Bowling Crustaceans

*The first snowflakes of the season have been spotted. The chickadees and juncos have returned to the feeders. Hard frosts make the windshields sparkly white every night. Time to curl up under the blankets for the next four months. Wake me when it's spring.

*The hunt is on for a Honda Element. New or used, EX or LX, I don't know yet. But, I did test drive one, and I really liked it. The all around visibility is the best I've experienced in a long time, and with the way you can move the seats around, it would be a kick ass flea market vehicle. At first glance, there doesn't seem to be a large number of them out there for sale. Plus, most of them are not the cool orange color that I like (which only comes on the more expensive EX model, of course). But, I haven't even started to ask dealers for quotes and prices yet. Right at the moment, Honda isn't offering any great finance deals either. Not that 1.9% for 36 or 2.9% for 37+ is horrible, but it seems I missed the whole 0% boat. Have I mentioned that I really hate car shopping? I can't get the color I want in the LX model, but I have the stereo that I can pull from the Tribute so I can use the iPod. Now, if I get the EX in the color I want, it comes with an iPod compatible stereo. I really don't want to trade in that stereo, but I also don't really want another blah colored (silver, gray, or black) car. I'm going to have to go over what comes with the different trim packages and see what I can live without (the $1K 'dog friendly' package is one of the things I can do without). Then comes the fun of trying to figure out how to pay for it.

*Done with leaf removal for the year. There now sits a 10' long waist high drift of leaves in front of my house waiting for the city to come and vacuum it up. It's one of those piles of leaves that looks highly tempting to run and leap into. But, since I was the one who collected them, I know there a quite a few dog turds that got raked up with those leaves. And if anything would take the fun out of leaf diving, dog turds would be it. That's all of the leaves I intend to remove from the yard for the year. Not to say there aren't still more out there, but the rest of them are fertilizer as far as I'm concerned. May run the mower around and chop some of them up until the gas tank is empty, but other than that, lawn care is at an end until sometime next year.

*Two weeks left until the formal presentation of my Quest (with a tip of the fez to Ahu for making allowances). After dashing an email off to E59, at least I now know where the party is going to be. The live feed still seems to be in question, but I think I'll be nervous enough about repeating the whole presentation in front of the bulk of the Red Palms without knowing it's going out live to the east coast as well. Also interesting to note that if I was of a mind to, I could party for 3 straight weekends with FOM folks. Thinking I'll try 2 this year and work my way up from there.

*As much as I like swing music, it does seem to be something that's better in small blocks. It's the same thing I found with the Squirrel Nut Zippers-if you're not in the right mood for it, it can come across as kinda frantic. Adding that BBVD disc to my iPod was a good move though. Need to get caught up on all my backlogged podcasts too.

*Gorged yourself to maximum capacity and then some? Vision blurred from hours and hours of non-stop football? Nerves frazzled from the endless stream of half-crazy relatives roaming through your house? Everything you own smell vaguely of turkey? Sounds like you need an adult anti-holiday sanity break! Head on over to the Blue Moai Room Thanksgiving night for cocktails, conversations,
and decompression starting around 6:30.

*The court case I was supposed to go in for next week has been settled! Apparently the accused is taking a plea deal, so that's over and done with. About damn time. Now I need to figure out if I'm gonna bolt out of town for the night on Monday. Even a brief change of scenery sounds like something I could really go for. The current car situation could be an issue in that plan though. Sheri has already mentioned more than once that should be one of my 'in person' car searching days.

*Watched the end of Lost the other day. Wasn't quite what I was expecting. But then again, that could very well be a description of how I felt about the entire run of the show. I was glad that they didn't try and nail down every last detail about the show. Leaves lots of room for interesting discussions that way. Still, I found the last episode vaguely unsatisfactory. Half tempted to restart the series to see if I can make more sense out of it now, but 6 seasons worth of episodes is a lot of time to spend, and I'm way behind in my studio output as it is. Tropical Tails is coning up in short order, and I'm guessing there will be some FOM events that I'll need to contribute things to. Just need to get back into the winter swing of things. Getting all the crap cleared off my drafting table would be a good start.

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The Brick Is Dead...

*"Leaking head gasket". Not what you want to hear your mechanic say. Even worse than that is when they say it will take some time for them to work up an estimate of what the repair will cost you. This whole thing makes me quite unhappy. And slightly queasy. I don't want to shop for a new car. I don't want to be making a car payment. But, I don't want to write out a massive check to the mechanic. Talk about a lose/lose/lose situation. I need to find ouit what the projected lifespan of the engine would be if I just have them put it all back together. Now that I know about the problem, it makes it real hard for me to not disclose it if I want to trade the car in. And even if it does have <70K miles on it, I don't think the gasket issue would add anything to my trade-in value. But, if I keep driving it and the whole thing just explodes, that would really do bad things to my trade-in value. The really pissy part is that there is a TSB out on the gasket problem (it was a manufacturing issue), but since it's not safety related, the manufacturer isn't covering the repair. That sucks. And shopping for a car sucks. Even if you've got it narrowed down to a model or two. Blech. Just not sure what to do yet.

*Got to run out to F+F and pick up a leaf blower to replace the one of the folks that busted while I was using it. But, before I hand it over, I fully intend to test it out on my yard first. Get all those leaves out of the back yard and be done with it for the year. What a way to spend my day off. Wheeeee. I am SUCH a rock star.

*Supposed to go to court to be a witness Monday for a DUI case from 3 or 4 years ago. This is supposed to take up the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday before Thanksgiving. I think this will be at least the 4th time that I have gone over to Sycamore to participate in this case. But it's been rescheduled and postponed more times than I care to remember, and it's really starting to piss me off. I'd kinda like to head out of town on Monday, but I really can't do that if I have to be in court all day and then back again the next morning. To top it all off, I don't even remember the guy. Wouldn't know him if he walked up to me and poked me in the eye. So, if this nonsense ends up mucking up my week, I do think I shall be quite put out.

*Good to know that if nothing else can, Monty Python quotes can always be relied on to derail a forum thread.

*Who would have thought it would have taken me so long to find my freakin NIU diploma? And who would have thought of all the strange stuff that I would have found in the process of looking for that diploma? The tiny blue armadillo was a pretty strange find. I have no idea of the context under which it came into my possession. It's actually kinda cute, though. So, it found it's way into the studio with my other armadillos. The rose from 24 years ago I left where it was. Still not sure what the lesson I was supposed to learn from that situation was. All I know is that it's way too late for me to learn it.

*The Space Car doesn't have a jack for my iPod. WTF??

*

Combo Fried Rice

*Hoping I can get away with raking the yard just one more time. The trees in the back yard have finally given up the majority of their leaves, so it's now just a matter of beating the weather and the pick-up deadline.

*Took Saturday night and went out to catch the show at Tiki Terrance with Bart and Steph. Got there a little earlier than usual, so the serveice was a bit better than what we have experienced previously. All in all, I think they only missed one of my drinks this time, which was pretty good for a table of four. The roasted pork was really good, and so was the mahi mahi. Even the kalamari was good, and lacked the after affects that Fred suffered the last time at the Chef.

*Poison and penguins made for a good Sunday evening, except for Sheri having a slight headache and me not counting on the potency of Chimay.

*A good thing to remember is that if you don't go looking, you'll never miss what it is you don't know that you're missing. Had I been thinking in those terms, we wouldn't have gone to the open house on Sunday, and wouldn't have found ourselves in discussions with M1 about the possibility of a new house. The really pissy part about it is that it seems to be a repeat situation of what we went through when we tried to buy the house that we currently live in.

*Finally got that gyro I had been craving for so long. Now I just need to quit burping it.

*Dropped my car off yesterday, and the mechanic called back this morning to say that the water pump was what was making the green puddles in my driveway. That was a goood thing because it didn't involve taking the whole front of the engine apart to get at it. But, the serpentine belt had seen better days, so they recommended changing that at the same time all the rest of it was apart. I said OK, go ahead and do it, and was even pleased when they said it would be done by the end of the day. So then, off to work I go. Then I get a call from Sheri who tells me that the mechanic has since called back and found that the leak was coming form further back than they thought it was, and they would indeed need to disassemble the whole front part of the engine. And, since they already had it apart that far, it would be a good idea to change the timing belt. So, I am no longer as happy as I was when I had left for work. But at least I know where my paycheck for this week is going.

*Almost a foot of snow in some parts of the Minneapolis area this weekend, and people will still ask us why it is we don't live there. There have been recent rumors of flurries being spotted in Rockford, so it appears it's only a short amount of time before we'll be getting our first dusting of the stuff. Can't you just sense how thrilled I am about that?

*I said it last time. There are things you should just leave alone. Some stones should remain unturned. Your memories may be incorrect and incomplete, but they are still usually better than the truth. But, since I've always had a bad habit of picking at things, I now know that there is yet one more aspect of my past where I was completely and totally out of my league without realizing it.

*Gonna kiss the land line goodbye. That's the simplest thing we can do to save a few bucks every month. Beyond that, I'll have to do some digging around to figure out where else we can tighten up the finances. I'm thinking I will end up on a beer budget of some sort. Domestic in cans, probably. Flea market season is over until next spring, so that shouldn't be a problem.

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