My car, on Sunday, developed a noise.  Sort of a buzz, or a rapid rattle, inside the car.  Outside the car, it’s clearly something metal rattling.  It’s got me concerned, as it’s started happening more and more.  Something is probably loose.  I hope it’s an easy fix.  But even if it is, it’s an unwelcome expense with sucky timing.  I’m trying to save up some blasted money for GenCon in August, dammit.  Of course, spending money on food out 3 times this week, then $30 on something I truly don’t need (but is extremely cool, a 50mw green laser pointer) and $32 on beer doesn’t help that situation any.  Or $25 going to the doctor yesterday morning for her to basically tell me “you look fine, take Tylenol and gargle with salt water” because my throat was starting to itch again, and Jade came down on Monday with what seems to be the same thing that had me horribly sick before and I feared I was still contagious.

I was supposed to take it in to Jimmie’s shop Friday morning.  But because I’ve got to get up stupid early for a work trip to Amarillo Friday morning, I had to reschedule.  To the following Thursday, the soonest they can get me in now, because they’re so busy.  Grr.  I really hope something on my car doesn’t explode or fall off before then.

Link of the Day: Combination CD and vinyl record – on one disc.

Spam of the Day: “Just broke your leg…”

Funny of the Day: Rather tempting, honestly.

Pic of the Day: Kitty looks . . . happy.

Video WTF of the Day: Klenginem

Still very happy about being able to open my car door from the inside.  Such a small thing, but so appreciated after being deprived of it for a week and a half.  Jimmy also got me a front license plate mount ordered.

Got paid today.  My financial status has changed from “broke” to merely “poor.”  Rent paid, electric paid, ordered more cat food, ordered a surprise for someone.

Link of the Day: “The Spy Who Accepted My Friend Request”

Spam of the Day: “As catwalk in refill. An a willpower.”

Funny of the Day: Craigslist Wanted ad

Pic of the Day: The truth about Godzilla

Quote of the Day: “There is a pervasive tendency to treat children as adults, and adults as children. The options of children are thus steadily expanded, while those of adults are progressively constricted. The result is unruly children and childish adults.” – Thomas Szasz

Tired and groggy, I drove my car to Jimmy’s shop this morning, dropped it off there, and got a ride to work from my dad. By 9:30, I had news: there was a minor leak from one of the transmission seals. Not a big deal, in itself . . . but, I also found out that the entire steering rack needs to be replaced, as there was a significant steering fluid leak and the steering rack had issues. So, looking at at least $600 . . . and then after clearing a short-term loan from my dad to be able to go ahead and get stuff done, I find out that it’s also going to need new tie rod ends, and an alignment. Yay.

Getting it done, I need a reliable, functional vehicle, but it’s going to make me poor for about the next month. It’s going to take what I have in savings (which was already mostly money I had earmarked for repaying my dad for the last round of repairs on this Acura), most of the money from my check this Friday after I pay rent, and a significant chunk of my paycheck on the 16th to pay for all this. Oy.

Weekend was pretty good.  Spent it with my Kara, we entertained ourselves inexpensively, ate very well (perhaps too well, I need to not be poor again soon so I can afford to get back on my diet), had a lot of fun and many good snuggle times.  Weather most of the weekend was dreary.  I really kinda wanted to see about playing with/test driving some cars Saturday (though Kara really didn’t seem too keen on that idea), but the weather wasn’t cooperative for that.

Entirely too broke right now.  I had to borrow money from a friend until this upcoming payday on Friday so I could afford food to make sure I’d have something other than hamburger and ramen (not the end of the world, I’ve been worse off) and be confident of having enough gas my dad’s van I’m currently driving to be able to get to and from work this week.  Heard from Littlefield Automotive earlier, $350 to get my car from them.  Then haul it to Lubbock this Friday afternoon, and see what the Saab place there says it’ll cost to get things all fixed up.  I’m worried about what they’ll say.  I hope it’s a reasonable figure at all.  Even if I end up in (further) debt to my dad for a year or more, I’d really like my car back in proper working order.  I miss it.  I do like it.  I’d really rather not have to buy something else on the cheap right now.

Link of the Day: Students for an Orwellian Society

Spam of the Day: “Colo Cleanse Plus”

Funny of the Day: Burned by a pharaoh!

Pic of the Day: Irresistable geekette earrings

Quote of the Day: “Sometimes it’s important to work for that pot of gold. But other times it’s essential to take time off and to make sure that your most important decision in the day simply consists of choosing which color to slide down on the rainbow.” - Douglas Pagels

At this point, it’s more a question to me now of, what’s the sane cutoff point of money to throw at this car?

Link of the Day: “Where I Write” - pictures of SciFi Authors and where they write. (Thanks James)

Spam of the Day: “Look at cars they drive”

Funny of the Day: “That’s sexual harrassment, Lion-O.”

Pic of the Day: Spock’s Ship “Jellyfish” done in Legos

Quote of the Day: “I’m assuming it’s either ginger, or condom flower. I’m hoping for ginger.” – Kara

No transpo?  Yeah, getting back to the terrible fucking Thursday last week . . . It rained Wednesday night/Thursday morning.  Lots and lots of rain.  Here’s an example of what I’m talking about:

That’s the sort of open field that dips down a little across from my apartment complex, and behind a host of businesses right along on the Loop 250 service road.  It stretches from this paved alley behind them that runs from Midkiff to my apartment complex, up to Caldera.  It was basically a humongous pond, or a shallow lake.  Unfortunately, so was a good stretch of Caldera.  I stepped out of my apartment that morning, greeted by this continuing rain, water all over the parking lot, in a rush to try to make it to work and Not end up a couple of minutes late.  I hopped into my trusty (so I thought) car, and drove across the parking lot, and saw Caldera underwater.  Hmm.

Keep in mind, this was right at pretty much 8:00 a.m., I hadn’t had been awake very long yet, and what little caffeine I had in me thus far had not kicked in yet.  I’m not fond of mornings at the best of times, unless I approach them from the “still awake from being up all night” angle.  This is the only defense I can make for the terrible decisions I made.

I decided I’d try to make it across a bit of Caldera to Crista Lane on my way to work.  This was a bad decision.  The water was really quite a bit deeper than I thought it was initially.  This is something I discovered as I was trying to begin my turn towards Crista Lane on Caldera, as my car’s engine sputtered and died.  Then, being sleepy and stupid and panicked, I tried to restart it.  Only afterwards, reading on the web, did I realize just how terrible of a thing that potentially is.

A City of Midland Transportation Services truck happened to come driving by (though the water – that truck has ground clearance of about up to my windows) right as I was getting stuck.  They radioed for for someone to come get me out.  A couple of police cars, an ambulance, and a fire truck all showed up, with a wrecker supposedly on the way.  Two firemen got out of their truck, put on waders, and pushed my car out of the water up onto Crista Lane – so the tow truck ended up being unnecessary.  Later that morning, Corey pointed out a bit on the CBS7 web site about a water rescue being reported in Midland “near Loop 250 and Midkiff.”  That was probably the host of vehicles with various sorts of flashing lights that showed up for me.

While I was waiting, in the water, I took a couple of pictures.  This one, when, hrm, I felt something wet on my ankle:

Water was coming up from under the car, through whatever various holes or crevices or whatnot, and filling my floorboards.  It got to being a couple of inches in each of them.  Not fun at all.

Here’s a view from my car while I was stuck in the effing water:

Tried to do what things I could Thursday afternoon after work, Friday after work, and then Saturday, to get my car driving.  No luck.  Sunday, Kara and Matt came over, and we pushed my car back to my apartment complex, parked right downstairs.  It doesn’t start, and the electrical system is haywire.  I reached out to my dad for help, having no other real alternatives.  Finally got my car towed on a car carrier to Littlefield Automotive Wednesday during lunch.  Haven’t heard anything from them yet, going to call in a bit and see what, if any news, they’ve got for me yet.

I’ve been really severely stressed most of this week and last weekend.  Stressed about my car, about everything going on at work right now in crunch time (well, until this morning anyway), stressed about money being entirely too tight until my next payday.  Having a non-functional vehicle, and that adding unknown added costs to repair it (or possibly end up getting a cheap used vehicle if repair on it is too costly to be considered feasible) and having to work something out with my dad, probably on a payment plan basis, just added heaps of stress for me.  Some of that is why I haven’t posted a damn thing on this site until today.  It was just something that so seriously wasn’t anything of a priority for me.

So, yeah, that’s a bit to catch things up.  All I really feel like writing about it for now anyway.  Linkage commences:

Link of the Day: SDCC 2009 Hot Cosplay Chicks

Spam of the Day: “Time For a New Copier?” – from, of course, Copier King

Funny of the Day: “Try and spell shield that“

Pic of the Day: Interesting Top

Quote of the Day: “(760): I wish they had nachos that got you drunk” – another gem from TFLN

Got paid today.  Money from that paycheck has vaporized alarmingly quickly.  Cable, Verizon, Airfare to Indy for GenCon.  Yeah, that hurt.  $346 was the best I could score, even with The Priceline Negotiator working his dubious magic (not as magical as I had been led to believe).  Having to borrow some money from my Dad for 4 weeks so I can be sure I don’t starve and so forth.  Bounce Energy STILL has my account screwed up.  Called, left two different voicemails to people there (Though I don’t know if one of the extensions actually is anyone or not), filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau, and even griped on Twitter.  Someone at Bounce responded on Twitter and I emailed them about it, going with cut ‘n paste from my BBB complaint.  ;)  I’ve got to budget for paying Bounce still this month, once I can find out what I actually owe them, and probably replace another wheel on my car (please god/universe/karma/luck/whatever, just be the wheel and not require the tire to be replaced now as well).

Link of the Day: Key/Keyring Combo

Spam of the Day: “ Are you looking for the Fountain of Youth?”

Funny of the Day: Lit-er-al?

Pic of the Day: Super Trooper

Quote of the Day: “Life is like a road trip. Sometimes, the road is smooth, the scenery is beautiful, and the weather crisp; other times, you break down with a flat across the road from a hillbilly with 3 teeth, playing a banjo and looking at you like a dented can of Spam out of the dollar bin at the local Piggly Wiggly.” – Kara

This morning, an auspicious, lovely start to my day, I head downstairs, and notice, hmm, that’s funny . . . that (front passenger) tire looks low.  No, actually, it looks bloody flat. I hobble the car to work (thankfully it’s a very short drive), go tell James I’ve got a flat and am going to the tire place (Discount Tire, also, thankfully, very close by).  I hobble it there, park it right in front, apparently smack in the way of practically everything.  They were really busy.  I spent probably 10+ minutes waiting just to get talked to.  Told it’ll be 45 minutes or so before they can look at it and give me an assessment.  I call James, get a ride back to work.  Get a call a bit later.  Verdict?  Wheel is badly bent, they’re doubtful a new tire on it will even stay inflated.  ~$190 for a new wheel and tire.  Oh, and also, the rear passenger wheel is pretty badly bent.  It should really be replaced too.  Except I can’t right now.  I simply don’t have the money.  MAYBE I can swing getting another wheel (hopefully I won’t need another tire with it too) next paycheck.  The timing on this sucks ass.

So, went and picked up my car – $190.64 total – during the process of writing this post.  I’m past being angry now, and am just sort of weary and demoralized.  All by 10:15 a.m. today!  AWESOME!

Saw The Proposal on Friday night.  It was cute, funny, pretty good.  Despite the whole “chick flick” stigma, it was a solidly enjoyable movie.  I was previously misinformed, however, as to the amount and extent of Sandra Bullock’s nudity in the film – definitely could have used more of that, IMO.  ;)

Additionally, saw The Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen yesterday afternoon on/as part of Kara’s Birthday celebration.  It was OK.  Some of the Bayhem-isms on the film annoyed me.  The spinning camera around Shia and Megan in one scene was really, really irritating.  It downright made Kara queasy.  The massive, excessive overutilization of Shakycam also bugs the crap out of me.  It’s not limited to this film, or Michael Bay, it seems to be used in practically everything now for action.  Such a horrible blight on the film industry.  That needs to either die entirely, or be relegated to very limited, “special” usage when it’ll actually accentuate a scene and give it more impact due to its rarity.

T2 is worth seeing.  Especially on a matinee if you can.  Does it have flaws, problems?  Oh hell yes.  It also has giant robots fighting, and a few very funny moments (Sam’s mom at college was great).

Link of the Day: Interesting and unusual car paint jobs

Spam of the Day: “Best oil for pork motor” – Seriously, I don’t make any of this stuff up.

Funny of the Day: I’m tempted to try this one, but I am skeptical of the results I’d get.

Pic of the Day: Too soon?

Quote of the Day: ”(972): they say celebs die in threes. leave it to billy mays to throw in one extra COMPLETELY FREE!” – Someone from TFLN.

Link of the Day: Portugal: Proof that Drug Decriminalization works?

Spam of the Day: “Best prices, best pilules”

Funny of the Day: Tears of Lasers.

Pic Vid of the Day: Shoe Magic with NPH

Quote of the Day: “It sounds like the Cirque du Soleil being chewed up by their own chainsaws.” – Jeremy Clarkson

Last week, I pretty much decided that with my upcoming paycheck on the 6th, along with my income tax return, with what I had in checking/savings, it was finally time (Again – the near $1200 of car repairs delayed me by a bit more than a month on my plans) to move on the whole Apartment/Getting-my-own-place-again goal.  Having already done a lot of the initial work of investigating, evaluating, eliminating apartment complexes here in Midland in January, this time it was a briefer process, starting with a short list of candidates.  Four complexes that were any real serious consideration, and another I called just to check on it as an option, and because it’s literally throwing distance from our office.  They were the most expensive, so that was pretty much an easy elimination.  

Of the other 4, I went and looked at all of them – 1 of the 4 I’d seen a 1BR Townhome before, which I liked a lot.  Really liked.  I just know Baby, my cat, would love the stairs there, and I liked the layout, but it was a little bit beyond what I would be comfortable with based on my projective budgeting.  Rent in Midland is stupidly costly right now – prices are still high from rapid rising over a few years of oilfield prosperity.  The oilfield prosperity is starting to show some real, true (worrisome to oilfield/oil company employees) signs of decline, but any drop in the inflated rent prices will take several more months, if not a year, before they start to happen.  In Huntsville, I had a 2BR, 1.5Bath 1100 square foot townhome for less than I’m (going to be) paying for a 710 square foot 1BR/1BA flat here in Midland.

So, anyway, after checking out all of the other 3 options, with some drama and surprises involved there, I decided on going for what’s supposedly the nicest/best rated of the complexes, Windscape.  Current schedule is to move in on the 13th.  Friday the 13th . . . I can’t help but feel that with everything that happened last week and weekend, it’s something that’s meant to be, and any luck I experience on that day will be Good.  It’s just going to be a tight week for me financially until my payday+ this Friday.

Friday night was looking to be pretty uneventful – I tried to get hold of a couple of people to see about doing something interesting:  seeing a movie with a friend, or going out for whatever workable (she’d mentioned wanting to go to a karaoke bar) with another, female, friend – but it seemed that stuff just wasn’t going to be happening that night.  So, without someone to make going out (and thus spending money) a worthwhile excuse, stay home and . . . apparently watch Seabiscuit with my dad.  During which I find out about some bad medical news about a friend of mine.  Not horrible stuff, but still unfortunate and unpleasant, kind of a bummer, which had (and still has) me worried for her.

Then at 10:15 that night, I get a text from Ms. Fire, commanding me to head down to the hotel lounge she’s in and ask her to dance.  I hop up, change shirts, brush my teeth, and head off to the lounge.  She seemed surprised I “actually came.”  To my surprise (though only a little bit) it was Tejano Night at this club.  I haven’t danced in like 9 years, and I haven’t danced to something other than techno/trance in a good dozen.  I wasn’t very good, but it didn’t seem to matter – the intent and effort, and quite possibly the fact she was a bit inebriated, seemed to matter more.

I’ll not go into further details on the rest of that night . . . but it was wonderful, and surprising.  

Saturday, despite lack of sleep, I got out to see that movie (The Street Fighter Chun-Li one) with my friend Ivy.  It wasn’t bad.  It wasn’t great either, but it was entertaining (even though I think Kristen Kreuk is just wrong for the role).  It had some very nice cinematography of Bangkok in it too.  

Sunday, I had a date to try to see Les Miserables at  MCT.  I type “try” because when I attempted to buy tickets Monday of last week, they were nearly entirely sold out – they only had 3 seats left, none of them anywhere near each other.  The nice old lady at the box office suggested I show up an hour before the show to try to get no-show seat tickets.  After discussing this concept with J, my supposed date, she said we should go ahead and try for it, and plans were made for her to meet me at the theater, see Les Mis, and then who knows?

I dress up as I thought reasonably appropriate for going to the Theater (to discover there later that several folks just went in whatever – but I still felt good about my clothing choice, I think dressing decently for the Theater is still respectful), and show up there a couple of minutes before 1:00.  I’m 4th on the list for no-show seats, with the box office manager informing me that she has no doubt I’ll get tickets.  I wait, seeing tons of people stream in, mingling, talking to friends . . . and then run into a good friend of my Mammaw.  People take their normal, had their tickets in advance, seats, being ushered and hurried into the theater by staff, and at 2:00, the box office manager starts calling out names for the no-show seat tickets.  J still hasn’t shown up (I’d been looking for her, for the entire hour).  I let the box office manager know my date didn’t show, someone else should get the other ticket, and she snatches back the pair she handed me, hunts around frantically, and then gives me a single ticket.  It was a decent seat.

Les Mis was excellent.  One of the best Community Theater productions I’ve ever seen (and most of my comparisons are from MCT shows, so that’s good comparisons, as MCT has been one of the best Community Theaters in the nation for a long time).  Not only was David Odom, who was a friend of mine in High School, on the debate team with me, in the play (as I knew beforehand and expected), but Robert Reed, another High School friend was in the cast as well.  I graduated with both of those guys.   There were other people who I knew from when I was involved in the theater back in the 90s.  I’m considering volunteering for a few shows, maybe auditioning for a part or two.  If not, I’ll at least get a membership, and make MCT a regular part of my entertainment options.

I’ve been trying to get in touch with J the last two 2 days, with no luck thus far.  I don’t know what the deal is, what happened – if there’s a good reason she wasn’t there, a bad reason, if I was just stood up, or what.  If I was stood up, oh well, her loss.  My weekend overall was so good, it doesn’t really upset me.

Anyway . . . leaving the megalith of wage-slavery, I was behind this guy in a big black truck.  I signal and start changing over to the leftmost lane (we both turned out into the center lane) of our side of the 7-lane road.  Big Black Truck Twerp also begins to change lanes – no turn signal – and sees me, swerves crazily (covering about 2 lanes of total width taken from all 3 lanes) and straightens out, slows down, and then changes lanes behind me, this time using his turn signal.  For the first lane change, anyway – not for the change into the turn lane, or his left turn into the Town and Country.  Oy, frigging idiots.

I don’t know, maybe Midland drivers have gotten worse over the last several years.  Maybe there are just MORE bad drivers in Midland.  Maybe I’ve just gotten spoiled by a better class of idiot drivers from other cities.  But it’s definitely worse here than I remember before.  I continually see more and more amazing displays of vehicular stupidity the longer I’m here.  The day and a half of icy roads a couple of weeks ago, I thought, were going to be some of the worst displays I could expect.  Alas, I was so wrong.  Give Midland a little dust storm – a weather phenomenon anyone who’s lived here more than 6 months should be familiar with – and people amaze me even more with how fucking stupid they can be.

I came up with an idea several years back, which I’m even more in favor of now: All Midland drivers should be forced to spend like 3 months or so driving a regular work commute schedule in a big car-oriented city, like DFW, Phoenix, Indianapolis, or so forth.  Someplace that HAS more than lip service to public transportation, but where individually owned cars are still the primary mode of getting where you need to be.  Then, maybe, the ones who don’t get themselves killed might come back to Midland as slightly less of a fucking idiot behind the wheel.

I like my car.  It’s pretty, it’s comfortable, it’s reasonably quick, and it gets pretty decent gas mileage (22-24ish city, 33-34 highway).  It’s definitely the nicest vehicle I’ve ever owned, and I like some of the Swedish Saab quirks it has.  It’s no Mercedes-Benz, but still a nice car.

Less than two weeks after buying it, I had it in the shop at the Saab (/Cadillac/Hummer) dealership in Fort Wayne.  Two trips in there to fix various issues – expensive labor for rewiring work in the rear to get all the lights back there working properly, a new Direct Ignition Cassette, new battery, new spark plugs, a couple of other minor things I don’t remember now.  $1100 more sunk into the car.  Irritating, but I still had money left from the insurance.  It was supposed to be in “great shape” other than those issues I had fixed.

Everyone who’s looked at the car in any professional mechanical capacity has said the same things about it, more or less: “It’s in great shape.”

A few weeks before I allowed my life to fully implode in Huntsville, my car developed an irritating and inconvenient problem: the battery wouldn’t hold a charge.  I thought something was draining it that shouldn’t be when it was turned off.  The battery was less than a year old, it COULDN’T be the problem.  After getting jump-starts twice (once from a friend who drove from the other side of town, once from my next door neighbor with whom I’d never even spoken before), I paid what was, at the time, very precious money for a low-end “jump box” from Wal-mart.  It got entirely too much usage.

A little more than halfway back on the drive from Huntsville to Midland, a new concern popped up: the Engine Malfunction light switched on, and stayed on.  Then over the next couple of weeks, it’d go on and off relatively randomly.  Great.  So, I needed to find somewhere I could get my Saab worked on.  I thought it should be no problem, my dad has a friend (for whom he does bookkeeping and tax preparation) who is a mechanic who specializes in Imports.  His shop is even named “World Class Automotive.”  As it turned out, he does pretty much just Japanese imports, and domestic makes.  No European stuff, and definitely not Swedish.  No Saab dealer anywhere in West Texas, short of El Paso.  DFW or maybe Austin are the closest Saab dealers.  Bloody Wonderful.

It turns out, it’s pretty damn hard to find someone to work on a Saab in West Texas.  When I bought the car, never for a second was, “I wonder how hard it will to get it worked on in Midland, Texas,” an item of thought or consideration.  After some calling around and chasing down referrals, we found one company that said they could scan the Saab’s computer and who worked on Saabs: Littlefield Automotive.  We took the car in, they took entirely too long to figure out what the deal with it was (bad thermostat and temperature sensor) and then informed us they’d have to order the parts, and that it would take “a couple of days” to get them in.  I got my car back (paid for by my Dad, who, I am certain, is keeping a penny-accurate tally somewhere), and we were going to come back in after they got the parts in – presumably the next week.

A week and a half later, we finally get a call informing us the parts are in.  This is the week before Christmas week. Well, trying to get it worked on with the shortened week before the Thursday Christmas just seemed impractical.  The next week, with a similar situation with New Year’s Eve/Day, also seemed impractical.  Now, I’d started to notice a concerning sort of grinding noise coming from the front wheels when braking, or at low speeds even when not braking sometimes shortly before Christmas.  I didn’t think too much of it, but wanted to have them see what was wrong when I took it in.  The next week after New Year’s week?  Nope, my dad had a trip to Corpus Christi that week, which he left for on Thursday, so I needed the car that weekend too.  Finally, Wednesday the next week after that, I get the car in to Littlefield’s.  Like, 3 1/2 weeks or so, closeish to a month, after the parts finally arrived.

That concerning grinding noise?  Oh, that was my front brakes being almost entirely gone.  Know what it costs to replace the parts of a Saab’s front disc brakes?  I had no idea.  I know now with a painful clarity.  $134 for a break pad set.  $119 each, x2, for Discs (aka rotors). $144 each, x2, for front calipers.  $12 for brake fluid.  $672 in parts alone.  Tack on $391 for labor (including labor for putting on the parts from before that were on order that we’d already paid for), EPA fees, and tax . . . and there’s an $1131 front brake job.  3 weeks pay for me, with what I’m currently making.  That effectively delays me a month or thereabouts on any hopes of getting my own apartment.  That’s pushing me into March (possibly late March) to move with a reasonable buffer established, maybe longer if more expenses mount up to surprise me. *le sigh*

In addition, I know that my rear brakes (which were essentially working overtime with my front brakes gone) will need attention fairly soon.  I’m hoping I can put off having to buy new tires (and possibly new wheels with them – 2 of my alloy wheels have bends in them which I don’t know if they’re reparable with any cost-effectiveness vs. replacing them) until next year, or at least late this year.

Next time, I’m buying Japanese.