(no subject)

I've had a much easier time getting out of bed these last few mornings. It's not a change-of-weather reaction. The beginning of autumn is just as exciting for me as the beginning of any other season; the new patterns of the days break up the mundane and leave my mind casting about to see what else might be new out there. But that's not enough to get me up out of bed the first time my alarm wakes me.

What's really getting my brain to kick my butt out of bed is the fact that wooisme isn't in it. That's not to say that I don't like having a pretty girl in my bed when I wake up; the reverse is true. And that's the problem. When I get up at six in the morning and compare the option of walking around in a daze and getting ready for work to the option of going back to bed to snuggle with a warm body for 'just a few more minutes', my logical side frequently loses out to my cuddly one. That meant many a morning spent sleeping until ten minutes before rushing out the door.

This week though, I've been up out of bed at just about ten after six every day, actually feeling excited as I wander about collecting the necessities of the day. Not only was I awake enough to nibble on a little food, but I even managed to take the garage out to the curb, and I still had a few minutes to myself before todd_riverden and serinthia showed up at my house. I could learn to get used to this.

There was some excitement on the way to work yesterday. I was driving my mom's cute little Chevy Prism, which, like the Mercury, is in rather better shape than I'm used to a car being. It was fun driving a little car too; it feels more responsive than most things, particularly the truck I tend to drive. It was zippy and smooth, so it was quite a surprise when, after taking the 41 exit from the I, Serin and I suddenly heard a horrific scraping noise coming from under the car.

Parking at the roadside, I went around behind to investigate. The entire exhaust system was coming off the bottom of the car. Muffler, catalytic converter, and all the piping up through where it mounted to the engine. To assess the situation, I looked in the backseat and opened up the trunk to see what sort of materials might be available.

Hmm. Role-playing game manuals, some cloth, twine, and speaker wire. Ah-hah! I cut two lengths of speaker wire on the edge of one of my car keys and crawled underneath the Prism. A few good square knots later, we were on our way, me feeling rather pleased with myself for having effected a hasty but serviceable repair.

I didn't realize until leaving work at the end of the day that I'd left more at the repair site than a missing exhaust system fastener; I didn't have the keys to the Mercury in my pocket! I searched my desk, my laptop bag, the car, but to no avail. They were definitely not there. As that was the only set we were readily able to locate, this was not good.

Serin and I drove to my parents house to drop off the car, and my mother drove us over to my house where, as Todd picked up Serin, I explained the situation to Moira. She panicked. I had hoped she might have found another set (I was pretty sure that the seller gave us more), but she hadn't, and she needed to drive the Mercury to work tomorrow.

I soon found myself driving back south along 94, bottle of grape juice in hand in lieu of dinner, to look for the missing keys. In a feat that amazed me no less than anyone else, I even managed to find them! It took about twenty minutes of scouring the shoulder along the 41 exit ramp, but I managed to turn them up. Finally, I drove home, and was immediately sent back out by Andrea to get copies made of the keys.

Since the truck has a headlight out, I drove it only as far as my parents' house. I put the plates that I'd brought with onto the Mercury, recruited my brother as a traveling companion, and drove westward down highway 50, bound for Menards.

I used the opportunity to talk about how much better I should have been to my mate. We are not always as calm and understanding of each other as we ought to be, and last night, as we both stressed out about situation, was one of those times. I actually left an apology on our voice mail before I drove out. She hadn't heard it before I got home, but we made our apologies and all was forgotten about anyway. Thank you sweetie; I am so grateful for you.

Still haven't had time to work on my brother's computer further. I haven't even looked to see if the restore disks that Dell is supposed to send me have shown up yet as they were supposed to. But I do have the molex to SATA power adapter that I need to rescue the data from his drives. Maybe I'll have him come by tonight to show me what he needs copied and what he doesn't, and we can play some DDR while his system restores. That sounds like a plan.

Wash machine drain fix did not work. Again. Even after Andrea's suggestion of form-fitting tinfoil around the joint and hose-clamping it down. I thought that was a brilliant idea, but it's still leaking. I guess I need to break down and bring the stupid thing out to Menards and have then show me where to find the right size adapters for it. I think that's probably a job for Saturday morning, unless Serin really feels like stopping in at Menards after work some time.

Speaking of Saturday, Andrea and I have that day set aside to get the entire downstairs cleaned up enough to have the handy-dude come in and fix our kitchen faucet. And once that's done, we have a block of Sunday set aside to go out for a nice long car ride together. We haven't decided where yet; possibly the Milwaukee lake shore. It's just been so very long since we've had the combination of money and reliable vehicle. We talk constantly about how much we miss road-tripping together, and while Kenosha to Milwaukee is on a rather smaller scale than we'd really like to do, it would be a really nice start, and wonderful way to spend a lazy Sunday morning and afternoon.

I'm sure I've bored you enough for the moment; 'till later!

(no subject)

I forgot to write about all the fun that Posi and I had on Sunday! We were going to get together for car hunting, but since Andrea and I had already solved that problem on Saturday, we had the day free to do random things. And do them we did!

We took a trip to Gurnee Mills to stop in at a few places like Micomp. They didn't have the adapter I needed but I did have fun looking at the smattering of rack mount servers. I was also chastised by a clerk for removing one of the drives from one of the aforementioned servers. Since I couldn't look at the labeling, I asked the clerk what the rotation speed and interface on the drive was, and was impressed by the fact that he had ready answers!

I had a vague notion about visiting Black Market Minerals, but since it was on the other end of the mall, we gave it a miss and proceeded on to our next destination, which we decided on during the drive; the Gurnee business park nearby. I suggested a round of dumpster diving and Posi seemed to think it was a great idea. Not only will he do storm drains with me, but he'll go technology scavenging with me too! I think I need to keep him around. *grins*

Unfortunately, the most interesting thing we found was a large brake drum that I thought about grabbing for later conversion into the firepit of a forge, but there was some kind of stuff all over it, and it was sitting in the middle of a bunch of empty bags of urea. Not being immediately conversant with the properties of that material (except for a memory from somewhere or other that it was the first organic chemical ever successfully synthesized), I decided that discretion would be the better part of valor in this case. The very promisingly named 'Inacomp Computer Systems' and a couple other possibilities with similarly meaningless technical sounding names yielded no new toys. We also noted that there were oddly few dumpsters in this particular business park. Some buildings don't seem to be producing waste, as they didn't seem to have any at all!

From there we moved on to Big Lots, a Sears Hardware that was going out of business (I wish I'd had more money to spend on discounted tools!), and a Wal-Mart to check out the clearance section. Posi said he doesn't feel bad buying items from Wal-Mart on clearance because that means they're losing money, and I suppose there's a point to be made there. I still won't buy anything from them though. I even passed up a very reasonably priced set of very pretty black anodized aluminum wind chimes. I've always wanted a pretty set like that, but I decided that if I'm going to buy one, it will be from the artisan at Bristol faire who makes them himself. Even when I was a little boy I remember being fascinated by the eight foot bass chimes outside his store. They're a wonderful part of my childhood memories from faire, and that's where my set is going to come from. Next year I'll be able to do that.

Next stop was the Golden Corral for dinner. I suppose I really need to break myself of my buffet habit, but they're so good! I'll admit it; I'm not exactly a gourmand. As long as the quality isn't sub-basement level, I'll take the quantity of a buffet over the quality of a fancy steakhouse or the like. I'll more than happily grab a slice of pizza from one section, pour nacho cheese sauce from another section over it, and then top it off with one scoop of macaroni and cheese and one scoop of noodles in meat sauce from a third, then mix it all together. Yum!

Mmm, now I'm getting hungry. I hope Andrea has something good planned for dinner. She made some tortellini in red sauce last night that serinthia and I finished off for lunch today over two more games of Set.

Done for now; 'till next time! So glad to be home!