When Good Cars Go Bad

We all knew it had to happen eventually. My Car of Awesomeness (who is rapidly approaching his first anniversary with me) has started down the dark path that the Truck of Malfunction forged many, many years ago.

I know at first I was a little worried when, less than a month in, we had that brief period where the car was possessed by Satan. But that was resolved in general short order, and there had been no problems since. (Unless you count the fact that it burns through gas so fast that I can literally watch as the gas gauge goes down, which is slightly demoralizing in an age where one gallon of gas costs more than a 12 pack of Coke. But let's not get into that.)

Then, about two months ago I started to notice that my left front tire was a little flat. Almost imperceptibly, but as time went on, it definitely got flatter. So I ran by a gas station, filled it back up, and fully intended to go get it checked out at the tire place.

But time passed and I grew complacent. It wasn't actually getting any flatter anymore, it was just one of those things. And then when it did start to get noticeably flat, I ignored the problem until my car actually started to pull towards the left. And again, I simply filled the tire with air rather than going to the store.

What can I say? I was young. And foolish. And the tire place was totally like at least seven miles up the road.

Okay, so maybe the car isn't so much heading down the TOM path of destruction so much as my own carefully crafted path of willful ignorance, but follow along, it's an exciting story.

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All of this rising action and foreshadowing leads us up to last weekend when I am supposed to drive out into deep East Texas for my Mom's family birthday lunch. As is our family tradition, the diaspora of our clan is temporarily put on hold, as we return together for a single meal on each member's date of birth. Usually held at a delightfully colorful theme restaurant.

We decide to shoot for a late afternoon meal, as going to church Sunday mornings always adds an extra element of complexity to the proceedings. I head out from Dallas just at 12:00 so I should arrive roughly at 2:30-2:45, with some spare room for traffic to make the 3:00 meeting time. I once again notice that my tire is looking a touch low, and thus do a quick fill up before I embark. (Note: this would be the third fill up of its kind in under 2 months. Lord knows I never was called the brightest bulb in the box.)

Things go great as the trip begins. Traffic is super light, I have both the new Hush Sound album and a copy of the latest offering from The National to obsess over/dance around to all the way up there.

Now the trip from Dallas to Longview is a relatively simple one. There is only one highway involved, and it is basically a straight horizontal line connecting the two cities. The only thing of note about the drive is that there is pretty much nothing in between the two places, besides a plethora of empty or cow-ridden fields. There is one city about 30 minutes outside the Metroplex, then the turn off for the only other mid size city (Tyler) and then nothing for upwards of 80 miles.

So of course, my tire chooses the dead center of this Nothing Span in which to completely blow out. I actually had about 15 seconds of warning about this, luckily, as my car started making a peculiar *Wwhoomp* *Wwhoomp* sort of noise as a precursor to becoming completely undrivable. This causes me to slow from 75 to 65 mph, which is probably the only thing that saved me from untimely death, as I still nearly careened straight off the road I was on and into a nearby creek. Instead, I slam on my breaks and am able to instead just crazy swerve my way over to the side of the road, minus a large portion of my tire.

After a couple of fun moments of hyperventilating, personal body checking to make sure all limbs were still intact, and nervous laughing, I make my way out of the car to survey the damage.

I pull out the jack and spend an agonizingly long period of time lying on the ground trying to find the lip of the car body that I'm supposed to brace it against. Then I spend an even longer time lying on the ground attempting to figure out how to pump up the jack using only this coat hanger-like apparatus that was packed in alongside it. Once I get the car up in the air and the old tire off, I'm able to see just how bad a blowout it was - nearly a 5 inch hole on the interior wall of the tire. It looks like the exit wound of a particularly nasty shotgun blast. I have a brief fever dream while lying on the side of the busy highway of an armed robbery gone bad in the interior of my left front tire - their last job before they were going to go straight too - until I shake myself out of it and get the little tiny spare tire attached to the car.

I'm wildly impressed with my tire changing abilities (which, yeah, I probably shouldn't be, but come on. Show of hands, how many of you would think I could change a tire under my own power without dropping a car on my head?) but now face the fact that I'm going to have to drive at least 60 miles in any one direction before I'm going to find civilization advanced enough to help me get off this Baby's First Tire that I've got going on.

Getting up to 60 mphs is an epic feat and strain for my car at this point, so we stick with about 55 mph, all the while wheezing down the highway as we are passed by 18 wheelers, uHauls, and even old people driving those giant camper houses on wheels, with dumb names like The Summer Breeze, or The Elegant Pelican. I'm thoroughly humiliated for my fancy luxury sedan, but at least it's still operational and we aren't in a sort of Deliverance/Wrong Turn situation where I'm forced to go wandering through the woods for help.

I decide to just head for Longview, as it's probably the closest and biggest place that I can reach without dying, and make it there with little further issue, although minus a large portion of my dignity. I arrive at the restaurant and the hostess blanches at the sight of me, probably thinking that she's going to have to rush some bum out of her fancy establishment. Finally for once I have an excuse for getting this look, as I'm pretty much covered head to toe in gravel, brake dust, jack grease, and God knows what else.

Being pretty sure that there isn't a place that could help me at this point anyways, I enjoy a nice leisurely (if soot covered) dinner with my family, who has awesomely waited around for an extra hour and a half just for me, chowing down on chips and what have you while placing side bets on what sort of disaster had befallen me this time.

Afterwards I make the long journey home to Dallas on the Tire of Stunted Growth, and find that if you just come to accept the fact that everyone on Earth is going to angrily rush by you, usually while flipping you off, driving can be really quiet and relaxing. Almost therapeutic. I'm not sure that it was worth the extra 2 hours of transit time, but it wasn't as horrible as I anticipated.

Still, getting the bird from the elderly driver of The Regal Eagle? It sticks with you.

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The next day I was able to get two new front tires and a front end alignment (the real reason for the blowout, apparently, insomuch as my alignment was far enough off that the inside of the tire was getting worn down about 10 times faster than it should be) with almost no trouble, assuming I didn't mind mortgaging my first born against the costs. Seriously, owning a fancy car is cool and all, but who would have ever expected that an expensive car would have associated expensive repair and maintenance costs? That shit just comes out of nowhere.

So to recap - stupidity and lack of CONSTANT VIGILANCE against potential car problems causes tire explosion and near death of the driver, but plucky ingenuity saves the day over said stupidity and everyone survives, just minus all their disposable income for the month.

Oh, and the bastards at the tire place totally lost one of my lug nuts on the tire they replaced. Which will take them as long to fix as it is taking the city to repair my gas at home. (Meaning they'll both be in place sometime around my 40th birthday.)

Woo and hoo.

Equal Opportunity for Nephews

If we're gonna make this an old man blog, we might as well go all the way.

(Jason with Eli, the rockin' nephew)

Obligatory self-deprecation: Good Lord, could my jaw be any more massive? And you may want to wear shades, lest my pasty skin blind you.

But dang, isn't that a cute kid?

In Which I Triumph Over Double Cheeseburgers and Technology

Yearly Blood Test - Completed
# of Previous Diseases - 0
# of New Diseases - 0
Previous Cholesterol Score - 310
New Cholesterol Score - 162!

If there was a show call Biggest Cholesterol Loser, I would totally be winning right now.

So can I finally go back to eating McDonalds twice a week?
What do you mean I have to continue the diet to keep the cholesterol where it is?!

Y'all, I am so tired of fat-free milk and no red meat, you have no idea.

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I swore to myself that I wouldn't turn this into an old man blog. But I love this picture with reckless abandon:

(Jason and Julia, the tiniest niece in the world)

Does it worry anyone else that my cheekbone juts out enough in that picture that it looks like I might have a tumor? Or that my skin is so oily you can almost see the reflection of the camera in my pores?

Just me? Okay.

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So, as I alluded to in my last entry, I got home this weekend and decided to rearrange my room.

Or to be way more long-winded about it (naturally), I got home and found the wireless Internet to be in complete disarray. After my normal tinkering did a whole lot of nothing, I decided to finally break down and spring for a new router and wireless card. Preferably ones that were made after the year 2000, in opposition to the coconut-radio/squirrel-powered system I had running right then.

At Best Buy, I was told by the (bastard) helpful salesman that the new router he handed me would not only be faster and have a longer range, it would totally be plug-and-play with our current system, as it was the same brand, just an upgraded model.

Yeah - that was a (fucking) lie of the highest order. I'm not even remotely kidding. The two systems were so far apart that just booting up the new router to accept signals meant rigging up an elaborate system of hardwired Ethernet cords that stretched the length of the house, setting up about four different trip-wire type booby traps at various doorways. And that installing the controlling drivers for the card and router somehow disabled my DVD drive.

And that once I got that fixed, and the router was up and running, it turned out that "backwards compatible" didn't so much mean that it would work with older standards of wireless. Instead it meant that you could configure the router to run the old standard or the new standard. Not both. So since I had a new wireless card and Frank had an old one, only one of us would be getting to use the Internet at any given time.

And on top of that, my "faster, wider-range connection" was actually running at 35% of the strength of my old coconut/squirrel connection. Plus, did I mention that for the router to set up a wireless connection with a computer, the computer had to first be physically connected to the router? Is that not the most insane thing you've ever heard?

But whatever. After, literally, 4 hours of brute force hacking away at the network, rather than A) go all Sophie's Choice between Frank's and my Internet, or B) destroy the new non-working devices with an axe (my favorite option), we decide for secret option C) take back the $200+ system and go buy a $30 length of Ethernet cable and just hardwire both of our rooms to the Internet.

This process took all of 5 minutes to set up, used the old reliable router, and the only drawback was one long cord that ran the length of the living room and hallway, along the wall. I will take the decorating hit to save my sanity. And new direct connections mean delicious Internet with absolutely no waiting, signal loss, or devious neighbors sucking my bandwidth dry like hungry mosquitoes at a 4th of July picnic.

Anyways, the result of this (horrifyingly boring) story is that running the line into my bedroom was much easier if my desk was on the opposite wall from my normal room configuration. And being the obliging person that I am (along with my deep-seated compulsion to rearrange furniture all the time - thanks dad!) I did a full reorg of the room.

I think the result is an even better layout than the original one, and I loved the original. It makes the room look bigger and draws your eye immediately to my fancy bookshelf, rather than my unmade bed like before. Plus this time there's no awkward wasted section of the room - one that I had previously filled with a single trash can and an unplugged standing lamp.

The only downside to the new setup comes in my morning routine. Before, I used to roll out of bed to my left, hit the alarm, and then walk to the shower, all in one fluid motion. Now I have to hit the alarm first, and then roll out to the right, and walk around the bed to the shower. Because if I forget and do it the old way, I get a facefull of wall. And I apparently roll out of bed really forcefully.

Because, OW.

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Behold all my triumphs and despair, you's guys.

Returning to Form

Aw y'all. I neglect because I love. Or something like that.

Anyways, back into the groove. Housekeeping notes to get going:

• I'm an uncle! Okay, so technically I was already an uncle as of 4 months ago, but I am again. My sister had a tiny baby girl, who is very cute and has the best name, and who I hope to see in person very soon, as I missed out due to a protracted bout of illness going into this weekend. Woo, family!
• The weekend before that I managed to use my uncling skills for two whole days watching the aforementioned 4 month old nephew out in East Texas. The fact that the two of us are both still alive is a wonderful testament to the resiliency of the boy, and my blind and total luck. Also, he's a ridiculously cute child. Finally, our family genes kicking in where it counts: in adorableness!
• The ultra sickness that I had for approximately 42 hours at the end of last week had better count as the one illness that I always get come each Fall. Because if it was just a preview, I will be most displeased. I don't think I can take much more of that.
• I survived OU/Texas weekend relatively unscathed, and in the process completed my first night staying out until dawn in at least 14 months. Which, while really fun, helped me realize that even though I am not incredibly old physically, I have a seriously old mentality. Which I think I'm okay with, all things considered.
• I have a new and unwavering obsession with finally finishing up my apartment outfitting, after 4 months of relative complacency. Primarily, I'm desperate to find curtains for the living room. And lampshades to match. I have no idea where this domestic urge has come from, but it is so strong I can feel it in my bones.

And that's about that. More stories and actual full entries to come. Also, stay tuned for a new TV update very shortly, as I think I'm finally ready to lock in to a realistic viewing schedule based on the first two weeks of the new fall season.

Woo, it's nice to be back.

How I Spent My Weekend

This is my nephew, Elijah. He is awesome and 5 days old. Also, he's very tiny. He tends to sneeze a lot. I held him for upwards of 20 minutes, and didn't break him at all.

I now feel older than the earth.

That is all.