(no subject)

It was a bittersweet act, removing the license plates from my old car, Perseverance, to place them on my new one, the as-yet-unnamed Lumina. The fact that the front-end problem may have been solved simply by moving the badly worn front tires to the back and inflating them correctly is a huge relief. The fact that it is essentially the end for Percy can't help but tinge the event with nostalgia.

Percy came into my life right around the time I was splitting up with my ex-wife. I had moved in with my parents while she moved elsewhere. We were going to try living apart for a while. During that span, my previous car (Igor the Neon) developed mechanical problems beyond my willingness to address even with Super-mechanic Juan. I'd purchased Percy a few months before that I think, as a secondary vehicle because I was getting into hypermiling and really wanted a small stick-shift car to play with.

When I came home and told her I'd bought the car I'd gone out to look at, she was decidedly unamused. As it turned out though, Percy was there just when I needed him. He was a fantastic car. Exactly the sort of vehicle I'd choose for myself, if I had the latitude to choose (as I did when I bought him from a seller on Craigslist for about $250). The first fillup I noted in my logbook was on June 7th of 2010. In the three years since, he and I have traveled about 46,000 miles together. He carried me to New Orleans, Paducah Kentucky and Southern Illinois, Detroit, Minneapolis, up through Houghton and Hancock to Calumet and Copper Harbor, and to innumerable other daily destinations. When everything was in good shape, the gas mileage I got from that little car was just fantastic. After a non-stop drive from Detroit to Wisconsin, I calculated right around 49 miles per gallon.

---

Tonight, I left the archives at 3 instead of staying to research more so that I could spend some time on the Lumina. I swapped the front tires with the back ones, and inflated them up to 44 psi, the maximum sidewall pressure. I was, honestly, rather surprised to find after doing so that the major pull to the right while driving was gone. Maybe it really was bad tires combined with low air pressure. There's still a bit of a clunk up in the front end that I'll mention to Juan, and I do need to replace those two bad tires. But the car is definitely drivable.

In fact, it's legally drivable as well as physically. I was trying to work out a schedule to get to the DMV and deal with registration and everything when I decided to look at online options. As it turns out, I was able to do the entire process online. Now I just have to mail the original title and a check and they'll send out my new title and tags. How about that? The DMV is doing something right there!

So with the possible exception of going around the block a few times to teach my brother to drive a stick-shift, the somewhat arbitrary span of time that will be defined, for me, by my emotional attachment to the life-context of, and my shared experiences with, the mode of personal transportation known to me as Percy, is at an end. Such is the way of the physical.

I look forward to new and unknown adventures with my new car. May it be as good to me, and may it provide me with as many positive, memorable experiences, as my other vehicles have.

Here's to the new.


Passing of the Old, Coming of the New - Pic-a-day 22 July 2013

Copyright Stormdog 2013

(no subject)

Yesterday, I failed at my plans to get up early and photograph the Muon G-2 ring being lifted off its barge by crane and set onto the custom truck that will carry it to Batavia.

I got up when my alarm went off at 6, but I was feeling sleep-deprived, hot, and sun-burnedly-crummy. I went back to sleep. I do regret it a bit, but I think it was the right choice. And you know, sleeping in and being lazy with danaeris on a Sunday is a pretty nice thing.

That afternoon, I thought I'd take lisagems out with one of the two Groupons I bought a while back for Brew-and-View at the Vic. It sounded like a lot of fun; it's a double, or sometimes triple feature shown in a 1912 Vaudeville house. There's a cash bar (not so exciting for me given my lack of interest in most alcohol, but an attraction for lots of folks) and you can order food for delivery to the venue from local restaurants. I bought one two-admission Groupon to use with Danae and one to use with Lisa, and I realized that I'm running out of free weekends to use them before they expire! So even though the movies weren't super-exciting, Lisa and I figured it would a nice way to spend the evening.

And it was nice. The seating is a little problematic. The main floor with all the comfy couches is closed for the movies apparently, and the balcony is mostly fairly small theatre seats. She and I found a backless bench sort of thing behind a few small tables that was tucked into a little nook, and that worked out well. We watched "Now You See Me", which was an action movie about magicians who rob banks. Sort of. I didn't know what to expect, and I often had trouble hearing the dialogue; the acoustics weren't the best. And being me, I had trouble following some of the plot and keeping track of characters, which Lisa helped me with. All in all, it was fun.

Then the second movie started, "The Internship". We left less than five minutes in. Lisa commented that she pretty much immediately decided she hated both of the main characters as people. For my part, I was turned off by the rush into fat jokes. And since we already knew we had no interest in the third movie "Fast and Furious 6", we decided to go back to her place for chili and conversation on her patio. All-in-all, I think that was a much nicer experience.

I'm not knocking the Brew-and-View or the Vic. I think if the movies were better, it could be a lot of fun. Beyond that, I couldn't help but think that, with the way that everything bu the safety lights on the steps were turned off while the movies ran, it would be the perfect venue to take a cute person-of-a-preferred-gender who's into that sort of thing and make out. Yeah, that could be fun.

------

That evening, after getting back to Danae's place, I tried to do my daily self-portrait. I kept having camera issue after camera issue. Too dark, or too blurry, or too orange, or too blue. While I was fussing with my camera, Danae took a few shots of me that came out much better than any of my attempts did. Here's one of them!


Camera Troubles - Pic-a-day 21 July 2013

Copyright 2013