Friday Miscellany.

First things first:

My truck - well, I must say...I didn't realize how bad the brakes WERE until I got in it last night and drove it three blocks home. I no longer have to put all my weight down on the pedal! Huh. I was right, the thing does drive like new. So this pleases me.

But one thing disturbs me - on the hang tag they put on the rear view mirror, above where it says "gray Ranger," someone put two zeros with dots in the middle. Now...do I take this to mean that they wanted to signify that the owner of this vehicle is female? Were these things supposed to be BOOBS? Lucky for Watertown Ford I have sense of humor about such things and that I don't take myself, or my boobs, very seriously. Or I'd have issues with this. As it is, I'm letting it slide because...if you don't have a sense of humor, you're a miserable cow.

Like this seriously unbalanced woman who was in there when I got there, who was having some kind of meltdown, something to do with a tow and a rental, and in response to a simple, direct question from the guy behind the counter, she went ballistic and said "You're the biggest asshole I've ever met!!" and stormed out.

WOW!!!!! Lighten up, Leona, no one's out to get you!

Granted, I only came in towards the end of the interaction, and for all I know the guy WAS being an asshole - but it sure didn't look like it from what I saw. Anyway, again, you catch more flies with honey, honey.

Anyhooo....thinking about sports a lot lately. Watching a lot, though the last three days in New York haven't actually happened. (Except for that one brief, beautiful moment in time that Tek laid off a high, fast one. That can stay.) The rest of it? Nope. Sorry, I have no recollection of the Sox playing the Skankees at all this week. They must have been resting while their incompetent body doubles went to the Bronx. That's my story and I'm stuck with it. (Aren't I clever.)

Still, we retain the lead by 5 games, so I'm not particularly fussed. On to football.

Here's the thing:

There is altogether TOO MUCH pre-season football. Am I right? A game or two, sure, gives the new and third string guys some playing experience, gives us a chance to size up our teams, gives the coaches a look at their players in action, and tweak potential strategic problems, etc. Sure, makes a lot of sense. A couple of pre-season games can whet our autumn appetites, and make us not so sad that summer is ending.

But come on, watching very expensive players go down (hey now) with season-ending injuries before the season starts, in games that don't count, so that the owners can line their pockets with a few extra games worth of ticket sales?

If the season starts in mid-September, there is no good reason for me to be watching football on August fucking NINTH.

I'm against it!

And another thing: Is Eli Manning that bratty neighborhood kid, the younger brother of some popular, more athletic kid, whose mom says "You HAVE to let your brother play too, or I'm taking the ball away." ?
What? You thought it, I said it.

Happy weekend all! It's a long weekend and I'm off for an extra day on top of that, because I have to travel. I'm also against this, but it must be done. I shall have to get over this anti-travel thing. But it is hard, so hard. It's very, very, very, very hard.

Eeeee .....Faaaaahhhhhk.

...So I brought my truck in to the Ford dealership this morning for a replacement on a recalled ABS part. Supposed to be a free repair. (That's my baby, there on the left, for those of you who tuned in after August of 2005. She's not as big as my brother's beast there on the right, but a truck that size would be extremely impractical in Boston, and for my purposes. So don't make fun, I chose her for parkability as much as anything else.)

My first ever automobile.

The excitement of owning which has definitely started to wane.

In addition to the free repair on the recalled ABS part, I asked them to do an oil change, and the kid said I was overdue for the 46 thousand mile check-up - a look at all the systems, brakes, fluids, rotate the tires, etc. Well, winter is coming and I'll need a new inspection sticker next month, so... cringing a little, I said, "Sure, why not, give it a full pre-winter check and tune-up."

I don't think I need to really go much further with the set up of this story before you guys will all know where it's heading. Right?

By the end of the day today, I will have spent two weeks' salary on parts and labor for new brakes, pads, a stabilizing rod (Whatever the FUCK that is), various and sundry other brake and alignment related items. In a few months, I'll spend probably at least that much for a brand new exhaust system and new tires.

Well, I guess I won't be quitting my side job anytime soon.

I love Ford trucks, but as long as my arse points south, I will never, NEVER own another Ranger. And probably never another USED one. Next up will be a new F-150, but that won't be until I'm so old and shrunken I need a stepladder to get in it, because by the time this bitch is done with all this new stuff, she'd better drive like a brand new automobile, and last at least as long as the pyramids.

Faaaaaahhhhhhkkkkkk.

Yezzz, I like your Amurrriican rrrock and rrrroll...verrr much.

Happy Friday everybody. The last real weekend of the summer is upon us and I'm going to get every second's enjoyment out of it that I can. The wine rack is full of old vine zinfandels, the fridge is packed with beer, and I can't be sure, but I think if Harfleur had this much cheese on hand, they'd have lasted longer against Henry V and that siege might have ended a little differently.

In between all the baseball, SPOUSE and I are going to watch "300" this weekend on the stupidly sized television. He doesn't even seem to be put off that I keep calling it gay porn. That's how cool and modern we are.

I shall now take my non-sequitur spouting self out to find a place in Harvard Square to watch a few innings of baseball and drink some adult flavored beverages. Charlie's, I think. They've got a veggie reuben that kills. Hear me baby? KILLS.

These aren't the 'droids you're looking for

Great. Just when I was tripping along pretty happily in life, now I have to know people like THIS exist?

I can't begin to express how much this pisses me off.

Meanest cat ever.

I once had a cat I named Rigsby, after this character from "Rising Damp." Meanest fucking feline I ever met. He never purred, never played, never cuddled. All he ever did was attack, piss on my clothes, and stink up the gaff.

I don't think he liked his name.

I took him to Maine with me on vacation, because I didn't want to make my roommate care for the ungrateful little bastard, or open the two storey window and throw him into oncoming traffic while I was gone. I sincerely thought this was a possibility, as I had contemplated doing the same, more than once.

Anyway, my mother didn't quite understand the concept of 'indoor cat,' and let him out, and he never returned. Or maybe she just hated the beast as much as everyone else did (except me, I liked him. Didn't love him, but...), and decided he'd be better off taking his chances in the Maine woods, but he was gone. When I got back, two weeks before we were to move to a new apartment, my roommate, with one of those half-smiles you give someone when you're giving them bad news and you're kind of gleeful about it, "Guess what, the new apartment doesn't allow cats."

I replied, equally gleefully, "Gues what, we don't have a cat."

I wasn't sad, you see.

Random musings

Are the squirrels living near Grove Street in Waltham daring each other to cross the streets in traffic or are they just more abysmally stupid than most? There's a fresh squirrel corpse every time I drive that stretch of road.

Something nasty is afoot.

WEIRD

So...the first few blogs I looked at today - Fatmammycat, Mr. Beer & Hockey, and Kim Ayres - ALL had posts up about dreams. Since I dreamed some weird shit last night too, I thought I'd post about it.

Last night I dreamed that an old friend of a friend I haven't seen in about 10 years (Tor, of all people!) , showed up, wanting to give me guinea pigs. He didn't have a cage, and it turned out that he had not one or two, but FOUR guinea pigs to unload, and he had males and females all together in the same box. This means that I wasn't getting just four guinea pigs, I was getting four guinea pigs PLUS however many would result from guinea pigs of both sexes being boxed up together for an indeterminate period of time. I spent the remainder of the dream trying to separate the guinea pigs by gender, and making (Again, TOR?!) go and buy some cages while I broke the news to SPOUSE that we now had a houseful of rodents, as well as the three cats and that spider in the first floor bathroom I won't let him kill because I've named her Harriet, and she's eating lots of more annoying insects.

Anyone have a guess what this might mean? Also found a pretty funny picture of a guinea pig in a dress - but blogger is, once again, being a total fuckwad and not letting me post it.

Okay, back to vacation mode. I've finished my vodka experiments and have decided the difference between the listed brands wasn't significant enough for a full report. I've now moved on to an effort to rid the world of Sangria, one batch at a time.

Vacation countdown

One day to go. I think I have a brain cloud.

I'm sick of people, sick of work, sick of this blog, sick of food, sick of drink, sick of ...I can't lie, it's mostly people. But I guess since I'm pretty much sick of EVERYTHING, on some level, I'm thinking it's a good time for a vacation.

A nice, tall, vodka & tonic, and a book in my back yard...I doubt I could get sick of that. I'm sure I can obtain empirical data on this. Let's make Stoli the control group, and test Skyy, Grey Goose, Absolut... I may check in and report my findings...I may not really be able to, if my experiments go as planned.

SKOL!