a good start to the weekend

it may be hot as ballz out there (the "z" on "ballz" indicitave of temperatures soaring above the normal levels represented by just plain old "balls"), but i enjoyed my drive home today despite the traffic. i blasted bon jovi tunes from slippery when wet and young guns, and belted out the lyrics all 55 miles of my commute. i can't sing, like, at all. so it was even more fun.

then i went and picked up my custom-size drivebelt, the procurement of which led me to find a really cool little store for bearings, seals, belts, servos, and motors that's local and full of cool old dudes who appeared to weep tears of joy and faith in today's youth when i told them that i rebuild automotive crap for fun.

and tonight we're getting together with tcitb crew, going to pound some brazilian bbq and tasty beverages. it's time for friday night in the city. ohhhh right.

driven to the bottle

is it any wonder that tuesday is half-pitcher of beer at lunch day?

every tuesday morning we have 1.5-2 hours of obligatory meeting, presentation, argument, overuse of "let's take this offline" long past the point when it would have actually saved us time, and congratulatory notes of achievement that one would expect would result in promotion but, in fact, do not. those who actually achieve don't get announced kudos; they just get promoted.
none of that applies to me though, because you can't get promoted when you've declared your intent to leave as early as your interview, so don't read into that.

but yesterday a certain member of our group was scheduled to speak, and i had my notepad and pen at the ready. it has been a debate of long-standing between me and my workwife as to whether this person really overuses the word "actually" as much as i profess she does. my feelings were mixed; jubilation at knowing i would finally be vindicated in my assertion, and utter despair that i would have to sit through the talk and pay attention in order to prove it.

lo and behold! 21 total powerpoint slides, 45 minutes, and 84 - yes, eightymotherfuckingfour!!! uses of "actually" as a modifier when none was needed. do you need an example of the auditory lashing we all took? "when we received this sample, we actually tested it using a protocol which was actually designed for another drug, which we actually did not look at using the same actual parameters." gaaaaah!

i also compiled a list of other abused adverbs, most notably, "basically," "essentially," "totally," "practically," "generally," and some others which i can't remember for you now because my ears are still ringing and it's distracting me. DO NOT OVERUSE THESE WORDS IN YOUR PRESENTATIONS FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. say less, say it more slowly, and be concise. misusing words makes you look dumb and then people assume the content of your talk is similarly retarded, and then they repeat lines from your talk in the 'special olympics voice' later at lunch, and will discuss your faint harelip and sweaty pit stains but not an iota of information from your long, arduous presentation.

otherwise there will always be someone sitting in the back row, disgusing their smirk with sips of coffee, high-fiving their friend under the table and noting with acerbic accuracy every single time you fuck up. and then posting about it on the internet.

mud and meat

so i am retarded, and have forgotten how to send photos from my phone to my blog. because i lost my list of email contacts, because i had to get a new phone, because suddenly, nobody could hear me anymore. not that that is so unusual, since i mumble, speak into the wind, talk like i have potatoes in my mouth, and trail off at the end of every sentence, and am from long island. but i mean they couldn't even hear me enough to say "what?" and it was the day before we at trunkmonkey racing were planning to head up for maine forest rally. and i took a picture of the car on the trailer on thursday morning as we headed off, but i cannot show it to you now.

i think this needs more cowbell. there is a backstory to everything.

so like, i had asked for wed-fri off. the goal was to pack up the service truck on wednesday with everything we might possibly ever need to fix a car, but can't take up too much space or be too heavy. and because i am crew chief now, i had to get all fancy and uptight and make wiki lists of every roll of duct tape and set of washers and cotter pins we packed, along with location. you can view my handiwork here (it is assuredly boring to you, but a work of art to me)

then the epic of the alternator began; reference posts below. and how my knee hurt and i was tired and pissy and battered and covered in coolant, and on the rag, and decided not to go to work on tuesday when it was 95 deg out and i had a faulty car, a bum knee, and a frown for every person. so we did some last-minute items on the rally car that day, and macdaddy came down to help out with rewiring the horn and some other misc items. we went to quizno's for a late lunch, which was motivated by the menstrual gnomes clamoring for a hot pastrami with melted swiss, black pepper and onions (those gnomes don't fuck around). whilst there, i witnessed what is perhaps the coolest and grossest thing ever: the meat bath. this is the little cup-shaped broth jacuzzi for your sliced pastrami or shaved steak, where it stews and marinates in foamy fecal-colored dishwater to become that savory pile of boiled meat, upon which the cheese melts ever so delicately. i want this meat bath apparatus for my own house; i think it would change my life.

wednesday i think we packed the service truck and made a complete inventory. i'm not sure because the days of heat, diet soda, rustoleum, trips to quizno's, and seemingly endless wiki-ing all blend together. thursday we left early and met up with macdaddy and slvrblt, and had an exciting first leg of the trip involving some tranny overheating, a steady spray of ATF over the cars following the truck, and some billowing smoke on every hill as the ATF hit the hot exhaust. we stopped just south of the notch and unloaded a few hundred pounds of stuff and wheels/tires into macdaddy's civic and crossed our fingers. nothing of note occurred afterward, other than a sighting of the most pristine, gorgeous pearly white T-top 300zx turbo parked across from the burger king in gorham. le sigh.

when we arrived i was slightly dismayed at the lack of shower pressure in the motel (e.g. midget stream of lukewarm pee) and the necessity of going into vacant motel rooms to steal working lightbulbs while the maids were busy. but once headlong into the weekend of rally, the place transformed into somewhere that i could track mud and oil without feeling bad, and i think you could probably swap a tranny and do some minor welding in the parking lot and they wouldn't mind so much. and isn't that what really matters?

the next couple of days were a whirlwind of early rising, compulsive list and clock-checking, tool unpacking and repacking, fun with tarps and bungee cords, fast food, snack food, junk food, and beer; driving all around god's creation, which i think is a funny term for ramshackle little towns that make me think neither of god nor of creation, but rather of paper mill fart smell and one-way main streets with blinking yellow lights. macdaddy brought technology to the area by watching clerks on his PSP while slung back in a folding chair in the parking lot of the technical college, waiting for the cars to roll in. service went well both days, other than missing a bent wheel where literally, and this is my own description i have repeated 10 times since because i am proud of it, you could stick a twizzler between tire and wheel, and still see daylight. but the bent wheel just goes to show that we need a serious jack and peg stands. and it showed that big men in nomex can change a tire way faster than they thought possible.

so i had an awesome time doing it up trunkmonkey style this weekend; sean and kz did a great job being solid and quick, and the car held together well. the crew really worked their butts off (and sat on them lots too, which is really had when you're waiting for news of the car) and most importantly, we had a lot of fun. i came home with tired feet, an eye twitch, a rain-spattered clipboard, 2 six-packs of beer we didn't have time to drink, clothes caked in mud, and stinking like bug spray. only one of which will probably come off.

addendum

i almost forgot to add to the "bad" list about that whole 3 hours of sitting in stopped traffic in the 93 tunnel under the city, with the worst-ever detour that diverted us back from whence we came and wasted so much time, my dad missed his flight. an appaling spectacle of non-organization; great job, massport.

that and the $750 bill i got from my doctor for my school-required immunizations. and nobody (doctor's office, insurance, school, company HR) is going to help me out. more on that saga later.

if i seem too busy to remember the myriad of suckitude presented to me in the last week, it's cause i am.

4-day recap

the good

took a half day on friday to drive into the city and meet up with my dad, who is really awesome company.
an eating and drinking tour of boston ensued, including my favorite iced mochas at cafe aroma on newbury (formerly torrefazione), rare steak and blue cheese sammiches with hoegaarden at the parish, superman movie at lowes on the common, and a leisurely persian dinner experience at lala rokh on beacon hill.

saturday found us on a harbor cruise with literally 50 or so of our relatives that i had never met nor heard of before; all offspring of my grandpa's older sisters. the resemblances, physical and intellectual, were uncanny. i left feeling like i had made all sorts of new friends in the area, and realized i had a much bigger family than i thought. seeing my dad reconnect with people he hadn't seen in 50 years was something special; it made me vow to keep in better touch with my current friends, which i am so bad at sometimes.

sunday was an awesome lobster roll lunch affair down in RI, where kz's parents got to meet my dad. it was so relaxed and pleasant, i think everyone really hit it off and i realized i had been stressing about it up until the grand official meeting of the clans. it was lots of fun!


the bad

first off, extreme heat and boston parking garage fees.

secondly, my car refusing to start in the bowels of the harbor hotel garage, right before the cruise. i promptly ignored it and decided it wasn't going anywhere while i had a relaxing tour of the harbor. i got it jumped when we came back and decided i would either make it home or i wouldn't, and then there's always triple A.

then my low fuel light went on. and natch you can't stop for gas when you can't start again.

i did make it to NH, and changed the battery in the walmart parking lot. a job well done; back to normal with little fanfare, i thought.

the ugly

the car didn't start again yesterday afternoon. ironically, in the sam's club parking lot right across the street from the walmart. the new battery was covered in this greasy stuff, which i can confirm for you today, based on the soreness of all my fingerpads, was indeed battery acid. i called kz, who picked up a re-manned alternator on the way down from work. i had nothing to do but sit in the shade and drink the water and eat the granola bars i had just purchased in bulk. things seemed just crummy but ok until i twisted my knee again.

then i did what anyone should do when about to heatstroke, in terrible pain, and in fear of never having a driveable car. i cried, and hid my shame behind sunglasses, and then called my mom.

kz came with the part and the next 6 hours passed rather quickly despite the stifling heat, swarms of mosquitoes, and curious onlookers. one nice lady in a minivan stopped and brought us papertowels like molly pitcher to a wounded soldier; it didn't make a dent in my coolant, grease, and sand-encrusted skin, but was awfully sweet.

sean also came by with a spare battery and witnessed a few moments of particularly heated cursing and grunting as we struggled to align the pivot bolt. god, that sucked.

but car made it home under its own power with a new alternator and another new battery. the day ended with subway sandwiches for dinner at midnight, and you bet i called out of work today.
if it doesn't start today when i need to go meet up with some trunkmonkeys and do pre-rally prep, i think i will take it out back and shoot it.

pms? not at all

goal: make a quick post-gym stop at the grocery store to procure something for dinner.

aftermath: return home with 3 boxes of blueberries and a bottle of shiraz.

and, stretch

just one of those days where 99% of humanity is too loud, too eager, too interested in my affairs, and too overbearing. i would like to make a shirt to wear on days like these. on the front it would read, "take yoga." on the back, "so you can stick your nose up your own ass instead of mine."

thankfully some quiet time alone in the apt, my only companions being the melodious air conditioner, my teddy bear fred, and a bowlful of plain yogurt and honey, did much to soothe my soul and stave off any verbal lashings i might have felt compelled to mete out to perfect strangers. pilates class and a DIY-carwash also contributed to my renewed sense of peace and inner rejuvenation. that and escaping all the butt-hurt whiney asstards at work.

domestic chemistry

clearly, socks are the ultimate limiting reagent in any laundering schedule based on necessity alone.

brilliant idea

turn on the "electronica" music channel on tv while you're trying to listen for the "your eggs are now hard-boiled" alarm on your nifty egg timer cooker thing. it's like a little puzzle, only for your ears.