8 in when the gauge was showing that the tank was a little more than half-full (which means the gas gauge is correct; it's a 15-gallon tank) and I'd put about 160 miles or so on the car this week. My estimate is that it's getting about 20 in town and 22 or so on the highway. If you don't know a whole lot about cars, let me tell you -- for a V6, 215hp "sports car" that is seventeen years old? That's phenomenal. I'm guessing the two new tires, new oil/coolant, and new air filter is helping a lot with that mileage as well. This means, with rough calculations, that I could probably go about 300 miles or so between fill-ups. While I will never do that, it's good to know that if I have to, I probably could.

It's also good to know that (for once), I don't have a ton to do this weekend. My workload for not only my classes, but for my students is light, and aside from doing some reading and typing up a scene for my Playwriting class (which was canceled on Wednesday), I will be able to relax a bit and catch up on a fair amount of sleep -- which I did earlier, as you know.

I also went to the discount grocery store here in town this afternoon to pick up a few things -- I needed eggs and another box/bag of cookie mix so that I can bake cookies again for the ladies of the KAPodcast, my friends April and Kristine. I tried to bake them snickerdoodles last weekend, but it turned into an unmitigated disaster, a disaster of cookies sticking to the baking sheets and burning and the like. So, because of this, I'm trying again. Kristine was out of the country for a month, performing at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (she's a comedian, and a somewhat famous one), and I promised more cookies once she got back last week. As for April, she just completed finals week, and she wanted one of the spiral blue/red tie-dye shirts I'd made a few weeks ago, so I'm sticking that in the box as well for some extra padding. I love doing nice/sweet things for my friends.

The electronics keep piling up at the discount store as well; today I got a pair of digital camera binoculars for $3.50, a retractable laptop mouse for 99 cents, and a 2GB MP3 player with speaker set for $7. I don't really need any of these things, mind you, but they're neat to have. My parents have a set of digital camera binoculars, and they're neat. I've wanted a set of binoculars period for several years, so $3.50 is a good price for them even if the camera in them never functions correctly.

I also -- wait for it -- purchased a Shake Weight. New. For $1.50.

Go on, laugh. Most other people will and/or already have.



The South Park parody aside, I've wanted one for a while. I have horrible upper body strength. Yes, I've got good legs and strong ab muscles (even if they're buried under a thick layer of man-fat) but I've been wanting to exercise some more to work out my arms and pecs, and even though I have a full barbell set with bench in the basement...eh. I don't have the time or energy for that. I do have the time and energy to use a Shake Weight.

Okay, that's enough, you can stop laughing now. It was $1.50. If anything it should tell you how at ease I am with my sexuality and manliness. If the raging Castro-beard didn't tell you that already.

Ahem. Anyway.

Even in my sleep-deprived state of a few days ago, I created a marinade for two large chicken breasts and stuck them in the fridge. I'll be baking them tonight and making a side dish of a box of "Mediterranean curry" couscous (also found at the store today, for 49 cents) for dinner. Or maybe lunch tomorrow during football; I haven't really decided yet. I haven't been incredibly hungry over the past few days. Thirsty, yes, because of all the coffee I drink just to stay functional. Hungry, no.

The weather is beautiful; it's been in the 60s most of the day and sunny. There's been a slight breeze that's made everything oh-so-delightful as well; my windows are open, and thanks to a pumpkin spice scented candle, the house smells like fall. In my very, very sleep-deprived state on Wednesday night, I went to Walmart on the way home to find the night stockers starting to put up all of the kids' Halloween costumes, and stocking candy. Halloween this year is a Wednesday; I won't even be home that night to give out candy to the neighborhood kids, as Wednesdays I'm stuck on campus for fifteen hours straight (as you probably know). I considered wearing my costume to school that day, but a full Superman suit isn't exactly comfortable to wear for fifteen hours straight, and as I've lost about 40 pounds since I last wore it, it's not exactly going to fit that well anymore.

Yes, I own a full Superman suit. And guess what, ladies? He's single too!

I'm fairly sure my evening classes would get a kick out of it, though, if I at least brought it with me to school and put it on before class. Hm. Food for thought, there. Perhaps I'll do so.

I did, however, purchase a Wolfman t-shirt at Walmart from their clothing section. In case you didn't know, my nickname around the department is "The Wolfman," mostly because of the beard. When I had my longer hair, the name fit me better...but hell, if I'm going to be called that, I might as well play the part.

Daisy took that picture of me on Labor Day. Yeah, it is a very Wolfman-esque beard, is it not? It is a beard that will not be shaven for quite some time, mainly because I've been growing it and maintaining it since early May.

Yes, I do shampoo and condition it, in case you were wondering.

I also brush and comb it.

Yeah, I know. Shut up. My beard is the one good-looking characteristic my face has. I just wish my hair would grow back out a little faster. Every time I cut it (again, the last time was May) it seems to grow in that much more slowly. Perhaps it's my balding genes kicking in -- I already know that due to genetics, I'll probably be completely bald by age fifty or so. It travels down the mother's side of the family. My grandfather was bald. Yep, it's in the cards for me. As I will not look good being bald and bearded (trust me, gentlemen, it's never a good look) I'm taking advantage of what may be my last few years on the planet of looking good.

But, I've gotten way off track.

The week was long and hazy, as per the usual. I mentioned before that my Playwriting class was canceled on Wednesday, which wasn't a huge deal but did free up three hours of my day. If I would've known that said class was canceled, I would've canceled my office hours as well and wouldn't have gone to campus until around 6PM or so (I do have my Surrealism class from 7:05-9:45 on Wednesday nights, and I don't expect that to ever really be canceled).

My students are getting into the groove of the Engineering English 102 class I teach, and fairly well, I think. Most of them are on the ball and have been bringing up good discussion points in class, which is a plus. We're covering the last major article of the unit on Tuesday, and then they'll be diving into their first big papers in the class afterwards. I'm preparing a quiz and some in-class writing activities for them to keep them motivated and to help with their writing. Their papers are due in the beginning of October, and their workshop week is coming up soon as well. Should be really interesting to see how that goes with classes this large. As of right now, I only have one student who may drop the course. That leaves 49 others who are hanging tough. They're the largest classes I've ever taught, which (of course) means it's going to take a long time when grading their papers, especially their long and intricate research papers at the end of the semester. I've adjusted my schedule for that accordingly; I have changed around some of the dates at the end of the semester so that we not only have a bit of extra time for workshops, but they have a day off in the interim between the last day of class and the final exam.

As for the classes I'm taking, they're going interestingly enough as well. I have to meet with the professor of my Surrealism class at some point in this coming week -- he's also my thesis advisor, and wants to discuss some of the example poems I've shown him that give him a bit of a feel of what the thesis entails. I also need to provide him with my "reading list" for comps at some point soon, which he has requested as well. I have no clue what I'm choosing for my reading list, but most of said reading will have to take place over the winter break and very early spring if I want to be prepared for those comprehensive exams and graduation in general. I've also had no real interaction (except for a very short conversation) with our esteemed, famous poetry professor -- my second reader -- in several weeks, so I don't know when he'll want to see a draft copy of the thesis.

Add to this that it's mid-September, and I have not yet even begun to look for jobs come May, let alone figured out any sort of plan of where I'll end up and when. Hell, for the last week I've been preoccupied with car trouble and actually being able to sleep enough to function -- believe me, looking for jobs and teaching positions at other universities and colleges after graduation is so far down my list of shit that must be done, and soon that it hasn't even registered on my radar yet.

Yet, I look back to last fall and how busy I was then, and marvel at how I actually survived it. I was much, much busier then -- with two lit classes, a workshop class, and teaching two classes that I'd never taught before. Now, even though for the moment I am considerably less busy, I'm in more of the mindset of "I'm getting way too old for this shit," as mentioned before here in the blog. Everything seems so much more tiring, so much more draining of money, energy, and spirit. Daily tasks are a hassle and obstacles that must be tolerated and begrudgingly dealt with, instead of the daily challenges that made me drive hard to succeed (as they were in the past). Getting up every morning and forcing myself to go about my life is enough of a challenge -- yesterday morning I slept through ten minutes of my clock radio when it went off, and that radio is ear-splittingly loud. Ten. Minutes. Yes, I realize that after spending the past six years in the midwest, I can sleep through trains, tornado sirens, and the occasional loud domestic violence from the white trash across the street from me, but I don't sleep through alarm clocks. Never have. Doesn't matter how little sleep I've gotten. I'm pretty sure all of these things are signs of how I'm just growing more old and bitter and fed up with life. And I'm not sure I like that trend.

I've also basically given up on hearing anything from Lady ever again. I don't know what's going on in her life, but it's clear that she doesn't want me to be a part of it, nor does she want to be a part of mine. Oh well. I can't do much about that, really. It's been over two weeks since the last time I even attempted to contact her, and after that point (and the subsequent silence/cold shoulder on her part) I've given up. Life's too short to keep trying to keep in contact with people who don't seem to care about you one way or the other -- and you folks can quote me on that, if you like. I'm not pushy, I'm not dramatic, and I'm not stupid -- I know when to give up, when to move on. Lady's not stupid either; in fact, she's one of the most intelligent people I've ever known. And I know she's gotten the messages I sent her weeks upon weeks ago and has made a conscious choice not to respond to them. That's fine; I can take a hint. Again, oh well. That doesn't mean I won't talk to her if I do eventually hear from her again (as unlikely as that scenario seems at this point), but I've learned a valuable lesson here -- if someone cuts you out of his or her life, deal with it and move on. I don't like being ignored or cast aside, but sometimes it happens. I never blame anyone when I am ignored or cast aside, either. I may not have particularly high self-esteem, but I will always see actions like that as their loss, not mine.

I'm no stranger to this sort of situation, really; over the course of the past year or so, I've found out who my true friends are (as I've mentioned before), and some of the others have either been removed from my life or they've removed themselves from it. I am a good person; I am friendly, lovable, and endearing to people (as Daisy would put it). But, I have also learned that I need very few people in my "support network" -- otherwise known as a group of close friends -- to function and get by. I don't tolerate anger, craziness, drama, manipulation, selfishness, etc. People who exhibit those traits are given a one-way-ticket to go-the-fuck-away-ville, with few exceptions. I've found more than anything else that living in Kansas, alone and away from 90% of my friends and family is an exercise in self-reliance. Take care of yourself first; look out for number one. It may be a lonely, unhappy road a lot of the time, but not everyone gets to be fulfilled and happy in life. Those of us who don't have to suck it up and deal with it. For example, Daisy is probably the closest friend I have out here. She lives five hours away, and I'm lucky if I get to spend twelve hours with her once a month -- or less. Again, I suck it up and deal.  Anyone who reads my blog knows I'm no stranger to isolation and/or solitude; I'm not a fan of the bar scene, I would much rather watch a DVD than go see a movie in a theater, and I would much rather stay at home and sleep than go out and be social. That's just who I am. It doesn't mean I'm any more or less lonely or unfulfilled, or that I have more or less people I'd consider friends -- but it's my life, and those are the cards I've been dealt.

So, ahem, yeah. After multiple sidetracks, one video, and one picture, that was my week, I suppose. This weekend I'll be trying to relax, sleep, bake cookies, and not think about all of the stuff that's barreling my way over the course of the next few weeks and months.

But hey, looking on the bright side, I'll be able to gorge myself on Halloween candy soon enough.

Shop Talk, Part V

Fall semester: day eighteen

I sent an email to the car shop about the "Service Engine Soon" light kicking back on in my car. This is the reply I received:

Good morning Brandon

 

We knew the check engine light was going to come back on because of the emission codes we saw when we checked the codes. It should run fine  as long as the light is not flashing.

The squeaking noise concerns me because I do not know what it is, so would suggest we at least listen to it so we can decides if it need attention.

Hoo boy, that takes away a lot of my apprehensions. The light isn't flashing, of course -- that would signify a cylinder misfire, which would signify that one of the new spark plugs had blown or that there was some sort of hazardous condition for the catalytic converter. The light flashed the entire time I owned the car up until when I got it repaired this past weekend because it had two bad plugs and a bad wire. Apparently that extended to five of the six plugs going bad over time once the gasket broke and drowned 'em in oil, which is why the car was running rough and why I took the car in for service in the first place.

The "emission codes" he refers to are nothing major or important; it means, basically (more than anything else) that the car is old and that its emissions system sensors are burning out and/or that it's letting out a little more or a little less exhaust when I drive it. I like to keep my carbon footprint as small as possible, but something like that's going to pop up on many a car as old as mine regardless. My Monte Carlo has a fairly complicated dual-exhaust system that is (thankfully) in good shape.

Whatever is squeaking (and I paid attention to it this morning) squeaks steadily, though quietly, for about the first half-mile I drive the car when the engine is still cold, and then stops afterwards. Something like that could be anything. Could be a belt, could be a rotor, could just be the engine warming up and the like -- who knows. Whatever it is, it doesn't affect the car's performance or driveability, so unless it gets worse and/or much louder, I'm not incredibly concerned about it. Still, I told him that if it persists, I'd bring the car in on Thursday afternoon once I got off work so that they could look at it and try to listen to it then. After all, I don't have a whole lot going on this weekend (that I can foresee, anyhow), but reading and doing some homework.

I came home this afternoon, talked to Daisy for a while, and attempted to read some of my poetry for class tomorrow evening before passing out downstairs. Tomorrow (read: today) will be a long day not only because I have to be on campus for fifteen hours, but because my sleep schedule is off. I slept for about five or six hours this evening -- what I get most nights -- but that's not enough when I'm on campus all day and all evening tomorrow. It's just not. It doesn't matter that most of the day will be spent in my office and/or taking care of little things, office work, reading, stuff for my students, etc -- it matters that I can't just be done and go home/go to bed before 10PM, meaning that (because I need to stop at Walmart on the way home) that I actually won't get to sleep until 12 or 1. I'll more than likely go back to sleep tonight for a while, but as I have to be up again in less than four hours anyhow, I'm wondering if it is a fruitless endeavor.

Again, folks -- fall semester messes with one's body and mind. You sleep when you can, and you don't when you can't. On Wednesdays, when I'm stuck on campus for very long stretches of time, I end up drinking two or three full pots of coffee just to be able to stay awake and stay lucid. I can't tell you how many classes I've gone to in graduate school which I'm sure I contributed to, and I'm sure I did well in, but have no memory of whatsoever. After a while my mind enters a "fatigue haze," a fog where great stretches of time, even though I was lucid and functional during that time, I can no longer remember. This is why I write everything down in class word-for-word, in case in my haze I cannot remember a due date or issue of importance. I barely remember the classes I took last fall -- it was not only a dark time in my life, but it was quite possibly the worst semester of any form of higher education that I've ever dealt with. This semester isn't nearly as busy (yet), but I'm really getting into the mindset of "I'm getting way too old for this shit." I can only hope that in the spring, when I have nothing to do but teach, finish my thesis, and (more than likely) attend one class -- either visiting writer or sitting in on workshop again -- that I am able to finally regulate myself and catch up on some real sleep.

For now though, at least the light on the car isn't indicative of any real problems, most of my work is finished, and tomorrow will be spent downing a lot of coffee and dealing with student work, office hours, and my two classes. Life, as they say, moves forward.

Shop Talk, Part IV

Fall semester: day seventeen

Yesterday afternoon, as planned, I left for campus around 3PM. It was a warm, gorgeous day, without a cloud in the sky, and there was a nice breeze going. The Monte Carlo was running in tip-top shape, fast and strong, growling proudly.

And then, halfway to Wichita, the "Service Engine Soon" light came back on again.

...you've got to be fucking kidding me, right?

I paid attention to the car -- nothing rumbling, nothing rattling, no loss in performance, no out-of-the-ordinary shuddering (it's always had a bit of a shudder, which is probably the motor mounts and/or shocks just being old) and no overheating, so I don't know. For all I know, any of the triggering sensors for that light could've just now decided to go on the fritz. The only thing different about the car -- aside from the fact that it is running much better/smoother -- is that with its oil change/coolant flush and the lighter 5w30 oil they put in it for the winter, it warms up a little faster in the heat than it did previously, which I guess is to be expected as there's no gunk in there clogging it up anymore.

Gas mileage, by the way, seems to have been doubled (or more than doubled) by switching out the bad plugs -- it used to be a 1/4 tank to get to Wichita and back, meaning I had to fill up at least once a week. Now, after driving around town this weekend and making the trip to Wichita and back yesterday, it's barely used an 1/8 of the tank. Over time, that's going to save me a lot of cash when it comes to gas for the car.

Anyway. The light came on halfway down there yesterday afternoon, and has remained on, being on when I start the car and not going off the entire time I'm driving it. It was on for the entire drive home last night too, yet I still don't notice anything wrong with how the car drives or feels. The only thing I have noticed is that when I start it up, it sounds like one of the belts is squeaking at me just a little bit.

"Could be timing," Rae told me yesterday when I told her about the light kicking back on.

Rae's father is a used-car salesman, so she grew up knowing a lot about different cars. I also have to admit that this was one of my first thoughts as well. Although they checked all of the belts and hoses and the like when I had the car in the shop this past weekend, and they all apparently checked out fine, one of the only things that has not yet been replaced under that car's hood is the timing belt, as far as I know. It's a pretty important part, obviously, but from what I know about it, it's not incredibly difficult to fix/replace. It's also one of those things which, if it breaks, you're fucked because the engine won't run at all.

I doubt it's the serpentine belt slightly squeaking at me; while it could be, I just had that and its tensioner replaced six months ago. It could be anything squeaking, really; the car's old. And it's not loud, and only squeaks on startup -- once I move, it stops. So eh.

With all of this in mind, I sent the following email to the shop guy last night once I got home, as he had sent me an email as well to check up on how well the car was running:

Halfway to Wichita today the "Service Engine Soon" light clicked back on and stayed on both for the rest of the trip and my drive home. Car is running and handling really well (and my gas mileage has doubled from what it was with the bad plugs), so I don't know what it could be. I did notice that it does have a little squeak to it when I start it up, so it might be a belt, perhaps? I doubt it's the serpentine, since you folks replaced that about six months ago. Timing belt, maybe?

My question to you: should I bring it back in for you folks to look at? What do you think?

Brandon

I have to teach this morning, but I'm done by a little after noon. If necessary, I could stop by this afternoon on my way home and have them plug it into the computer to see what's causing that light to kick back on. I will, of course, wait to hear back from them first, to see what they say.

"I say take it back in there and tell them 'look, I just spent $1400 on getting this thing fixed,'" Jay said.

While that's true, I do want to know what their opinion is first. It's an old car, folks. Despite the fact that it's now running better than ever, it's still very old and has a lot of little things wrong with it, both cosmetic and mechanical. While I don't want to dump any more money into it, there are certain things that, if they go wrong or break, need to be fixed or I will no longer be able to drive the car. My finances, while okay at the moment, can't support me spending $1400 on car repairs and needing to purchase an entirely new vehicle shortly thereafter, especially on super-short notice. Additionally, it's not like I have the downtime or breathing space to do all of the stuff required for another vehicle right now, either. I just need this one to fucking work, and keep working.

I will, of course, keep you folks updated on what happens and when. For now, though, I must make my morning journey to campus to teach. Let's hope it keeps running.

The Nutshell

In a nutshell, the rest of this weekend has been, largely, an exercise in futility.

It is 11:25 PM on Sunday night. I've tried to sleep, but cannot. I am writing here as a way to try to make myself tired enough to go downstairs and actually pass out.

I took the car out yesterday morning to drive her around, to test the vehicle in and around town to see if she would act up or smoke anymore. This entailed going to the local discount grocery store, as I mentioned before. I noticed three big, important things about the car:

1.) She will now, once more, go 0-60 in about four seconds without even trying. As in, I can touch the accelerator and she will rocket off, basically throwing me back in my seat. Again, I once more have to gauge how much pressure to put on the pedal, as I'm used to pressing it down a little harder. New spark plugs are indeed important, kiddies. That car gets to once more put out the 215hp she was built to throw around.

2.) No smoking, at all. I took the car for a good ten-mile round trip around the outskirts and back roads of Newton, and while I didn't drive her hard enough to get the engine temperature rising by much, I did open her up on several straight stretches. No smoking, perfectly responsive, lightning fast and smooth. She didn't smoke a wisp during the drive or afterwards. This is a good sign, I think.

3.) It is very, very odd to drive that car with no warning lights on the dash lit up whatsoever. I mean, nothing. The "Low Coolant" light has been on ever since I bought the car (no matter how much coolant is in it; the shop said that's just a bad sensor, and there's not much that can be done on those cars about that after a while), yet with its radiator flush this past weekend, it is now off. The "Service Engine Soon" light, which until I got the spark plugs replaced was either flashing at me (indicating a misfire because of those bad plugs) or was always steadily on (indicating all of the other problems the car had) was off. For the first time ever. Yes, it was off when I brought it home from the shop too, but still. Not having those warning lights on, not having something always flashing at me from the dashboard? It was not only strangely calming, but just strange in general. I'm so used to so many things being wrong with my car that having everything working for once is surreal.

As I told my Dad, it drives like it's a new car -- and it should, after I put almost $1400 into it. If it slowly falls apart piece by piece between now and graduation, I am sort of okay with that at this point. Minor stuff I can fix myself or otherwise prevent, really. Even major stuff can be put off a little while, such as the wheel bearing occasionally growling at me -- I plan to get that fixed when I next take the car in for another oil change around Christmas, if it doesn't act up any more before then. The new tires feel like a dream, and make braking and accelerating much easier for some reason. I'll get to listen to the radio in the mornings now to keep me awake as I drive to school, and to have something to sing along to while driving back home. The car actually has a really nice aftermarket CD stereo system with removable faceplate, remote, and everything. I've just never used it. I've never been able to, obviously. The blown fuse they replaced I found in my cupholder yesterday afternoon, and laughed. Two little prongs of metal joined by a piece of plastic. Smaller than a dime. Yet that was for all intents and purposes what prevented me from turning on the radio for the past fifteen months. Cars are weird.

Anyway, I suppose that was a pretty successful road test. It may smoke a little when I get it to campus tomorrow, as I will have been driving at 75 on the interstate all the way down there beforehand, and thus will be warming up the engine and giving it its first true workout since it was worked on, but if it does, I at least know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it's not anything serious, like a hose or clamp they forgot to reconnect. This weekend's drive proved that to me pretty nicely.

So with the car taken care of (for the moment, anyway) I can finally relax a little about that. One thing at a time, as they say. Small moves, piece by piece. I'll still be a little nervous for the next few days as I drive her back and forth, just to see if anything acts up again, but she seems like she's going to hold stable for the time being. I don't have to venture to campus until late tomorrow afternoon, for my 4:30-6:50 Playwriting class. I'm planning to sleep in and move at a leisurely pace for most of the day; there's nothing at all I have to do on campus other than go to that class. I neither have anything to do in the office nor for my students, so unless I get supremely bored and twitchy, I'll probably leave the house around 3PM or so.

Yesterday afternoon after the test drive, I sat down at the coffee table in the living room -- and in two sessions, one class after the other -- graded almost fifty papers back-to-back. I say "almost" because there were several students who were absent or who otherwise did not turn one in, so the number was about 45-47 or so, really. Many cigarettes were smoked. Much coffee was consumed. Much football was half-paid-attention-to on the TV. It took me about five hours total (they were short papers, only worth 20 points out of their 1,000-point class total). When I was done, I returned to my room -- and to my cell phone -- to see several missed calls and voicemails.

Hm, I thought. That's odd. Nobody EVER calls me. Not unless someone is dead. Usually text messages work fine, but nobody ever texts me either. I had a text from Jay, as well, asking me if I was going to the grad student mixer thing they were having in Wichita, which I covered in my last post here (short answer: no, because I hadn't tested the car yet at that point).

I checked the numbers before I checked my voicemail. One of them was Jay's number. The others were numbers I'd never seen before.

Note: this is nothing new; I get robocalls all the time from scammers, political activists trying to get me to vote a certain way, or from the cable company trying to sell me digital phone service to go along with my internet, so I'm used to seeing strange numbers on my phone. I also never have the ringer on my phone turned on, whether I'm at home or otherwise, so I never hear my phone ring. It's always on silent or vibrate. Plus, well, as I said, nobody ever calls me. My parents don't even call me unless there's an emergency. Aside from them, Lady was the only other person who would ever call me, and for some reason she hasn't spoken to me in over three weeks, so my phone has remained relatively undisturbed.

Sort of panicked that something had gone really wrong, I checked the voicemails. Three new messages.

All of them were from friends in the department, who had taken turns calling me to leave messages or had passed the phone around on each call to take turns telling me how much they missed me at the mixer and how much they loved me and wanted me there, since they knew that my car had been fixed and was running (I wrote about the test drive, briefly, on Facebook before starting my grading). It was both hilarious and sweet at the same time -- it was, essentially, a cell-phone intervention of sorts to snap me out of my hermitude.

I didn't realize, really, that I was being a hermit. Well, I guess I did to a certain extent. As you folks may know, I'm not an incredibly social person. I don't go out and do stuff much, if at all. It's not a finances thing, especially not now that I once more have money -- it's more of an unconscious choice of sorts. I have a lot of responsibilities I deal with in my downtime, though no more than most other people in my situation (I assume). I tend to have a lot of problems and issues that pop up -- this weekend, it was the car, and then the mountain of grading that I had to take care of so that I'd actually have time to do my own work for my classes. I've always been one of those people who has the mindset of well, I'm on campus so many days a week; I socialize enough then. The weekend is spent taking care of business and "me time."

Don't get me wrong -- I do socialize within the department when I'm there. It's the main reason that I can only do most of my serious work while at home, aside from the fact that the old laptop my friend Jae gave me years ago is too slow to do a whole lot of schoolwork on. I hang out in friends' offices, they hang out in mine, and yes, there is the occasional "beer and a game of darts at the student union" outing that I'll participate in, or a "hey, let's go out after class for dinner and drinks" thing that I will occasionally (read: very, very rarely) attend. This weekend, I could've gone to the mixer thing, yes. But I didn't know if the car was going to act up and start smoking violently, and I did have nearly fifty papers to grade, about 100 pages to read in two different books, and two scenes to write for Playwriting. Based on that, I made the judgment call that it was probably best that I stay in and do all of the work I needed to do.

I only got about half the reading done, by the way. The rest I'll finish in the next day or two.

The voicemails were very cute. I'm not sure whether or not it was everyone just trying to annoy the piss out of me or everyone being genuinely concerned for me and my well-being/wanting me there, but they were cute. Most people I know in the department also know, on some level, that I am not a "social situations" sort of guy -- i.e., they know about my level of social anxiety, even when surrounded by a lot of people I know and/or am usually comfortable with.

"You are loved!" Daisy told me later, when I relayed the story to her.

"Gods, why?" I replied. "I never do anything with any of my friends, I never hang around on campus any more than I have to, and I have fairly poor social skills."

Many people would debate that last one, of course, including Daisy herself. I should say that I can have good social skills, and I tend to have a sharp wit and good sense of humor, yes, but a lot of that is just timing more than anything else.

Timing was key in this situation again as well -- I didn't receive the voicemails until about four hours after they were left on my phone. By that time, the group had probably dissipated and had gone back to their respective homes anyhow. If I hadn't been grading, there's a good chance that I would have actually gone to the mixer/party thing, as I'd told Rae and Jay earlier in the week that I wanted to, but it depended heavily on whether I got the car back by the weekend's end. I had, but until I took it for the test drive, it's not like I knew whether it would be okay, and again, after that I settled in and started doing my work. Truthfully, the mixer was the last thing on my mind once I started going through papers.

"You're loved because you are endearing to people," Daisy said. "You are a good man, a nice guy."

Daisy is a bit biased in that assessment, of course, but okay.

I didn't call or text anyone back; this was partly because of shame that I'd missed the calls in the first place, partly because I wasn't there, and partly because I knew I'd see most of them this week, if not tomorrow. Judging from the sound of the...ahem...raucous party that was going on in the background of those calls, I'm pretty sure most of them probably won't even remember leaving me those voicemails anyhow, which I'm fine with. Never let it be said that GTAs don't know how to have fun, though.

I have been in a sort of quiet, introspective mood for the past week or so. While I'm getting to know the new recruits better over morning coffee and cigarettes before we teach, in my home life I've become increasingly closed off. I try to talk to Daisy when I can, and Zedral as well, but aside from them I barely speak a word to anyone (unless it's my cats). I'm rarely on Facebook anymore, on Twitter even less, and have been burying myself in the work I have to take care of for my classes -- it's all-consuming, a lot of the time. I've been sleeping a lot, even if it's on weird schedules, as if it's an escape from reality -- the more I sleep, the less I have to worry about why Lady isn't talking to me, the less I have to think about how much money I spent on the car, the less I have to think about when I have to take care of all of the bills, housework, and schoolwork I have to do. However, just because I'm sleeping a lot doesn't mean I've been sleeping well. Over the past few weeks -- mainly since school started again -- I've been having at least one or two nightmares a week. Sometimes they're mundane, sometimes they're terrifying. It seems like my insomnia, which at times was fairly crippling before, has been replaced by nightmares. I don't like the trade-up.

On that note, I am once more going to bed. In the morning starts another week, and day sixteen of the fall semester.

Shop Talk, Part III

Fall semester: day fifteen

Hoo boy.

This is the concluding chapter of the story about my car. It is not necessarily a pleasant story, though there are some pleasant parts to it. I am telling this story as a cautionary tale: folks, take care of your cars. Get them serviced regularly. Don't ignore noises. Make sure your fluids are all filled and in good shape.

That being said, let's continue. How about we start with the email I just sent to my parents, and work our way backward from there? Good? Good.

Subject line: Final Car Update

...$1370.27.

Everything that *can* be fixed right now has been fixed right now. The techs said that one of the wheel bearings is loud and may be going out; if it gives me any problems I'm bringing that back in to get it fixed (can't really avoid that, after all), and the computer said that there's an occasional slip in the transmission, though I've never noticed one. Not much could be done about the transmission unless I wanted to dump another grand into the car, which obviously I do not -- so if it goes out, the car's basically getting junked.

Aside from that, he said it's going to leak a little oil occasionally, and that if I notice it's leaking any coolant to use a little stop-leak in it and it'll be fine. The rest of the car is now in perfect working order. Runs really quietly, has a *ton* of power when I touch the gas pedal now that it has all of its spark plugs working, and it has two new tires on the back. Nice tires, good ones. The radio works now. The high beam has been fixed. The "Service Engine Soon" light is off for the first time since I bought the car. Gas mileage should be much improved, which is good because they nearly ran the tank dry letting it run/testing it while they were working on it, and taking it for a test drive to make sure everything on it was okay. It took $49 to fill up the tank with how expensive gas is now, and I have a 15-gallon tank. It took 13.2 gallons when I filled it up tonight.

However.

When I got it home, I noticed that once I parked it and turned it off, the engine was smoking. Not a lot, but enough to be noticeable -- right under the hood/intake manifold where they'd worked on it. I called the shop back and he told me that was fairly normal after they've done all the work they've done to the car, that it was probably working through the new oil and/or burning off a bit of the cleaning stuff they put through the car and that it wasn't necessarily unusual for that to happen for the first several miles or so after the car has all of that stuff done to it. He said to drive it around some this weekend and if it didn't stop, or if it got worse, to bring it back in first thing on Monday morning, so I guess that's what I'll do tomorrow and Sunday -- put a good ten to twenty miles on it at a time driving around town to see if it acts up any more.

I was also told the grim reality that no matter what I do or how well I treat it, the car's expected life is about another year or so, max. It's just old and falling apart, and while it may run just fine now (well, I hope it will), anything else that goes out on it or screws up really isn't going to be worth the time or money to fix. While everything else checks out okay, including the brakes, belts, and pumps, it's not exactly a car that's going to last forever (obviously), and unless I wanted to sink much more money into it than it's worth, I should start looking down the line for a new mode of transportation -- which I will probably have to acquire before I graduate from [Flat State University], and perhaps sooner rather than later. I'm not looking forward to that after I just sank that much money into this one.

I paid for it with a check, so if the bank calls the house sometime over the next few days asking if I wrote a large check to [shop], tell them yes, and that it was check [number], perfectly authorized, etc. I doubt it'll happen, and I used a check instead of my debit card to avoid that sort of call again, but still.

So here's hoping that the car holds up and keeps running.

Love you both.

B

Yep.

Not kidding about any of that. All of that actually happened.

I've already sank much more money into that car than it's actually worth. According to Edmunds.com, it's worth about $250. Total. Yep. Total. It is obviously worth much more than that to me personally as a working vehicle, as a mode of transportation that gets me from home to school and back four days a week. Yes, it is stupid to spend that much money on it. But it's what I've got -- it's the only car I have. I need to keep it running, and right this second I don't have the time or ability to just up and purchase another vehicle. Adding insult to injury, last night I paid my $63 yearly re-registration fee for said car as well. At this point, I'm invested. I won't be investing any more major money into the car, but the work had been done -- on estimate and on time, I might add -- and I paid for it.

The bossman told me the car was leaking oil after they worked on it. As in, oil was puddling under the car.

"That's weird," I said. "It's never leaked any oil before. Not a drop."

This is true. I've never seen it leak a drop of oil, ever. Coolant, yes. It will occasionally drip a small puddle of coolant the size of an orange or so if it's been running for a bit -- and if I've just recently added more to the tank -- from the overflow valve. But since I replaced the serpentine belt in the spring and added just a lil' bit of radiator stop-leak to it shortly before that, such an occasion is rare.

This also surprised him. It really hasn't ever leaked. Will it burn a bit of oil sometimes, slowly? Yeah, of course, because it's old (and also because apparently oil had filled the spark plug housings). But it never leaked anything. When I got it home tonight it hadn't leaked anything either; I checked once I parked it and again about two hours later, and I drove it about ten miles or so in the interim. Roughly, anyway.

It just now occurred to me that it was probably smoking from where it had leaked before, where it had touched some hot metal part on the engine and dripped down. The engine was already warm from their letting it run to test it while working on it, and from their test drives before I picked it up (having a fully-functional temperature gauge is a wonderful thing). I'm still going to do the whole "drive it around this weekend" thing tomorrow and possibly Sunday as well, though I'd like to be gentle with her. I'm planning to take her to the discount grocery store tomorrow and then to Walmart and back home, a round trip of about fifteen miles. Of course, I will obviously be monitoring her performance (and any smoking that may or may not occur) closely.

Speaking of performance, the car has never run better. Not since I've owned her, anyway. That is one of the major upsides of dumping almost $1400 into a vehicle -- it does tend to make it feel like a brand new car. She runs quietly but strongly, purring like a kitten at idle, and when I barely touch the gas she leaps into action. I learned that quickly. I'm used to pressing a bit harder on the gas pedal to get her rolling. Tonight, upon leaving the shop's lot, doing so spun the tires. I was impressed, to say the least. But, as I've said many times before (and even told the techs this evening), that car will do eighty if I do so much as look at it funny. Granted, it's taken a bit more coercion than that to make it run in the past few weeks, but now that doesn't look like it'll be a problem again.

...hopefully.

There is one of our fabled "grad student mixers" tomorrow. I've known about it all week, and I told Rae and Jay that if I had the car back I would attempt to go to it. I do want to; the new recruits (most of whom I've friended already on Facebook) are pretty awesome, and even though I have a fair amount of work to finish up this weekend, I could take four or five hours out of the day to hang out with some friends, both old and new.

And if the car weren't smoking, I'd probably go.

The smoking thing does concern me a bit. Yes, it's probably just as the bossman at the shop said, and it is probably just a bit of excess oil or cleaner burning off the surface of the engine. Or, as I mentioned before, where it was leaking when they were working on it -- oil drippings in a spot they couldn't reach. Still, until I am absolutely sure my car isn't going to catch fire the next time I drive it, I'm not making a trip to Wichita until I have to. If it's something worse, I'm not going to get stranded on the interstate between here and there, or get stranded in the city itself. I'd much rather do some calm, easy test-driving of the car myself to see what happens, as even if something is really wrong with it, I can almost certainly get it back to my driveway or back to the shop if I don't leave town. So, even though it's running well, running strong, I'm not risking the venture southward to the mixer tomorrow. Let's keep it safe, keep it around town, until I'm sure that it's not going to smoke anymore. After all, if it gets worse, the bossman told me to take it back in immediately on Monday morning and they'd see what happened.

And at least they have a Contour I can drive for a day or two, if need be.

I forgot to mention this before, but as they were changing the oil for the coming winter, they put in 5w30 instead of its normal 10w30. That's because the car is older and because 5w flows better in colder weather. I've been putting 10w30 in it -- the "high mileage" variety -- for the better part of a year at the rate of about a quart a month. There's no real difference between the two, really. It'll be interesting to see if the car performs better or worse with an entirely new load of oil, and different oil at that. But it also means that to keep the weight correct, when/if I need to add new oil over the course of the next few months (until its next oil change, which I will be getting on goddamned schedule), I'll have to get a few quarts of the 5w.

As for the stuff that needs worked on, but isn't incredibly pressing as of yet -- such as the wheel bearing (which is loud and grumbly, but has been that way since I bought the car) and the transmission, which apparently slips from time to time -- again, something I've never noticed myself, and I drive that car a lot -- well, there's not a lot I can do about those things, at least not right now. The wheel bearing repair is about $300, to which I replied "Oh, that's not too bad then." Comparatively speaking to the close to $1400 I dropped on the car tonight, it's really not. I probably will have to fix that sometime within the next few months, but good lord, can just I space things out a little bit? I told the bossman that I would immediately bring it in if it got bad. Right now it's just growly. I know what it sounds like when it's bad; I looked at an old Ford Tempo that had a really bad wheel bearing before I bought the Monte Carlo. Believe me, if it goes out and/or gets bad, one will know.

The transmission? Eh. As long as the thing drives and doesn't blow out on me, that's probably something that will never get fixed...if there's even anything wrong with it. Knowing all of the other things that car's computer could tell the shop, who knows whether it's actually giving out the correct codes.

"My advice to you," the bossman told me this evening, "is to drive the hell out of it until you can drive it no more, but there's no reason to put any more money into it."

"That's the plan," I said. "I graduate from WSU in May. If I can make it last until then, even if I have you fix the wheel bearing in the meantime, it'll be worth it to me."

This is true. Gone are the heady thoughts of driving home to West Virginia for Thanksgiving; I can't risk that. I'll be lucky if that car lasts me until graduation, and if it does, I'll be very lucky if it gets me wherever I'm going next, if anywhere, even if it quite literally falls apart once I get there.

"Even if it dies on you," Daisy told me, "things will work out. You'll find another car."

"True," I said, "and you're right. But it'll be a huge pain in the ass."

She and I were looking at cars on Craigslist tonight. There's a lot of stuff out there right now, but most of those vehicles have problems worse than the Monte Carlo. I can't tell you how many ads I saw that said "blown head gasket" or "no engine or transmission." It appears that until I am forced to purchase a new automobile, I won't be getting one. It's enough trouble, as you now know, to keep the one I have running.

As an aside, it is interesting to note (and I did mention it briefly in my email to my parents above) that the radio is now working. It was indeed a fuse. They replaced the fuse, and it blew a new fuse. They replaced that, and then checked the wiring. Apparently the wiring was screwed up/unhooked/etc, and they didn't mess with it any more because it needed some sort of "antenna adapter" to get it working again -- which, according to the bossman, was about $80 more in parts and labor, and he wasn't going to jack me on that. I told him that was fine, that it wasn't a big deal. When I got into the car, and started it up, the radio was already turned on from their testing it, and it was working fine. Only one of the speakers works, but it works. Nice. I can now listen to music while driving to and from school, at least. Until it blows the fuse again, that is.

So yeah, that's the story in a nutshell. I brought the Monte Carlo home, and she is once more safely parked in my driveway. I told Rae and Jay the "damages," so to speak, over Facebook, and added that I was alternating between saying FUUUUUUUCK over and over with banging my head against the wall and weeping at my checkbook like a little girl.

Never let it be said that I don't paint a vivid mental picture.

Labor Day, Redux

I've been meaning to write about this for several days, but with my work schedule, lack of sleep, and then all of the drama with the Monte Carlo and the auto shop today, I never got to go into any real detail about Labor Day itself.

On Sunday night, Daisy and I were both bored. I had Monday off, of course, and so did she. So, due to boredom, I invited her down here to visit. It's too quiet here in Newton, not to mention the fact that it was really hot and I had finished all of my work for my students and for my own classes ahead of schedule -- remember, last weekend I was expecting to have the car in the shop, and had therefore brought everything home with me that I thought I would need, in addition to having already done all of the grocery shopping because I expected that I wouldn't have a car for at least a day or two.

"This is one of those rare occasions where I actually have nothing pressing to do for once," I told Daisy. "This doesn't happen often in the fall semester. Want to hop in the car and visit?"

Mind you, I originally meant this as a joke. Daisy lives five hours away. It's not exactly convenient for her to hop in her Hyundai and make a drive to Kansas. But, well, that's what she did. She flipped a coin -- heads yes, tails no. It was heads. The coin had spoken, and she was like "Sure, be there in five hours."

No, really, that's how it happened. It's not like it was planned or anything. So, five hours later -- in the middle of the night, mind you -- she got here. Bringing oranges and Gatorade in tow. It is not Daisy's style to show up without bearing gifts. It's also good -- and very, very rare -- to have a friend willing to drive five hours in the night to come see me just on a whim. That really just doesn't happen. I have friends in Wichita -- twenty-five miles away -- who never come visit me. She stayed until mid-morning. We talked, a lot. It's good to have someone to talk to, someone in the same room with me. That never happens anymore.

Goofy pictures were taken, as you can see. This was our attempt at a "serious" or "angry" face. Also note: Daisy is almost as tall as I am. She was holding the camera at a weird angle.

She can also make herself look really mean if she wants to. Meanwhile I just end up looking like an idiot. I am so not photogenic.

Anyway, she left later in the midmorning hours, and I went to bed. When I awoke late Monday night, it was storming like hell. Because I'd slept until the night, my sleep schedule was off. It is not a good thing for me to get my sleep schedule off, really -- especially not again this early in the semester. That's usually bad times. That usually means that I won't be able to turn it back around without losing some serious sleep at some point over the next few days, as you folks know. I basically have to run myself into exhaustion. Luckily, during the fall semester, that isn't hard to do.

I spent the overnight hours making out lesson plans for the rest of the semester.

Yes, the rest of the semester. As in, from now until mid-December. Every week, every class day, every due date, every day I will cancel class (because I already have some of those planned out; for example, I'm not holding class on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving). Conference weeks. Workshop weeks. Library training sessions. Reading assignments. Everything, ladies and gentlemen. Now, for the rest of the semester, all I have to do is stick fairly closely to the lesson plan and everything will be gravy.

So yeah, folks, that was my Labor Day. Stick around; I've got a new post coming up detailing the mess that is my car (which I now have back from the shop).

Shop Talk, Part II

Shortly before I finished my last post, I received a phone call -- and an emailed receipt -- for the car.

It needs new plugs and wires, two new tires (which, if you've been following the saga of that car, you already knew), an oil change, a coolant flush, and a full four-wheel alignment -- something else I already knew. The tires, of course, were mandatory; the shop had already ordered them before they called me, because they were down to the wires (apparently) on the back tires. I'd looked, but I hadn't seen any wires. Still, I trust those people. Okay, no problem. They're old -- very old -- and I knew they would need replaced. I'd actually meant to ask them about tires before I left the shop this afternoon, but had forgotten. With the added cost of the tires, I looked at the receipt/estimate.

$1150.55.

Eleven-hundred-fifty-dollars-and-fifty-five-cents.

Can't be helped, really. I couldn't sell that car for half that, not even for parts -- and it's much more valuable to me than that in tip-top running condition. I told him to go ahead and do all the work on it, to fix it and get it up to speed. I have little choice at this point; it's already there, they're already under the hood, and it has needed the work for over a year. All of the work. Not just some, all of it.

"So do you folks do payments on something this large," I asked, "or is it an all-at-once sort of thing?"

Mind you, the last time I was there, it was less than $300. I just paid that with my debit card, bit the proverbial serpentine-belt-bullet and dealt with it.

"We used to do payment plans, but we don't anymore," the bossman said. "Now it's either all at once or we can finance it through GE over six months."

Yeeeeeah, I'd so rather not do that.

"So I can just write you guys a check, then?"

"Yep, that'll work," he said.

Once he got my full go-ahead to do the work, we hung up. And I began rubbing my temples at the thought of a $1150 repair bill. I have the money, of course, thanks to student loans, but still.

I will add that it was what I'd roughly estimated in my head before the tires got added on. The plugs/wires and the other work came out to a little over $800. The tires were each about $130, including labor of putting them on and the alignment afterwards. So, really, my estimate was pretty accurate -- within $10-20 of what I thought it would be. And honestly, I'd much rather have these guys take care of my tires than someplace like Walmart, who would be about my only other option in this town and/or area.

Later in the afternoon, as I was writing out my bills (gotta make sure those are paid, regardless of how much it costs to fix the car), I heard my phone ring. I looked at the number. Yep, it was the auto shop. Okay. Hrm. This could not be good. I was right.

"Well, we have another issue," the bossman said. "I hate surprising folks when we start working on their cars, but when we removed the intake manifold gasket -- since you have to remove that to get to your plugs..."

I was waiting, and fully prepared, to hear something like you have a blown head gasket and your block is cracked. We can't do much for that but put in a new engine.

That is not what I heard, thankfully.

"...we found that your back plugs were sitting in three inches of oil."

Oh, because that's so much better, right?

Apparently some sort of gaskets that seal off the plugs from everything else had worn out. In wearing out, they let oil flood into the plug chambers. In letting oil flood into the plug chambers, they killed the plugs (obviously). No wonder the car was running rough, and no wonder I would put a new quart of oil into the car every month or so.

Fuck me, really?

Ahem. Anyway.

"We do have good news," he said. "To fix those it would normally be about $400, because of the labor and time. However, since we're already in there and have the car opened up to replace the plugs and wires anyhow, we can knock about $200 to $250 off that labor cost."

"Okay," I said, rubbing my temples anew. "Go for it. If it needs fixed, it needs fixed."

Obviously, I can't drive around with three inches of oil in my spark plug chambers all the time, otherwise all of the other work I'm having done would be pointless. Duh.

He apologized, but he wanted to clear everything with me first. I like that. Again, this shop is full of awesome people. They do their jobs well and do them quickly, and they do it as inexpensively as possible. They could've jacked me and charged the full $400 labor and parts for the gaskets too, but they didn't. They told it to me straight. That's why I go to this shop; that's why I like these people. There aren't any of those gaskets in town, but they've been ordered and will arrive in the morning -- similar to how they needed to order a special belt tensioner for the serpentine belt because I have the 3.4L V6 instead of the 3.1. He also told me that the work on the car was already halfway done. Major plus. This means I'll probably get it back fairly early tomorrow, with a wallet that's about $1400 lighter.

April gave me some really good advice earlier. She said this:

You know, Damon and I were just talking about this and our fucking awful car we had when we first got married. The money we put into those cars would have better gone to a new car with a warranty. Probably spent more than a monthly payment.

Personally, not that it matters, I'd scrap it and get at least a warrantied newish car.

She does have a good point, you know. I just...well...here's what I said in reply:

The funny (read: half funny, half sad) part is that I only paid $500 for the car when I bought it. But it's never had any real work done to it since I bought it, either. I had to replace the serpentine belt in the spring, but that's it. I've never given it an oil change in 8,000-ish miles,
I've never replaced the tires (which *always* needed replaced), and I've never had a coolant flush done. Two plugs and one wire have been bad since the day I bought the car, and I could never afford to get all of this stuff fixed until now. Otherwise? The car is mechanically sound and runs like a champ. Even with all her issues, I still put 150-200 miles on her every single week. And I love this car, very very much. She's gotten me through a lot, and she's the fastest, most reliable vehicle I've ever driven. If spending $1150 on her will keep her running for quite some time, I will be more than happy to invest that (as much as it may put a dent in my bank account, as that's basically three paychecks).

Of course, that was before I got the call about the gaskets, but what I said still applies. If putting the work and money into that car will keep it running, will keep it not only reliable every day but very reliable and in good shape, and will allow me to drive it to wherever I end up next after graduation with no real issues and proper maintenance when required from this point forward? Yes, absolutely, I'm going to do it. I'd rather do that than get another car (which may have issues of its own) for roughly the same price. Yeah, my Monte Carlo has a shitload of miles on it (it crossed 223k this week), but it is a good car. Like I said, even with all of the shit wrong with it -- $1400 worth of shit, to be exact -- that car has still started up every morning, it has taken me to Wichita and back every day I've ever needed it to, and if there's something wrong with it, it lets me know by the way it acts. The car will, in a sense, whine at me. Which is how I knew that something was seriously wrong this time around.

The shop is open for another half hour. I told Zedral that I'm crossing my fingers, hoping that I don't get a third call saying that yet something else expensive is wrong with the car. I so don't want to add more digits to that bill come tomorrow.

In the meantime, I have paid my bills, and I will soon cook dinner at some point tonight. In the morning, I will await another call about the car and its progress, and hopefully will be able to pick it up, finished off and in top form. Here's hoping, though, that nothing else happens.

Shop Talk, Part I

Fall semester: day fourteen

I was able to schedule an appointment with the auto shop here in town for this afternoon at 1PM. This was on the docket anyhow, but it was solidified yesterday morning, and I told the guy who runs the place (a really nice older man) that I'd see him then -- and then crossed my fingers that the car wouldn't blow up between that time and when I dropped it off, as in the interim I still had to drive the car another 75 miles -- home last night, to campus today, and then back up to Newton to the shop this afternoon.

She's running rough still, but as I told my mother this morning, no better or worse than she has for the past two weeks at this point. I've gotten used to the Monte Carlo being loud, growly, shuddery and rumbly, as that's how she's driven ever since I purchased her sixteen months ago. She's a big landboat of a car with a huge, loud, and powerful engine -- much different than the ex's 4-cylinder 1996 Contour that I used to drive a lot before I purchased the Monte Carlo. We'll get back to that in a moment, though.

I didn't have a whole lot to cover in my classes today; I collected my students' first papers, gave them a twenty-minute lecture on how to use SafeAssignment (the plagiarism-checking system our university uses for papers), went over their first major paper assignment in the class, and gave them their first major reading assignment for the semester that ties in with their papers. This took a grand total of about forty minutes for each of my classes, something that I was grateful for. I was able to leave campus by 11:45, and my appointment at the shop wasn't until 1. I rolled into the parking lot of the auto shop at 12:10 or so, and debated on waiting a little while before I dropped the car off, until I noticed something...

The parking lot, except for the cars of the mechanics themselves, was deserted.

Okay, that's a new one.

I've been to this shop several times over the past year; as you may recall, this spring I took the Monte Carlo in there when she blew her serpentine belt and burned out the belt tensioner. Cost of repair? Less than $300, but absolutely necessary (obviously, otherwise the car wasn't going anywhere). Anywhere else that probably would've been a $500 job, if not more. These guys are quick, friendly, reliable, and relatively inexpensive. They're good people. And because of that, they're constantly busy. Refer back, if you will, to my posts of the past few weeks, when they've been too busy and/or closed to fit me in.

So, really, I saw that and said "well, screw it, I'm already here, so..."

"So you need spark plugs and wires, number one," the boss guy said.

"Yep."

"And what else?"

"Well, I think some of the fuses might be burned out; the left side of the dashboard has never had lighting, and the radio has never worked since I bought the car."

"That's probably not the fuses, just burned-out bulbs," he said. "The dash lighting is on the same circuit, so if one side works, well..."

"Ah," I replied.

"Now we could replace those too, but we'd have to pull out the entire dash and go inside it, and that would be about $100 of labor," he said with a grin.

"No no," I said, "That's okay. Believe me, the dash lighting is the least of my concerns."

"We'll look at the radio for you though," he added. "That might be a fuse."

"Couldn't tell you," I told him. "It's never worked since I bought the car. For all I know, it may not even be hooked up right."

"Okay. So that and what else did you need?"

"Basic maintenance stuff. Coolant flush, oil change...oh, and the right high beam is out. I brought a new bulb with me; it's on the front seat of the car. I would've tried to put it in myself, but I couldn't figure out how to get the cover off. Didn't want to end up breaking the light housing."

"That's 'cause on your car you have to go in through the back."

D'oh. That makes sense.

"Ah, so that's why, then."

"We'll look it over and see if there's anything else we find, but the priority is to get you back on the road, keep it running, and keep it safe, right?" He smiled. He's a good guy. A really good guy.

"Indeed it is," I said. "Is there anything else you need from me? Anything to sign, etc?"

"Nope; we're all good," he said.

"Oh, one last question," I added. "You have anyone here who could run me the five miles back home?"

He looked around for a few seconds. "Nope," he said. "But we can give you a car, like I told you before."

Hm. Interesting.

"Does it cost anything?"

Of course, this was my first question.

"Nah," he said.

"All right then," I said. "Hook me up."

He took a key off the hook next to him. "It's a little blue car out front here."

"The Contour?" I asked.

I noticed that in front of the shop at the edge of the lot was an older, in-very-good-condition Ford Contour, periwinkle blue. I noticed this because my ex drove a Contour of the same model year that was a decommissioned police car -- and before I bought the Monte Carlo, I drove her Contour a lot.

"Yep," he said.

"The first car I ever drove on a regular basis was a little 4-cylinder Contour," I told him, grinning.

Not exactly true, but close enough. The first car I drove on a regular basis once I had my license was her Contour.

"Ah, then you're good, and I don't have to show you any of the controls or anything."

"Indeed," I replied. "I'm good."

So I took the Contour home. I immediately realized, upon cramming myself into its cabin, that it wasn't the exact same model my ex drove -- hers was the 4-door, while this one is the 2-door. This means that the seat is as far back as it goes, and my knees still feel like they're up in my chest when I drive it. I once again realized just how large my Monte Carlo is. Everything inside the Contour is tiny by comparison, even the steering wheel. It's like I'm a giant driving a go-kart.

I'm still waiting on the shop to call me back and give me a timeframe/estimate/etc. They told me that they doubt it would even take them until tomorrow night to finish, so that's a plus. And in the meantime, if I have to go anywhere, I've got the little blue go-kart.

The Slow March of September

Fall semester: day twelve

I went to bed yesterday afternoon at approximately 4:30 PM. I don't remember the exact time, but it was somewhere around there. When I next awoke, it was 10PM. I got up, went to the bathroom, and went back to bed. When I next awoke after that, it was 1AM and I could no longer sleep.

That's how exhausted I am on the weekends and holidays, folks. I will occasionally just feel the need to pass out for nine hours or so. It is now 5AM, the time I would normally be waking up on a Tuesday morning, and in the four hours that I've been awake I designed lesson plans and set the schedule for my classes for the remainder of the fall semester. As in, all the way through December. I made note of important dates, scheduled what we'll be doing in my classes for each unit, and found that I have a ton of extra time at the end of the semester for review-like stuff and workshopping. This is because every semester, I streamline the course a little bit more, learning from previous semesters and adjust the dates and times accordingly. Fall 2012 is a bit different, as it runs a little longer into December than usual. This means, as mentioned before, I have a little more time to play with at the end of the semester. This is good; it allows me to schedule things around all of the "vacation" days the students have, such as Fall Break (two days off in the middle of next month), Thanksgiving, and conference week.

September is here, and with it came a soothing rain shower for a while in the early morning hours. While that's nice, it's still supposed to be 101 today, and not cool off by any real degree (pun intended) until at least Friday. I'm not a huge fan of September unless it starts to cool down fairly quickly. Last fall, because it was still 100 degrees every day in the second week of September, I cut my hair short because I could no longer stand the heat with my hair down past my shoulders. Two days after I did so, the temperature dropped by forty degrees and stayed there. This makes me glad that I don't have a ton of hair to cut off now, because I'll need that hair when winter strikes. That's the reason I grew out my beard over the summer, too. It may be hot to have a full beard when it's 100 degrees outside, but it takes three months for me to grow a beard, and when the wind chills are -20 in January, I will thank myself for it.

Some of you may be thinking "why don't you shave it off now, and it'll be grown back by December?" Because I know my luck. The moment I shave my beard, we'll hit a cold snap, the temperatures will drop into the 40s, and I'll get dry, windburnt skin on my face.

Besides, with my shorter hair, without a beard I look like I'm fifteen. I have a perpetual baby face and double chins I have to cover up.

This week, because of the Labor Day holiday yesterday, should be a relatively short one (except for Wednesday, of course, which is always backbreakingly long and miserable). Today and Thursday I'll just be on campus to teach, and then I'll be returning home. Thursday, if I'm lucky, I'll be able to get the car into the shop, as mentioned in my previous post here. I'm fine with this, really; this coming weekend, I'll be grading my students' first papers, and will need the quiet time at home to myself to be able to do so -- I doubt the shop will be able to finish all the work on said car in 24 hours unless all of their busy-ness from the past week and a half has died down. And you folks know as well as I do that said car needs a lot of work. Hopefully she'll be running in tip-top shape afterwards.

After I get that work done and get some new tires on said car (which I plan to do at Walmart in the coming weeks), I've been considering a road trip over the holidays. Once the spark plugs and all of the other minor issues with that car are fixed, the gas mileage in that car should be about 25-30mpg, even with how old it is (with the bad plugs it gets about 15mpg now). If the weather remains mild and not snowy, I've been considering making a drive back home for Thanksgiving, if possible. It's about 1,100 miles, which means (doing my math for how often I'd have to get gas once my car gets worked on) that it would be about $180 or so in gas money each way, and would probably take me about a day and a half to make the drive each way as well. Yes, my car has a lot of miles on it, but properly maintained, it should make the trip there and back just fine, and I have a GPS to plot the way. There and back is about 2,200 miles. I've put five times that on the car in the past year with two blown out spark plugs, rusty coolant, and no oil change. Hell, I put 200 miles on the car every week just going to school and back.

It's a thought, anyway. I'll have to examine my finances and time around Thanksgiving to see what exactly I can do, if anything. Who knows; I may end up being swamped with papers and stage plays that must be written. If I do get to make the trip, it will be a good test of the car's perseverance if I end up moving back to West Virginia after graduation anyhow.

Again, I love that landboat of a vehicle; while the ex's car may be the easiest car I've ever driven, the Monte Carlo is by far the best. That thing's gotten me through a lot over the course of the past fifteen months, and as I've mentioned before, it's one of the few large material possessions I have which I own outright.

And I have to renew the registration on it this month, which I just remembered. Luckily, I can print a copy of my insurance card -- which I must include with the registration form -- from the Geico website. Now that I have a printer at home, that's much easier than before.

In half an hour's time, I shall don my pseudo-professional clothing and venture to campus this morning to teach, and return home shortly after noon. Hopefully that time will go quickly, as I will probably be tired again by the time I get back home in the 100-degree heat. I have no major responsibilities to take care of before tomorrow morning when I venture back to campus, so if I wish to go to bed once I get home this afternoon, I probably will.

Snark Plugs

Fall semester: day eleven

On Friday morning, I received this email reply from the auto shop's boss, the guy who worked on my car before (and an awesome person). I have not edited it at all except to take out his name/the name of the shop:

Good Morning Brandon

I would love to help you this weekend however you are right this is labor Day weekend and we are closed. It sounds to me like your vehicle really needs some TLC soon.  We have loaner vehicles available what I would suggest is that we set you up with a loaner car. This way we can repair your vehicle without interrupting your busy schedule. We can set you an appointment next week just let me know if this would be helpful to you.

Well, shit. I did not know this, of course. They never told me about that on the phone last week. Damn.

Rae, however, suggested I get the "loaner" car and head for Mexico. Not a bad plan.

I suppose, if nothing else, I could get the loaner car if I absolutely needed to, but really I'm rather wary about driving someone else's car. When the ex and I were still together and I hadn't yet purchased my car, I would drive hers on the days that I had to go to/from campus when she did not. While her car was the easiest car I've ever driven, it wasn't mine -- and the fact that it wasn't mine made me super-nervous on the days and nights that I did have to drive it. That anxiety went away, of course, when I bought the Monte Carlo. I suddenly didn't have to worry about getting into an accident with someone else's car anymore -- my own car was my own responsibility, and the fact that it's an old beater lessened my anxiety even more. If someone smashes into it, I'm well-insured for it. Lady offered to let me drive her car once or twice, as her car (a Probe) is identical to my first car, which was a year older than hers is. I considered it (mainly for the sake of nostalgia), but did not do it. I'm paranoid that if something goes wrong, it's going to be my fault regardless of whose car I'm driving or when.

I don't let people drive my car for similar reasons, as well. Since I've owned it, only one other person has driven it (aside from the auto shop people), and that was the ex when we were still together. She drove it twice; once during our test drive and again the day I registered and put plates on it -- and that's all she wanted to drive it, ever. It was too big, too powerful, too different for her, so she said. The Monte Carlo is a unique car, make no mistake. It handles differently than anything else I've ever driven, it's bigger, louder and faster than anything else I've ever driven, and it took me a long time to get used to its acceleration and anti-lock brakes, as well as its turning radius. I'm so used to it now that it would be difficult to drive something else -- it would be a real learning curve, so to speak. Aside from Lady and Daisy, nobody's even been in my car other than me for the past year.

"I wonder how much that costs," Zedral said, referring to the use of the auto shop's "loaner" car. Up until then I never thought about a cost associated with it, but after I thought about it, I'm guessing it's not a free service -- especially when it comes to mileage and the like.

Luckily, the Monte Carlo will have rather light duty this coming week -- teaching and returning home two days, and then one day where it will sit in the parking lot for fifteen hours -- so judging on how well she's been holding up despite the circumstances, if I wanted to wait until Thursday (again) to get her in and not use any sort of "loaner" car, I could probably do so if necessary. Then again, if something happens, I'll basically have to call a tow truck and have her towed there if she decides to be temperamental with me. It's a real flip-of-a-coin scenario, really, but she's been holding up pretty well even if she is running rough. All of my actual planning was skewed by Labor Day weekend, so there's not much that can be done. Because of everyone having today off, I don't have much of a choice when it comes to driving, yet again. I have to keep pressing my luck for at least the next three days, because my schedule doesn't really allow anything else.

So because of this, I sent an email back to the guy at the shop asking him to set up an appointment for Thursday or Friday, whichever day was better for them, and to let me know. Barring any unforeseen circumstances, I'll get the car in there then, and will pay whatever it costs to get it fixed up, regardless of how much I so don't want to spend that much money at once.

Because I was expecting to drop off the car and be vehicle-less for the rest of the long weekend, on Thursday night (around 3:30 AM or so) I made a trip to Walmart to pick up the essentials, as I said I would probably do. I got many things, two frozen pizzas and a bunch of sandwich stuff (breads, meats, cheeses, lettuce) amongst them, and restocked the food and litter for the cats. I then spent the majority of the weekend taking care of the rest of my household stuff and/or the work I had to do for my classes, which took a very long time. Writing twenty pages for Playwriting isn't easy, nor is reading (and I'm not kidding here) well over 100 pages for my Surrealism class. I'm still not done with that, mainly because it's really, really boring. I'll more than likely finish it Wednesday morning/afternoon during my office hours before that class, because every time I try to read through it while at home I almost fall asleep. It's not exactly the most engrossing set of reading assignments, to put it mildly.

And 80% of them I had to print out here at home on my new laser printer.

I'm a bit bitter about that, in case you couldn't guess.

Anyway. It is Labor Day. Which means it's September. Fall is supposed to be coming, but it's not here yet -- it is currently 104 degrees here in Kansas. No, that's not a typo. After a few weeks of highs in the 80s and 90s, it's shot up again over the course of the past 48 hours or so and it has once more become unbearable. My air conditioner went on this morning for the first time in about three weeks or so, and I'm pretty sure it's almost out of freon after the past two horrible summers, because it's not really blowing that coldly. In the past sixteen hours or so, I've showered twice, but it doesn't matter when it's this hot -- as soon as I get out of the cold shower, I'm immediately coated in sweat again.

Oh well.