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The truck is acting up a little more this morning. At one point I had the transmission in drive, but it seemed to stick in neutral until I revved the engine a bit and was rewarded with a 'clunk' as is popped into gear and the truck lurched forward. Not inspiring.

So I think I'm in the market for a used car. Fortunately, much like job hunting, the best time to look is when you don't really need one. I think, I hope, the truck will get along for a while yet. But in the meantime, I'm looking for something small to replace it with.

The reason I have a truck is because when I needed a car, I was desperate and friends of my parents were selling it. I took the first decent thing that came along. I love my truck and have been really happy with it, but I hope I can be a little more choosy this time.

I've always wanted a hatchback. That would be cool. But I'm not going to be that picky. What I'm looking for is something small, Asian (or at least, not American), with four cylinders and a manual transmission. I've never actually driven a manual, but I'd like to. If anyone has anything in that category they'd like to bring to my attention, I'd love the help. Thanks!

On a related note, mocha_mephooki, any chance you'd be willing to give me a little bit of training on driving a manual transmission vehicle?

In other news, my drums are fun. I will post a picture this weekend if not sooner. I stopped at Music Center in Kenosha last evening and got a pair of sticks. I'm going to talk to their drum guy today about how much it will cost to get the hardware to mount the resonant heads on the bottoms of the drums since the set I have doesn't have the mounting hardware on any of the toms.

I was tapping rhythms on the snare drum while sitting at my computer desk upstairs 'till Andrea went to bed around 10. Whee!

(no subject)

My drums. Let me show you them.







Yeah, they're pretty cheap. The 12" and 13" toms only have four lugs, and the 16" floor tom has 5. (When I asked about hardware for them at Music Center today, the drum guy asked whether they were 6 lug or 8 lug; no, when I checked at home I found that I'm not even that cool apparently.) But you know what? I set them up in the basement with the TV that mocha_mephooki gave me a while ago as a makeshift snare stand. To make a throne, I removed the back and broken arms from the office chair that was waiting on the porch to be junked. I slotted the well-used bass pedal I picked up today for twenty bucks (the only major expenditure needed to make the set usable) onto the kick drum. And I played.

Oh yeah. This is totally worth seventy bucks.

I can't wait 'till the basement is clean enough to set up a corner with my drums, a stereo, a TV, and a computer so I can play along with whatever I'd like whenever I want to, not to mention using the space down there for Dance Dance and other video games.

One minor caveat: I think I need ear-plugs next time I play....

I was going to do some cleaning and writing ad copy today, but the time that I didn't use trying to get a DVD copied for foreignlegion (sorry that didn't work out, and it was really good to see you again!) went mostly into drumming. That's ok. I haven't had much time for myself this week, and it was good to make some. I do, however, need to clean up this weekend. Srsly.