Thanks heavens for capable friends who are just generally awesome people. Super Mechanic Juan came by to look at my car, and it's now waiting for his skilled attention over in his driveway. After we got there, I watched him use an infrared thermometer to check the temperature of each hub. This was enough information to tell him which brakes were working and which weren't, which is diagnostic of the underlying issue. Technology is pretty slick. He may get to it tomorrow. He may not. I don't care if it takes two weeks, 'cause I wasn't even expecting him to come get it at all, and it means I'll have a working car again for an affordable sum.
I also got to see his wife and their cute (and rapidly growing; I guess babies do that) child. Yay! (It's so weird seeing them with a baby. I knew him when he and my brother were in high school....)
Now back to the book I'm reading. I made a deal with myself for a reward if I can get through the whole thing and make notes on it tonight. It's really interesting; don't get me wrong. It's just difficult for me to pay active, critical attention to a book for hours and hours at a time.
I'm reading Robert Fishman's "Bourgeois Utopias," which is a history of the phenomenon of suburbanization. I was worried at first that it would be a rehash of Kenneth Jackson's "Crabgrass Frontier," but in fact it has a significantly different focus. This is much less quantitative and much more of a cultural history. An example of how looking at multiple approaches to a single topic is rewarding, even if they don't necessarily have much direct disagreement.
