Category: Uncategorized

Monday Blues

What keeps me going today: going home to see Lovely and little Bear
What moves my feet today: nothing. I don’t really even feel like moving, but here I am anyway
I could do without: a seemingly dead car that I owe money on

I was going to post something from the morning. I’m glad that I didn’t. I must have more than 24 hours lapse before taking my meds or something. Who knows?!?! I know that this morning I was even worse than THIS! After my lunch hour of watching funny bloopers on YouTube I fought my way back to the Good Side of the Force. Maybe I was being mind tricked this a.m. Maybe it was just that I hadn’t had enough coffee. Whatever it was it had me by the throat and was chokin’ the life out of me.

I have been trying to get work done all honkin’ day long. I have had accounts that are paid in full that I am trying to get letters mailed. I have had people withdraw from school and have to have their repayment paperwork to them. Then I have had up-and-coming students dropping by to sign for their loans. There have been eight as of right now. Eight people may not seem like a lot, but when it takes about 20 minutes per person, it tends to eat up your day while you are chanting over Terms and Conditions and waiting for them to fill in their John Hancock. I mean, that is, what, two and a half hours. I mean, CRAP!!!! And some people take longer than 20 minutes. Then you have to disburse their financial aid. The little gaps left me with thoroughly detailed work to do. Not good when you have specific steps to take or you’ll mess up everything. So I found myself taking an occasional glance at the following youtube junk.

Please know that this isn’t for the absolute squimsh. I saved the best one for last. At one point I was taken off guard and laughed out loud and spit all over my monitor. Caution: Don’t drink coffee and watch these videos.

Enjoy!

Homeward bound!!!!

Well, it looks like the old Taurus is going to be heading home within the next few days. Fixed? Nope. We’re just towing it back home. I just can’t swallow the $620+ to do two repairs that isn’t guaranteed to fix the car. I can do those repairs myself with only $200 out of my pocket. Of course, if that doesn’t fix it I’ll have to get a Code machine and run a code diagnostic on it to see if anything else pops up.

I hope that this will be an easy fix. I really do want to go on vacation. If I can’t get it fixed, then the rest of the family (including Lovely and little Bear) will go on vacation and I guess I’ll just work. I guess that is no different from the usual.

Anyway. We should have some answers on this issue pretty soon. I just hope that all of the salvage yard parts that were bought actually work and I don’t have to replace them with the new parts. (Note: I didn’t buy salvage parts…maybe for a broken window or headlight or radio, but never anything to do with the actual engine workings of the car.) Maybe I’ll be pimpin’ in the Taurus within the next two weeks. I hope so…even if the air doesn’t blow icey cold. I mean, at least I would be driving in the car that I’m making stupid payments on, yeah?

A week of lasts

So Monday of this week was the last lesson with my current guitar class. We had a good time in class. We learned Sweet Home Alabama, Home by Daughtry, Can’t you See by the Marshall Tucker Band, and began working through the intro of Stairway to Heaven by Zepplin. Oh, in only 8 weeks…and starting the whole playing guitar thing from scratch. Most of the class had never actually held a guitar. What can I say? I love what I do.

Tonight, I will be heading over to the Lovelady Center to meet with the choir, but it won’t be for practice tonight. That’s right. Attendance and participation has been so low that we are going to be cancelling the choir. I hate that because the ones that actually showed up really did want to sing. But it is kind of difficult to have a choir with 3 people. Ya know?

So what now? Well, I’ll be picking up another 2-3 guitar classes within the next two months that will keep me honkin’ busy as all get out. So it’ll be a push to the first of the year, but I’ll make it.

So in the mean time, check out these Youtube videos. You can get a taste of what these good people learned.

Weekendings for August 3-5

This weekend was set out to be a mixture of absolute joy and shear, toiling madness.

So I get home on Friday and I notice that little Bear is very fussy. Not being haughty, but it is like she is sleepy or something…like she is uncomfortable. As weekends go, I am usually on Daddy Doody Duty so Lovely can take a break. I took little Bear to change her diaper and noticed that she was the diarrhea darling. I talk to Lovely about it and find that she is barely eating, has a very slight fever, is congested a little, and a little fussy. We weren’t sure if she was sick or if it was her teething. Well, it is the latter. By the time we laid her down for the night on Saturday, we found that she had “popped” a tooth on her top gums and has another tooth coming in right next to it. Poor thing. Even while she was teething she was pretty pleasant. She would be a cuddle-bunny and still want to play and get tickled. She is doing better today, but still working on that second tooth up top.

Lovely and I had a good ol’ time on Saturday. I have been looking to start playing out at coffee houses in about another 3-4 months. So she helped me pick through some tunes that would be great to play…different than I’ve played before. We finally got away from the house and grabbed a quick bite and some groceries. We didn’t get a date night this week. It was sorely missed. I really hope that the two of us can get away to spend a little time together to reconnect. We’ve been through a lot this year and haven’t really had any time to get back on the same page. I hope that happens soon.

I did get some much needed sleep. I went to sleep around 12 midnight Friday night/Saturday morning and woke around 6 a.m. I looked around and noticed that while it was light outside, that it was still early morning. I watched Lovely and little Bear sleep for about 15 minutes, prayed for them, and rolled back over to see if I could rest for another couple of minutes. A little later I was awakened by the overwhelming stabbing pain in my lower stomach area. It was a throbbing yet piercing pain. What was it? Had I rolled over on little Bear and she was trying to kick me off of her? Had I, in my sleep, bumped and kicked Lovely enough where she picked up a screwdriver and settled the score against me? Nope, I just had a 10 hour bladder. I had sucked down nearly a gallon of water from 8 a.m. on Friday to 12 midnight and was in desperate need of going to the bathroom. The extra rest was much needed and appreciated. It’s not that I always need 10 hours of sleep to function, it is just that I rarely, and I do mean rarely, sleep well at night. This was the new wind in my sails that I needed.

Well, while I do have about 5 more topics to yap about I think that I’ll just hold on to ‘em. Why? That’s just how I roll. I have to have something to talk about tomorrow or the next day. I didn’t really get to the “shear, toiling madness” part. Maybe I’ll just keep that to myself too.

I will say this. I know that I have had the emotional breath knocked out of me and the financial health of Job, but God will see us through to the end. I just can’t…we just can’t give up fighting for it. God has a plan that is bigger than anyone could imagine. I’m just glad that I have my Lovely and my little Bear to share it. They mean the world to me.

Taurus update

Not good, people. Not good.

They said that they can’t pinpoint the problem to just one issue.

The solution:
Replace the Mass Airflow Sensor to a tune of $413 + tax
Replace the spark plugs to a grand ol’ tune of $210 + tax

And then run another diagnostic (another $88) and see if there is anything else that comes back on the test.

Let me tell you people something. I’m ill. Not just mad, I’m nauseous. I have only had the car just over a year. Thirteen months to be exact.

This experience has been the worst. To be sold a lemon from someone you know. I’m trying to work through this. Until I can get the money together to pay for the repairs I’m just stuck paying out my wahzoo for gas.

So much for that few days of vacation.

Well, we’ll see what happens.

Soon and very soon…

It has been nearly 2 months since the Taurus has been running. It has sat, much like a bunch of rednecks, in my in-laws yard. The un-redneck thing is that it hasn’t been up on blocks. It has just been sitting there in a setting not as picture-esque as this gif I grabbed from the internet.

I will be getting a call from the Ford dealership that is breaking my car down to nothing. (That shouldn’t take long, right?) I am taking the car (well, towing the car, really) in to the dealership for them to fix something that has the car on a recall list. I am taking advantage of this by having them run a diagnostic while it is there.

You may ask, “Why in the name of CRAP are you taking your car, that DOES NOT RUN, to get a recall problem taken care of, dummus?” Here is the deal. Where it is sitting, and I do mean sitting, it is not being worked on AT FREAKIN’ ALL!!!! It doesn’t do me a flippin’ bit of good when I am paying the insurance (for a financed car, no less) and the car payment, and then driving a gas-guzzler that eats up $520+ gas per month. Now to some people, $500+ is normal for what they pay in gas. NOT ME!!! That is more than a freakin’ third of what I make each month from the ole college. In the Taurus, (formerly known as the Silver Sloth) I would fill up twice each week, but the bull-car got gas mileage that is twice as good as the “Gas-Saver truck.” With said Gas-Saver, you would think that it would go farther since it has TWO GAS TANKS ON IT, but they have two because it uses gas like a honkin’ semi. I STILL fill up the truck twice each week, but instead of a fill-up being about 13.5 gallons, it’s 36 gallons. Hey, and then multiply that by the middle grade gas price.

Anyway. I am waiting on the dealership to call me back with a report of what it causing the problem and what it’ll take $$$ to fix it. I hope it isn’t that much or that I can fix it myself.

And, yes, I am going to change the name of the car from the derogatory Silver Sloth to something more fun and peppy (which I am hoping the car will pick up on). I am taking suggestions.

HOPEFULLY I’ll be doing this soon instead of this!

American Movie Staples

I have been criticized for not having seen several movies that seemingly “everyone has seen.” In college I caught up on a few movies like The Godfather 1 & 2, Citizen Kane, and Casablanca. The Godfather movies were good…Bloody as all get out, but good. The other movies? Blah. I didn’t see the big deal about Kane. He was born poor. Made himself rich as the expense of his life, love, and personal liberty and his dying words were about a freakin’ sled that brought him happiness as a kid. ‘Blanca? A pseudo-intoxicated Bogart runs from love and runs to gin. The only great part of the whole stupid movie was to hear the line made so famous, “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks in on mine.”

Well, last night I embarked on a double-feature journey into a world of two more movies that I had not seen. The following will be a review of my first viewing of these two movie monsters.

Goonies – The first thing I notice is the kid that has the asthma, Mikey, is the same dude from Lord of the Rings. Over the next 80+ minutes I was slowly taken (and I do mean slowly) through a plot line that was about as deep as the kiddy pool and with acting that was just about as stellar…especially from Cory Feldman. While the story was so not believable, it was kitschy enough to pass the time with a smile on my face. I would like to go down the water slide thing…that was cool. And I will confess that I cringed a little when Mikey lifted the patch to reveal that One Eyed Willie indeed only had one eye socket. Overall, while I was entertained, I don’t believe I would spend the money to see it again.

E.T. – Enjoyable. Freaky, but enjoyable. I got the feeling that E.T.’s neck was a piece of PVC pipe wrapped in a rubbery silicone type material. The red light that would glow from the alien’s chest reminded of the Care Bears back in the day. “Care Bear…stare!” The older brother got on my nerves. I think he reminded me of my brother when we were little kids. (No offense there, cakehole. You’re different now.) Drew Barrymore was absolutely adorable. The plot was about as good as it could be. Spielberg did a great job with what he had at the time. A great change of pace from Star Wars IV and V. There could have been more character development. And since we never see the dad, why mention him other than to bring fake anguish to the mom (who seems to be a floozy at night and working single mom during the day). In the end, I’m glad that E.T. phoned home and his “peeps” came back to get him. It helped the movie end quicker. I would actually rent this movie again. I think there were some things that I might have missed that would’ve made it more interesting.

For both movies: Given the fact that the special effects these days are massively superior to what producers and movie makers had back in the 1970s and 1980s, they did a stellar job. Now, back to the 21st century. I wanna see Transformers.

Weekendhuh? Whaa?

Zoooooooooooommmmmmmmmmmmmm!!!!!!!!!!

I don’t really remember this weekend. I mean, I was awake for it all. It just happened so fast that I couldn’t really tell you much about it. This is a run down of it.

Friday night – quick date and movie with Lovely
Saturday – take some boxes to storage shed, look for swimsuits, move a dresser, help with a big huge machine
Sunday – run massively late to church, lead the Lovelady choir in a song, sermon, songs, leave, lunch, Lovelady Center worship, groceries, home, tension, sleep (actually, no sleep, but that is almost always the case).

I don’t think I really had a day off, I mean, geez, I didn’t stop moving long enough to go to the bathroom. I had to wear depends all weekend. (I’m just kidding. I’m not like that psycho astronaut lady.)