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.

Fat Bastardry

Fall semester: day nine

This morning I got up at 5:08 AM. I know this because I hit the snooze button once, and found myself unable to sleep again after it went off the first time. This is probably due to the fact that my clock radio is tuned to the classic rock station in Wichita, so this morning at 5AM I was awakened by Poison's "Unskinny Bop."




Yeah...once that gets stuck in your head, either by alarm clock or otherwise, there's no sleeping anymore. Because it's Poison. I shouldn't have to explain this. I also have no problem with this.

Anyway.

After teaching both of my classes this morning, I was in a bit of a daze. It's not the classes, mind you -- those went really well. It's the schedule and lack of sleep. I didn't get home last night until about 10:30, made a sandwich so that I could put something on my stomach, and fell asleep around 12. Back up at 5AM is never fun. While it is unpleasant and very fatiguing, I can do it. It does, of course, get easier as the semester progresses and I get used to it, but it never becomes "fun," or even "really manageable," in case you were wondering.

I originally planned to take the car to the shop this afternoon, to call them this morning and say "Hey, I need to bring this in and I need you to work on it this weekend, so when can I drop it off?" Not giving them an option, not giving them a schedule, basically saying hey, I'm going to give you money and you're going to work on my car; I don't care how busy you are, you've already made me wait an extra week on this bullshit.

I did not, however. When my mind is in a haze, when I'm scattered and mentally cloudy, and when I'm crazily fatigued to the point where I can't even remember most of what I did yesterday, I revert to my basest of base instincts no matter what needs to be taken care of. Those basest of base instincts, in case you are wondering what they are, are to eat and go back to bed to sleep for as long as possible. These instincts double in their intensity when it's really hot and/or I'm really uncomfortable. Today I'm pretty sure the temperature went up a good twenty degrees between the time I left my office to teach and when I finished teaching around noon. Remember: black car, black leather interior.

Anyway, coupled with the fact that I really forgot to call the shop before I taught this morning (I'm pretty sure I didn't even finish my cup of coffee in the office this morning, which is how scattered I was), and with the fact that it was also above ninety degrees outside before noon, I came up with a plan:

1.) I would leave campus after teaching my classes.
2.) I would stop somewhere -- whether it would be for fast food, for a frozen pizza at Walmart or what-have-you, but I would stop somewhere and get something to eat that would be easy to make or already made.
3.) I would eat said food while watching a disc of Community, the latest season of which just arrived in the mail this past week,
4.) I would go back to bed and deal with the car tomorrow.

I cannot describe to you folks what fully happens to my mental state when I'm stressed, tired and hungry. I tried to above, but that's not even a fully accurate description. I'm almost a completely different person. It's similar to how reptiles go into torpor for their hibernation periods in the winter. My mental and physical faculties start shutting down, and I go a little loopy.

I realized on the way home from school that it was way too hot to bake a frozen pizza in the oven, especially since I close up the house during the day (which makes it muggy and stuffy upstairs, especially in the kitchen), so I mentally examined my other options. I was really tired and didn't want to cook anything anyhow. It was really hot. I was already sweaty. It's also the beginning of a long weekend. There's a Burger King right off the interstate at the first Newton exit.

Hm. Burger King.

Mind you, I very, very rarely eat any sort of fast food, and over the course of the almost four years I've lived in Newton, I've eaten at that Burger King once. I haven't had any kind of fast food in months; the last thing I got was a McDouble from McDonald's one night because I had a few bucks in my pocket and there's a McDonald's inside the Walmart here. That was probably during spring semester.

I got four BK Bacon Burgers and two BK Stackers off of their value menu, two large fries, and a large Coke. Total purchase: $14 even. Fair enough. The intention was to eat a few of the burgers and put the rest of them away to eat later tonight or tomorrow.

This did not happen.

I don't eat much on a regular basis anyway. Really I don't; ask anyone I know. Almost everyone who knows my eating habits has chastised me for them over the years, mainly because I tend to eat one small-to-moderate meal every day and drink two pots of coffee, and that's it. If I'm at work and I have them in my desk, I may eat a granola bar or two as well, but really, that's all I eat. It's not that I'm not hungry; most of the time I am, but I'm also cheap and pressed for time quite a bit as well, or I'm fatigued. If I have to choose between eating and sleeping, I'm always going to choose sleeping (or, conversely, drinking another pot of coffee and powering through it).

So, I came home and systematically -- like some sort of fat bastard machine -- sat down and ate all six of the burgers one by one. I ate both large fries. I drank the entire large Coke. I could've eaten more if I'd wanted to, or had more.

Of course, I immediately felt ashamed by this, mainly because I've never done this before. Apparently my body was telling me that I suffer from malnutrition or something like that, because it felt like it was processing the burgers as quickly as I could eat them, like I was some sort of bottomless pit. Mind you, I used to weigh 330 pounds in undergrad, and ate like a horse then. Still, even in my fattest, most unhealthy days, I never sat down and polished off six cheeseburgers in one sitting like they were finger foods. Not to mention the fries and Coke as well. It's strange. I haven't, however, been dangerously overweight over the past eight years or so. In those almost eight years since I graduated from WVU, and the seven since I moved to the midwest, I've lost eighty pounds, roughly. This doesn't mean that I'm necessarily more healthy now, but I'm down to a more normal weight of someone of my build and stature. Yes, I'm still somewhat overweight, but I'm a lot smaller than I used to be, obviously.

Still, my iron stomach prevails, it seems. No, they weren't massive burgers or anything -- I mean, they were on the value menu -- but still, I've never felt...hm, how should I put this...psychologically fatter than after finishing off all of them today. I mean, try to justify eating that much in one sitting. You'd be hard-pressed to do it. I know I can't.

Anyway. Yeah. I'm a fat bastard.

After I ate, I went back to bed as planned. I got up around 9PM, getting almost double the amount of sleep that I got last night. I needed it, badly.

The car is no better or worse for the wear, despite this week's driving. Yeah, it's still running rough and loud at times, but only at times. Because I made the sleep-deprivation-fueled decision to deal with it tomorrow, I am going to send the auto shop people an email tonight detailing everything I need done to it (it's just easier to do that than to tell them all of the stuff over the phone and waste my minutes) and ask them when I can bring it in tomorrow or Saturday, depending on what parts they have on hand and their work schedule. I am lucky that at this point, they at least know me, they're familiar with me and my car -- AND they're good with their email system, so I should be able to get a reply almost immediately once they open up in the morning. It's also easier to remember and list everything that I need done to it if I write it down, though I'm fairly sure most of it is routine maintenance.

For those of you wondering the other reason I didn't take it in this afternoon -- I will remind you that it's the only car I have, that it was 95-100 degrees in Kansas today without a cloud in the sky, and the auto shop is about five miles from my house. I don't know anyone else in this town, and I live alone -- if I couldn't get a ride back home from one of the auto techs there, which is never guaranteed, I would've been stuck walking the five miles back home while hungry and sleep-deprived in the heat. If I get it in tomorrow or Saturday morning, there's a much better chance that I'll be able to get one of the techs to take me back home and/or pick me up once the car is finished. Again, that's another reason that I wanted to wait until Lady came to visit until I took the car in for all sorts of intensive work. We always take her car everywhere when she's here anyhow if we want to go anywhere (mainly because she hates being a passenger in my car; says I drive too fast and/or am really quiet and too focused on the road.)

She's right, by the way. If you ever find yourself driving in Kansas, you have to assume everyone else on the road with you is a fucking idiot, because generally THEY ARE. Therefore you have to stay focused on the road and what everyone else around you is doing. This is true in most driving situations, obviously, but Kansas drivers -- especially in and around Wichita -- are horrific.

I made a joke with Rae yesterday that I should just go buy a bicycle rack for the car at Walmart for $20, strap it to the car, strap my bike to it, and ride the bike home once I drop off the car -- and ride the bike back to pick it up again. That's not a bad plan except for the fact that the bike has been gathering dust for almost three years and has two flat tires, not to mention that it needs more maintenance than that if I were to ride it again. Additionally, I do not have a bicycle pump for its tires anymore -- the ex took that in the breakup well over a year ago, so that she could use it for her own bike.

So that's the plan for the car, anyway. We'll see what happens. This is a long weekend, of course; it's Labor Day weekend, and with Monday off, I've got an extra day to figure shit out. Whether that will help and/or matter in the long run remains to be seen. What I do know is that I don't have any shortage of work over the long weekend, that's for sure. I have to write twenty pages for my Playwriting class, and will also be doing something like eighty pages of reading for my Surrealism course. Whether I have access to my car or not, I'll still be kept pretty busy and occupied for the majority of the weekend.

Because I have seen now what my average workload for any given week will be for the semester, I relinquished my position as Nonfiction Editor for the school's literary journal. I've held that position for a full year, and with my workload, not to mention taking care of all of my thesis-and-thesis-like requirements for graduation in the spring, I don't feel that it's fair for me to hold on to it when someone else could do so much more for that part of the journal. I will still be a staff reader for nonfiction, of course, but the full editorial position I bequeathed to one of my colleagues within the department, a second-year fiction MFA who has much more time to take care of that stuff than I do. As I'm going to be helping as much as I can with the digital version of the journal on the website anyhow, taking care of the responsibilities of being one of the four head editors would be too daunting.

"I've already got it on my resume for a full year," I told my colleague, the new Nonfiction Editor. "Now you can put it on yours for a full year as well."

I feel good about this, surprisingly enough; I know he'll do a good job, and I know, though it may be hard for me to admit due to my pride issues, that he'll be a better fit for the position and a better editor than I was. He's more social, he lives in Wichita, and he has a better eye for detail when it comes to that sort of writing than I do. Meanwhile, I simply revert back to being one of our many staff readers, just like I was when I began working with the journal my very first semester of grad school.

In other news, I've still heard nothing from Lady since last Saturday. As mentioned before, I've sent her texts, emails, and IMs, but I haven't tried to contact her since her classes presumably began on Wednesday. If she's busy (and I assume she is), I'm not going to bother her. She'll call or text when she has time, I would imagine, whether that be this weekend or sometime thereafter. I am a bit worried about her, yes, but then again I am a worrier in general. And, more than anything else, I'm not going to be a pest.

Anyway, this is the email I've sent to the auto shop people; certain parts of it, of course, have been redacted or edited for privacy concerns:

Hi folks. I had my car (a 1996 Chevrolet Monte Carlo Z34) in your shop back in the spring to have the serpentine belt and belt tensioner replaced, and you were great. I'd like to bring said car in this weekend if possible for regular maintenance and other work, either today (Friday) or tomorrow (Saturday). Most of it is maintenance that's needed to be taken care of for a while, but I have not had the money to do so until now.

First and foremost, it needs the spark plugs/wires changed. As I have the Z34, 3.4L V6 engine in this car, I already know this is an expensive job -- it's the older engine and the one that's more difficult and time-intensive to work on. I know I have two plugs that are out, and I think a third is going out as well.

The car also needs other regular maintenance such as an oil change, coolant flush, new filters, a check of all of its belts and fuses and the like, etc. I'd like to get all of this done at once while I have it there, if possible, but I'm sure the spark plugs alone will take some time and work, as the last time I was there you folks quoted that as about a $400 job due to the unfortunate engine that car has.

I also need one of my high beam headlights replaced; I have the bulb itself already and will bring it in for you if you could stick it in for me as well.

As this is Labor Day weekend, I can leave the car with you folks anytime until Monday evening if necessary, though I will need it back by then as I will need to use it for work next week.

Please let me know if you are able to work on my vehicle this weekend, and if so, when I should bring it in. Email is best if possible; I may not have my phone on me at all times over the course of the next 24 hours or so.

Thanks!
Brandon

I wanted to add I've also called you three times over the course of this past week trying to get my car in there, but I'm sure they already know that. It's more important that they know the amount of work the car needs and exactly what that work is, something I've been able to tell them only in small snippets here and there on the phone because they've been booked up.

I'm not, of course, expecting this to be cheap -- refer to the $400 figure above for the new spark plugs/wires alone -- but it is, of course, necessary. It's been necessary for almost a year now, and I can't really get out of it at this point, not now that the car's acting up.

In the meantime, however, this is the first payday of the fall semester, which means that whatever money I have to spend on the maintenance and repairs of the car will be offset by that, at least. But it's still not going to be cheap.

I do still have to go to Walmart, though, especially if they tell me to bring in the car early in the morning. I have to make sure I have enough groceries and other necessities to last me a few days without access to a vehicle. Perhaps I'll do that tonight before I go back to bed. Yes, that's actually a decent idea.

Worries (and Other Normal Issues)

Fall semester: day six

Luckily, the car is surviving. She's still running a little rough at times (mostly on the interstate, around speeds 70-75mph or so) but she's running. I have narrowed down the probable causes at this point, and am now pretty sure that all indicators point to "another spark plug is going out." This would explain the intermittent sluggishness and the sudden apparent drop in gas mileage that I've noticed over the course of the past several days. Mind you, I know I already have two out. This is even more a reason that I must get her to the shop on Thursday after class. Still, she's not running hot and she's driving admirably, if a little roughly. Here's hoping that she lasts me the rest of the week without major issues -- my week is only 1/4 of the way done. Granted, two of my days on campus are short ones, but this semester is going to be a long one overall -- something that I keep saying over and over, like if I keep saying it or overplaying it, it will somehow seem shorter.


In the next, oh, 40 hours or so, I must drive to campus and back twice, teach two classes, and attend two more. I also must read about 100 pages' worth of three different books, make a blog post on Blackboard for one of my classes (the Surrealism class has us discussing things online once a week, apparently), and take care of finishing and printing out my first real exercise for Playwriting. Oh, and to do that, I must set up my laser printer when it arrives tomorrow, and hope that it works without issue.

In six hours, I will get up, shower, infuse myself with coffee, and head to campus to teach my classes. I'm tired, but it's manageable right now. I don't have to leave the house early on Mondays, so today I got up at 10AM and left here around 2. I returned home at around 6:30 or so, getting out of class a little early. If this means that I come home tomorrow afternoon and take a nap, or go to bed early tomorrow night, then that's what it means. I have somewhat regulated my sleeping schedules, but they're not perfect yet and likely won't be for another few weeks.

In the meantime, I'm a bit worried about Lady. She was supposed to make it back to school on Sunday, and the last I heard from her was about 3AM Saturday night -- she called me when she couldn't sleep, from the hotel room about halfway to school where she'd decided to spend the night. She said she'd tell me when she made it to campus safely, but after several messages and two emails, I haven't yet heard from her. Tomorrow's Tuesday. She starts class on Wednesday. My logic, of course, tells me that she's busy registering and moving stuff into her suite, as well as catching up on sleep, but my irrational fear tells me that something may be wrong, so until I hear from her at some point I will understandably be a bit nervous.

One thing at a time, Brandon, I tell myself. You can only worry about one thing at a time. Compartmentalize things. Between the car, my bills and school stuff, taking care of tasks for my students, keeping the household chores taken care of so that things don't pile up (and become insurmountable tasks), and now wondering if Lady is okay -- ladies and gentlemen, my brain is fried. I'm burnt out, already, and it's only the second week of classes. Yes, I like being able to keep busy, but there's a point when busy becomes too busy, and it is at that point where I start forgetting to do things because I have so many tasks to take care of, even if I start making lists. For example, I almost forgot to pay the rent this month -- it went out in the mail today, no worries -- but that's how addled my mind is. I'll either get used to that addled mind or I won't, but that's just an example of something big and important that it's possible that I'll just forget to do, because I have thirty other things vying for my attention or work at any given time.

I guess this is that whole being an adult thing, hm? Well, it sucks. And it's only going to get worse in the coming months and/or years.

Where's the Fire?

This was so bizarre and happened right after I woke up yesterday that I forgot about it until now, so here goes.

Yesterday morning, I got up around 11. It was really dark and pouring rain, which surprised me greatly. Wow, rain in Kansas in August. That's odd. Then again, rain anywhere in the midwest seems odd at this point -- we've been under severe drought conditions since early June, I believe. Maybe late May.

Anyway, Making a pot of coffee, I put my earbuds in and went about my morning internet-related chores -- checking the news, checking my email/Twitter/etc., and in the distance, I heard sirens.

Now, granted, even though Newton is a really quiet town, this isn't that uncommon. Route 50 is directly behind my house, less than half a mile away. Route 50 is a busy, busy road, so at any given time there could be cops chasing someone down or ambulances using it to speed to the hospital. As it was pouring rain, I figured there'd probably been an accident somewhere, and thought nothing else of it. The sirens got louder. Like, really loud. I stood up, looked out the window (because they sounded like they were on the street behind me), but didn't see anything. They stopped, I shrugged, and I sat back down.

A few minutes later, I heard talking outside my house. My windows are always open, so I knew whoever it was had to be fairly close. I looked out to see two cops wandering about my back yard.

Hm, that's a new one, I thought.

I walked out to the living room and looked out the window. There were two cruisers parked up the street, but a good 40 yards or so from my house. If the cops were wandering around in my backyard, they were looking for something -- or someone. Interesting.

I ventured back to my room to see the cops stop at the wooden fence at the back side of my yard, the fence that separates my back yard from the neighbors' yard behind me, and heard them yell something to the neighbors. This something sounded like "Do you have power?"

Mind you, it was raining like hell, so this didn't seem strange. I had power, of course, so I didn't think anything of it. I watched the cops move on through, walking through all the backyards of my street. Hm. Again, I shrugged, and sat back down. I couldn't have cared less; whatever they were looking for, they certainly weren't looking for me, and I didn't see anyone or anything around. I had power. Oh well.

A few minutes later, I heard more voices. Like, several of them. And really close, like on my patio. I stood up to see three firemen in full firesuits and helmets, one of them holding an ax, wandering through my backyard and looking around.

At this point, I was like okay, what the fuck is going on? Also keep in mind that it's still raining pretty good. So, I threw on a t-shirt, and while the firemen were still in my back yard, I stepped out onto the back deck.

"Anything I can help you guys with?" I asked, concerned.

"Somebody called in a fire out here somewhere," one of the firemen said. "Have you seen anything, smelled any smoke or anything like that?"

Now, granted, I'd only been awake an hour, but I'm pretty sure that in that rain, few things would still be burning even if something had been on fire.

I blinked a few times, because this surprised me. "Nope," I said. "I've only been awake for an hour or so, but I haven't seen or smelled anything."

The other two firemen were examining the backyard areas. I glanced down the row to see almost everyone out on their back porches or decks, just like me, just as confused as I was. No smoke, no fire, nothing anywhere around us.

I went back inside and locked the door before walking out to the living room to see Newton's massive new fire engine -- so large that it could barely fit down the street -- parked in front of my house and the neighbor's house. With it were two more police cruisers and the Fire Chief's long, red Ford Excursion with lights running. Most of the neighborhood's residents, despite the rain, were outside in their yards or driveways. WTF, man?

It then dawned on me that the cops weren't asking the people behind me if they had power, they were asking did you call in a fire. This is Kansas; redneck drawl is as thick out here as it is in West Virginia.

The cops talked to the firemen in the street for about ten more minutes before all of them got back into their vehicles and left. That was the last I saw, or heard, of any "fire." The rain let up for a while, but returned twice as hard as before, so if there was any sort of fire anywhere, it wasn't going to last long unless it was a crazy fire.

Never did hear of anything involving the incident, not even on the news. The action never stops here in Newton, I suppose.

The Slow, Whimpery Death of the Monte Carlo, Part III

I am not a huge fan of waiting on things, as you folks may know. I am, overall, a fairly impatient person in a lot of aspects in my life, and my patience is never thinner than it is when I'm jacked on a pot of coffee and/or am in a fairly crappy mood anyhow. Both of those things were true this morning, about an hour or so after I woke up.

Please note, as an aside, that there are many things I am patient for or can be patient for. I exude the patience of the gods when it comes to my students, when it comes to people I love, when it comes to the cats, or when it comes to most monetary issues. I may not necessarily like it most of the time, but I can be patient when the situation calls for it. Politeness, tact, and knowing one's role also plays a large factor in most of these situations as well.

Ahem. Anyway.

Around 10AM, I called the auto shop back as planned.

"We're still overbooked from yesterday," the guy said. "You called yesterday, right?"

"Yeah," I replied.

"Well, by the way it looks we won't have any room today, and the soonest we'd be able to get you in would be tomorrow afternoon -- but you wouldn't be able to get your car back until Monday afternoon, at least."

Shit, I thought. My heart sank. I can't do that; I have class Monday afternoon, due to my fall semester schedule that now runs four days a week.

I told him I would be unable to do that because I had work on Monday, and he understood.

"Tell you what I can do," he said, "when can you get it in, and how long is the longest you can leave it, in case we're still booked?"

"I work from Monday until Thursday around noon," I told him. "Thursday afternoon would be the earliest I could bring it in, and then the longest I could leave it there would be until Monday morning at the very latest."

I didn't realize until after I hung up that next Monday is Labor Day, so I could actually leave it until that night if I really needed to.

"Well, call us back on Thursday, then, and if we have any open spots at all -- I'm guessing we will -- you can bring it over and we will get your car worked on as soon as we can, since you've been trying to get it in. I apologize for that. I doubt we'd have to keep it the entire weekend."

The last time those guys worked on my car, it was in March or so to fix my serpentine belt and belt tensioner. They had it in and out in a little more than 24 hours. I know they're fast at what they do, and apparently this must be their "busy season."

"Sounds good to me," I said. "In the meantime I hope she holds up until then."

And we hung up.

So I guess that's the plan, really -- call 'em Thursday before I teach to make sure they have open spots, and then drop off the car on the way home from class. I'll probably have to hitch a ride home with one of the techs in their courtesy car, like last time, and in the meanwhile I will just have to cross my fingers and hope that landboat doesn't die on me this week while I'm going back and forth for teaching.

In order to help keep her running -- because I don't yet know what exactly is going wonky on her -- I went to Walmart this afternoon and purchased three bottles of fuel injector/carb cleaner, a new jug of coolant, two more quarts of oil, and a bottle of Marvel Mystery Oil. I put one of the fuel injector/carb cleaners into the tank when I filled up this afternoon, then came home and replenished the coolant, added another quart of oil to the engine, and put about half of the Mystery Oil in there as well (because yes, you can add it to both oil and gas). If it's anything in the fuel system like buildup or clogs or gunk, that stuff and the cleaner should clear it out, and the coolant and oil should keep the car running smoother anyhow. It may be a stop-gap preventative measure, but if it keeps the car running another week until I can get it to the shop, then that's good.

I will note that even if the car starts behaving normally again since I've put that new stuff in it, I still plan to take it to the shop next weekend anyhow. It'll be Labor Day weekend, I'll have Monday off, and the car is long overdue for an oil change and other regular maintenance like a coolant flush and a belt check/lube/etc. Not to mention the spark plugs and fuses, which if they can fix -- price be damned -- I desperately need them to. I love that car. She may be old and heavy and loud, but she's still the best car I've ever driven, and I'd like to make her last until something major blows on her and she can no longer be driven. As I told Zedral, if all else fails and I have to end up driving home to West Virginia in nine months, I want to be able to make sure said car will make the trip. If Lady's car -- which is two years older than mine, mind you -- can make it to the east coast and back twice a year, my Monte Carlo should be taken care of enough to make a one-way trip back home once if I need it to, especially if properly maintained between now and then. That's just the way I see it, folks. If that means I have to spend $1k on getting everything on it fixed, then I have to bite the bullet and do so -- that would be cheaper and easier than finding another car, purchasing it, registering/tagging/insuring it, and then finding something to do with the Monte Carlo. I don't have the time -- or patience -- for all of that unless I have no other choice. Like it or not, the Monte Carlo is sticking around until she goddamned dies on me, and cannot be resuscitated.

Let's hope that doesn't happen anytime soon, as well. And more than that, let's hope that pumping her full of fluids this afternoon will help solve or put a band-aid on whatever is making her all sluggish and weak as of late until I can get her to the shop. Until then, as I said, I'll be driving to and from campus gingerly, with my fingers crossed, hoping that the car will survive another four days of driving back and forth. And I certainly won't be driving her any more than I have to -- gas is already expensive enough, and I don't want to press my luck any harder than I already have.

I will say that during today's driving, she only acted up a little bit -- she revved a little higher than usual when I started her (which, again, makes me wonder if it's a clogged fuel injector or something) but settled back down to idle normally, and she didn't go sluggish on me while I was driving about town. Granted, that was only about five miles' worth of driving, but still. One can hope, right? Again, fingers crossed and all that.

In other news, I revised my students' lesson plans to incorporate page numbers from both editions of the textbook used for the class, and emailed them to tell them, basically, "either edition of the book is fine; buy whichever one you can afford and let's move on with our lives." I didn't use those words, of course, but still, that was basically the message. I also got two emails of praise and appreciation from my bosses for dealing with the situation in the best possible way given the circumstances, and was told that my efforts, flexibility, and devotion to my students/classes is appreciated much more than I know.

I felt really good about that, actually. I was also shocked. I receive so little praise or genuine compliments (from anyone, really) that I never know how to react to them. For example, I've been told I'm good looking many times over the years, and I've always been like "No, seriously, I'm not. I have a receding hairline and a burly, woodsman's beard. I'm overweight and have man-boobs. I swear a lot, smoke like a chimney, and drink too much coffee. Believe me, I am not attractive." People tell me I'm funny, or I'm fun to be around, and I give them strange what-have-you-been-smoking sort of looks, because I don't necessarily see myself that way. Yes, I do have a quick, sharp wit. Occasionally. But the concept of people actually wanting me to spend time with them and or wanting to hang out and chat with me, for the most part, feels strange and foreign. I constantly have the thought of "you people have met me, right?" running through my head. Perhaps my self-esteem is lower than I originally thought. I don't know. I don't think my poetry is that great either, yet a fair amount of people tend to love it, so who knows.

The rest of this weekend will be spent doing homework more than anything else. I have a lot of reading to do, and should spend most of the day tomorrow doing that. I also need to clean the kitchen and run the dishwasher, and try to get some decent sleep. There's a lot to do in the coming week or two.

The Slow, Whimpery Death of the Monte Carlo, Part II

Fall semester: day five


I am beginning to think that my Monte Carlo is just old, tired, and getting ready to really fall apart, instead of constantly being figuratively falling apart. This afternoon she tried to stall out on me twice at two different stoplights, and alternated between running normally and running rough.

Please note that this could be any number of issues, obviously, but as I told Zedral earlier, the intermittence of it all denotes that it is not something "broken," but a part(s) of the car that "just wants to be an asshole."

Yes, those are the exact terms I used.

The fact that it's intermittent, however, does narrow some things down. It's either something as simple as a clogged fuel filter or fuel injectors, or it could be another spark plug going out or something along those lines -- I mentioned the O2 sensor in my last post, for example. Regardless, while the car may be running and driving fine for the most part right now, I don't know how long that's going to last before it won't start and/or run at all, so it is imperative that I get it into the shop as soon as I possibly can to see what's wrong.

With that in mind, of course, I called the shop this afternoon when I got home from teaching.

"Well, we don't have any open spots today," the guy on the phone told me, "but we might tomorrow. We're not going to have you bring the car over and drop it off when we don't know when we'll get to it, though, so call back in the morning and we'll see what we can do."

Okay, fair enough.

In the meantime, I emailed my colleagues and told them I wouldn't be able to make it to tomorrow's (read: today's) meetings; the car will either be in the shop or it won't, and if it's not I'll be driving it as little as possible and trying to perform a bit of maintenance on it myself -- which means I'll be checking/adding fluids and looking over the engine to see if anything looks amiss. Regardless of whether I can drop it off tomorrow or Saturday or what-have-you (Saturday would be about the last day I could do it, as I need the car on Monday again), I'll be driving gingerly to the Walmart two miles away and getting some fuel injector/carb cleaner to stick in it to see if that helps anything. It is, after all, quite possible that those things are just gummed up. Even little things on that car act like big problems sometimes simply because it's so old and beat-up.

On the off-chance that I can't get it into the shop this weekend, I guess I just have to press my luck with it for another week -- it can't be avoided. The place I take it to is the only place in Newton which works on engines, and they're relatively inexpensive. I'll need the car all four days next week, so there's not much else that can be done. If I have to drive, I have to drive. I'd originally planned -- when the car wasn't acting up, of course -- to get it in to the shop once Lady arrived back in the midwest, as when she visits, transportation would still be possible around town with her car if necessary, at least while she's here in town with me. If I can't do it this weekend, I'll have to do that anyway and hope my luck (and the car itself) holds out until then. She's making her drive back out here for school over this weekend, and starts her classes on Wednesday. If the car doesn't get into the shop this weekend...well, essentially I'll be doing the same thing doctors do to patients in hospitals when they don't know what's wrong, except my car isn't human -- I'll pump it full of new fluids, monitor it for a while, and then let it go back out into the world, cautiously. Again, it's all I can do for the moment.

As for any fuse issues it may be having, as mentioned in my last post? Yeah, the shop guys will have to figure that out. I can only do so much, really.

In other news, with some help from my bosses I've rectified the book situation for my classes; I've been able to look at the table of contents for both books, and the newer edition has the same stuff in it as the old edition (as expected) with different page numbers and a few additions of articles I used to distribute as handouts. I told my students that they can use whatever edition they want or need to use, depending on what price they want to pay for a book based on their financial situation, but we'll still be covering the same stuff regardless. I also let my bosses know that I'll fully switch over to the new edition in the spring and will adjust my syllabus and lesson plans accordingly -- but for now, all of those things have already been printed and distributed. A large chunk of my class has the new book one way or the other, while some have the older version and some were waiting to see what I could find out. Their first reading assignment won't be covered until Thursday anyhow, so they have time to get it. Everything will smooth itself out, I assume. No real worries.

Tonight, for the first time in about ten years, I bought a printer for my computer. I had little choice; entering my last year of graduate school and dealing with the new rule that we can no longer print in the department means that I had to suck it up and bite ye olde printer bullet. I bought this one, a Brother printer with full Linux support, on Amazon. I've used Brother printers before. I like them. This is also a laser printer and it had a $50 instant rebate. So, yeah, those were big selling points as well. I'll be printing more this year than I've ever printed before -- I have a ton of my own work to print, including stage plays and at least two copies of my thesis, and that's just in the next two months or so -- and I'm not paying 7 cents a page at the library. I'll also be printing out a fair amount of handouts for my students as well, when necessary, and while I can get those copied at school, they apparently don't want us to print even student stuff there. So, yeah, having a printer is sort of necessary now.

I say "for the first time in ten years" because when I got my old, old HP desktop (which died in about a year and a half) it came with a printer. That printer also died very quickly. Old technology, inkjet, expensive ink, etc. I'm happy to have any sort of printer again, really. It arrives on Tuesday -- just in time for me to be able to print out my reading assignments for Wednesday night's classes.

So yeah, folks, that's what's going on right now. This weekend I'll be dealing with the car and my nose will be buried in several books as an attempt to get back into the groove of graduate school, though I'm not sure how successful I will be in said attempt. Really, more than anything else, I'm just tired. Really tired. Yet life and responsibilities press forward.

The Slow, Whimpery Death of the Monte Carlo, Part I

Fall semester: day three


In "things are starting to suck again" news, my trusty Monte Carlo is acting up again. This time it's more than likely dying and/or dead sensors and/or fuses that run said sensors.

The car's running rough and loud on occasion, and it's having trouble giving me power/speed at times when I press down on the gas pedal. Oh, it does it, it just takes its time to do so -- gradually increasing in power and speed instead of its normal 215hp V6 get-up-n-go. It's not running hot, transmission seems to be shifting and working as per the usual, it's just...well, sluggish at times, and it's noticeable. Other than that the car seems to be working just as fine as it ever did -- with one little exception. Tonight, on the drive home, the "security" light came on my dashboard for several minutes while the car was being sluggish.

This is odd, as it's never happened before while driving. A few minutes later, it went back off, and the car resumed its normal performance.

That in itself, more than anything else, led me to the it's-probably-a-sensor-or-fuse hypothesis, knowing what I do about cars, and especially my car. I looked up "security light" in the manual for the car once I got home (because yes, I do own the manual, I'm not an idiot) and it says this:

If you’re ever driving and the SECURITY light comes
ton and stays on, you will be able to restart your engine
if you turn it off. Your PASS-Key II system, however,
is not working properly and must be serviced by your
Chevrolet dealer. Your vehicle is not protected by the
PASS-Key II system.

It also mentions, as I figured it would, that if the light comes on at odd times that it's a good time to check the fuses. Which I was pretty sure of anyway.

Ah, the PASS-Key system. How delightful. Let me explain that one a little bit.

The PASS-Key system is a little nub built into my ignition key as a security device, similar to the electronic keys newer cars have now. Inside that nub is a chip that interacts with my car's -- and only my car's -- specific ignition system via electronic code. It's a theft-deterrent. It also means that because of that electronic code, I cannot get a replacement key made for my car anywhere but a Chevrolet dealership, or a locksmith/keymaker who can make those specific keys, the latter of whom are few and far between. The ACE Hardware here in town is known to make them, however, and I've been meaning to get a duplicate key made for a long time, but haven't done so yet.

Anyway. The car will run and drive even if this system is malfunctioning (obviously), and basically the only reason it would malfunction is if one or more fuses have blown in the car's fuse box, or if they're about to blow out. I already have at least one fuse that's out, the one that provides light to the left side of the dashboard when the car's headlights are on, and the one which provides electricity to the radio system. I'm guessing the ones that are wonky or are trying to die on me are not only the ones which control that security system PASS-Key thing, but also the ones which control things like the O2 sensor and/or other car electronics.

Fuses are kind of important. Most of them just power little things (like the aforementioned dash light and stereo), but if they blow out, they can definitely screw with a car's performance, especially stuff like the ones that would properly run things smoothly, like the O2 sensor. I thought it would be something like this from the start, but this reminds me that more than ever I must, must get that car into the shop soon to get repairs before something else goes wrong, something possibly catastrophic. Yes, right now it's running -- it may be sluggish at times, and only for short periods at that, but it still needs major work done to it. I've been planning to do that work as soon as I can get just a little breathing space, but this week has been horrific on many different fronts (which I plan to write about over the coming weekend). It's 10:51 PM, and I just got home about an hour ago -- and that's early for me on Wednesday nights this semester. In a little over six hours, six hours, I will be getting up again to start my Thursday of teaching. I've not been able to relax or get any true downtime since last weekend.

I've told both Rae and Jay that depending on how the car acts, and if it's going to want to run normally, I may not make it to the EGSA and journal meetings on Friday afternoon. This comes with a heavy heart, of course; I've tried as much as possible, when I have the time and ability, to help with the school's literary journal -- and I've been on the editorial staff in some capacity ever since I started grad school -- but if this weekend may be the only time in the foreseeable future that I can take my car to the shop and say "hey, fix these few things at least, because the thing's going to blow up if I don't get them worked on," then sadly that has to come first. Yes, I planned (and still plan) to go to the meetings if I can make it there without issue, but I'll also be calling the shop tomorrow afternoon -- especially if the thing's still acting up -- to see when/if I can drop it off. It may be expensive and/or time-consuming, but I need that car to last me as long as possible -- it can't up-and-die on me during the first week of classes, of all times. It almost would've been better if it had died on me during the summer, when I didn't have the mountain of responsibilities I have now, even though I didn't have money to replace/repair it in the summer. I did, at least, have time then to figure something out.

So yeah, add that to the list of "shit that's gone wrong" this summer. It's a big list.

My Playwriting professor canceled class this evening, on the second night of the class itself. We weren't given a reason, just that class had been canceled. We still haven't received any explanations via email, either, which is odd. I was fine with this until I realized that was really the only reason I'd been on campus all day -- that and my evening Surrealism poetry class -- aside from a few small errands I did on campus and in my office this morning (such as paperwork and paperwork-like things). If I would have known class would be canceled, I could've gone back to bed and driven to campus around 6PM or so, instead of 7AM.

I did, however, have my Surrealism class, which is taught -- not exactly coincidentally -- by my head thesis advisor. He gave Jay and I instructions after class on what he'd like to see of our theses and when. I will be providing him with five of my best, representative "samples" from my thesis sometime next week, and Jay will be working with him on another schedule at a different pace, as he's making his an all-new project (apparently). In about a month we'll be giving him our comprehensive exams focus guides of sorts, as well. This is a pretty good pace, really. I'm cool with it for the most part. I'll be juggling so many things over the course of the next month that I'll just add that to the "to-do list" pile.

My brain is already fried and I'm seriously feeling the fatigue, and the semester is only three days old. I haven't had time for anything else, really -- it's been get up, go to school, come home, eat/shower, and go to bed for the past three days now. Tomorrow I hope to be able to come home after class and pass out after I call the shop about the car...provided I can make it to and from school safely and without incident.

Oh, there are definitely more things to write about, but I am so tired and burnt-out that right now, I just need rest. Sleep. For a little over five hours. Oh, how wonderful, right?

Call Me Rico

Fall semester: day two


Hoo boy.

Where do I begin?

The fall semester is a strange semester; it always is. I've mentioned before that for most of us, it's also back-breakingly hard and exceedingly busy -- and even as a third-year, this hasn't changed. I was hoping it would, really.

Parking on campus is more of a nightmare than ever; because of construction on our student union (crazy, very large-scale construction) and further construction around the old football stadium, a good 30% or so of the student parking lots have been closed off and are inaccessible. This basically means that if you're not on campus by about 7:30 AM at the latest, you're not going to get a parking spot -- or you're going to drive around stalking people as they walk back to their cars after class in order to be able to snipe theirs as soon as they leave.

I arrived on campus yesterday around 11:30, and got the sole remaining spot in front of the school's baseball stadium, up against the stadium itself, a spot that was easily half a mile from my office building. That's not a joke. And it was pure luck that I got said spot. I'd heard that earlier that morning, parking and traffic on campus was so horrible that the police were directing it back and forth on the streets. I believe that. It looks like regardless of when or where my classes are, I'll have to be getting to campus as early as possible every morning this semester until the construction is completed...that is, of course, provided that it is ever completed.

This morning I made sure to arrive on campus by 7:20, and that was even after I had to get gas in the car before driving to Wichita. Even at that time, half of the parking lot I normally park in was already filled.

Yesterday was the first day of classes. I had but one class I needed to attend -- Playwriting, in the theater department, at 4:30. Beforehand, I needed to arrive on campus in order to be able to get my syllabus copied for my students and to make sure everything was going to go smoothly today.

Playwriting is held in one of the large theater buildings on campus, which wouldn't be a big deal if it wasn't further from my office than my car was parked. Flat State University has a much bigger campus than most students realize, and they don't realize it because 90% of the time, their classes will all be held in the same three buildings depending on what they're majoring in. I've been a student there for two years now and am entering my third year, and I've never ventured past the art museum. I've never had a reason to. The theater that the Playwriting class is held in is probably 200 yards or so past the museum, slung amongst an array of buildings that all look the same. If you could pick a building that is the furthest distance across campus than the English department's offices, it's that one. It's a ten-to-fifteen minute walk, easily.

The class seems like it's going to be interesting, but it's also going to be really work-intensive and time-consuming. While most of that work will be creative in nature, there's a lot of it. Writing a full 30-to-50-page play is not something I'm incredibly interested in doing this semester on top of all of my other work, but it's just one of many assignments in that class -- and we're required to go view at least two stage plays both on campus and around the city, as well, at some point during the semester. It's a lot of work, and it's work that I won't necessarily have time to do. I'm strongly considering dropping the course in favor of taking something much less work-intensive in the spring for my "enrichment" credit, but I'm not sure what that would do to my financial aid and/or GTA status. What I can tell you is that with full sections of both of my 102 classes I teach as well as another lit course (Surrealism in Poetry) I'm taking on top of that, I may have bitten off much more than I can reasonably chew -- so to speak, anyway. It's going to be a very stressful, work-loaded semester regardless of whether I say in that class or not. I can already tell that by early October, I'm going to be fucking miserable -- and swamped, to boot.

After class last night, our instructor informed us that there was a free picnic downstairs that we'd been invited to as students in her class. Free hot dogs, hamburgers, and other picnic food -- macaroni salad, chips, soda, etc. Jay and I were the only two English department students who actually went ("Only a fool passes up free food," he remarked), and we found that we had to put on name tags and a colored dot sticker that was supposed to denote what part of the theater department we were majoring in.

The problem should be obvious here: Jay and I aren't theater majors. We're poets, and grad students at that. Jay looks younger than he actually is, so he can pass for an undergrad when/if necessary -- but me? With my mountain-man beard? I already look like I'm at least 35. I'm not; I'm 29, but this still makes milling around with eighteen-and-nineteen-year-olds seem a little creepy.

Jay wrote his real name on the name tag; I, however, had another idea.

I picked one of the little colored stickers at random (I believe mine was red, denoting that I was a "music performance" major), and wrote on my name tag that my name was "Rico."

Because, really, fuck it.

I was waiting on someone to introduce themselves to me throughout the picnic, so that I could introduce myself as "Rico" and speak in a fake Spanish accent, but said opportunity did not present itself. Instead, Jay and I got our free burgers and hot dogs and ate them sad and isolated from the young'uns on the steps of the theater building before going home. On my way back to my car after the picnic, I deposited my "Rico" name tag in the nearest trash bin.

As an aside, Rico is my go-to fake name, the one I've always used if there's a situation that's called for it.



Note: situations like this don't come up very often, but my name on my gradebook for the classes I teach is filled out this way:

NAME: Rico Suave
CLASS: Graduate Student
SCHOOL: The School of Love

That's not a lie, by the way. I hope I never lose said gradebook, or I'll never get it back. People will be really confused as to where to return it.

And speaking of the classes I teach...

I have two full (or almost full) sections of my classes. In the past 24 hours, I've had three students drop, and one add, my course. I'm sitting at 48 out of 50 right now, a number that is not likely to change very much from now until December.

As you folks know, I am teaching the Science/Engineering English 102 I've been teaching for over a year now. I know how to do it well, I've streamlined it, I've made my lesson plans well in advance, and have set the readings and paper-due-dates to specific times and days. I've done this because it not only saves me time, but because I've been able to help design and tweak this class during the past two full semesters I've taught it, I know how it functions best.

The bookstore ordered the newest edition of the text I teach with. This would normally not be a problem, and would only be a bonus, but said text is not the one I have -- I have the older edition, upon which all of my lesson plans are based, including page numbers and articles we'll read in the class. Said "new edition" has been stocked fully in the bookstore. I knew the new edition had become available, and made sure to tell my students via email last week that we were using the old edition, not the new one, because that's the one I had lesson plans for. The new edition is about $80 in the bookstore and on Amazon. The old edition? $2 to $7 on Amazon, used. I also did not know beforehand that the bookstore had stocked the new edition.

Well, almost all of my students had purchased the new edition of the text, and they'd gotten it from the bookstore. I don't know that the department even has the new edition of the text.

Anyway, you can see my dilemma here; the fact that my students have a new edition of the textbook isn't necessarily a problem; the page numbers will be different, but it should contain all of the articles/chapters in the edition I've always taught with. The problem is that a lot of my students blew $70+ on a textbook that they didn't necessarily need, when they could've gotten a used copy of the one I use, and told them to get, on Amazon for $2 to $7.  This is sort of on them, yes, but I may retroactively be able to save those students a ton of money if they decide to return those books and order copies of the old ones. Truthfully, the students could really use either book; depending on what the new book has in it will mean I will either need more or less supplemental materials, but I'm sure the majority of the content is the same.

Still, if this or the amount of work I will be doing in my playwriting class is indicative, or an omen of, the semester I have ahead of me? Ugh.

In other news, today is my grandmother's 85th birthday. I called her once I got home this afternoon (as I once more finally have some minutes on my cell phone) and talked to her for half an hour. She's doing well, and is in pretty good spirits despite her age and many infirmaries. There's no way I'm living to 85, no way in hell, not with how much I smoke, how badly I eat most of the time, and how much coffee I drink. I've always said I'll be dead before 40, which is probably a fairly reasonable over-under estimate.

Some of you may think I'm kidding when I say that. I'm so not. I am well aware of my own mortality, folks.

I have to be on campus all five days this week; there are meetings on Friday that I need to attend for not only the EGSA, but for our school's literary journal. As I am an editor of the aforementioned journal, I sort of have to be there. This means I'll be filling the car with gas a second time this week -- three trips to school and back between now and Friday will drain the gas tank again. Being on campus four days a week during the semester compared to my previous three-day schedule means an extra three fill-ups on average (about $90 or so) during any given month. Oh yeah, I've done the math. Being on campus more is actually costing me more money. And not just more money every month, but more overall. Yet another reason this semester is going to suck.

Oh well. I suppose I have my kitties and tie-dye and college/NFL football to placate me.