Rancid-Tea

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Well, all seems to be going well, more or less. I still have the two job prospects, and I’m hoping to hear back from them next week. I keep worrying that I’ll end up being rejected on both fronts (which sadly isn’t that far fetched of an idea) and will be stuck at my current job, while my brain atrophies.

My parents came to visit today, and actually saw our new apartment. This prompted Ethan and I to do a lot of cleaning. Thankfully some of that was moving things down into our storage unit so that it’s not cluttering our apartment. This is very good.

I was going to clean out my old car today, drive it to my parents’ house and unload the aquariums (yes, they have been in my car trunk for some time now, ever since I removed them from my old house) and then drive it on to James’ house to sell to him, but unfortunately, he is terrible with his money, and spent most of it on god knows what, then his dog had to go to the vet, and so he doesn’t have enough to buy the car now. He said he should have it soon. I may just drive it up to my parents house tomorrow, then when he can afford to, he can pick it up there and give them the money. It wouldn’t be taking up space here in the lot, and I wouldn’t have to worry about making a trip up there later when he has the money. We shall see.

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Hep. My new car is working great (aside from the inconvenience of a semi-broken fuel-door release) and I drove it all over on Friday, all weekend, and drove it to work today. This weekend I also did some new stuff in Blender for the first time in months. I’ll post some mid-progress images soon. I also made a small update to the site, adding a mileage log for my new Prius. Hopefully I’ll remember to actually track it so that it doesn’t become stale and useless. I’m also poking around a few ideas for some new skins for this site.

Tonight I’m going to the state fair with Metogan, Wren and Ethan. Hopefully Wren and Metogan won’t protest too much if I want to hang out and look at the goats and sheep for awhile. They’re such fun, soothing creatures.

Back to work I go…

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(sigh) I was going to write a post today saying how neat it is to own a new car, and one that gets exceptionally good gas mileage at that. Instead, I’m forced to say this: sometimes people are just dumb. My faithful Plymouth Acclaim, Fable, has been on a downward path recently. I’m sad to say that while Fable has been reliable and trustworthy since I got it, in the last week or two it has been giving me trouble. Ethan and I discovered that the trouble was that the alternator is failing, and there are other things wrong as well. The mechanic quoted about $550 to fix everything (in addition to the $100 for diagnosing the problems) and I decided that was too much to pay to fix a car that originally cost $650.

I had been mulling over the idea of getting a new(er) car, but mostly in that “wouldn’t it be nice” sort of way. Well, this development led Ethan and me to the conclusion that a new car would probably be a good option. I found out that James can fix Fable for much less than the mechanic, and might be willing to buy the car off of us since it is in far better condition than his latest vehicle, so we went ahead and bought a new car. A 2001 Prius to be exact. Neato. It is a very fun car to drive, so long as you can keep your eyes on the road and off of the little LCD screen that is telling you how much gas you’re using and what exactly is making your wheels turn. It was very neat until this morning (we got the car last night) when the car failed to turn on. Boo. Boo says I.

I called the dealer (after waiting an hour and a half for them to open, yes, I was very late to work) and they said that it looked like, after replacing the battery, some dolt replaced it again, with the original battery. Arrr. So they ended up driving out to my apartment and traded me for some loaner car (which is still much nicer than Fable, but still, I did pay for the Prius, damnit) while they replace the battery and then test to make sure there isn’t anything ‘funny’ going on.

Basically I don’t get to drive my car again until at least tomorrow afternoon. I think they should give me a free gas card or something. I somehow think I’ll just end up with not having the car I bought for two days, combined with lost earnings from this morning. Suck.

On a completely random note, Nissan Maximas (the car I have on loan) are kind of nice to drive, if a bit noisy.

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Egad. I think I must be excruciatingly unhappy with my current situation. I am starting to plan things that won’t happen for months (or years in some cases) which makes me think that I don’t want to be in the present. Among things I’ve been thinking about: Thanksgiving. I would like to have another vegan thanksgiving holiday, and anyone who would like to join (probably not a lot of people, who are generally turkey obsessed) are welcome. Also, Ethan and I spent a great length of time last night discussing moving. That won’t happen for at least two years. I am alreadying worrying about how the cats will take a long distance move. We decided that most of our furniture will probably go. I was terrified at the idea of losing my wonderful bed, but then we discovered that a complete replacement would cost less than $800. That makes it a little easier, especially since my bed is… well, something like 12 years old, and apparently 15 years is about how long you can expect a soft side waterbed mattress to last. two years down the road it will probably be mostly dead.

– Thankfully, there may be light at the end of the tunnel and I might soon be much happier. I actually have some decent job prospects, including one person who I’ve been playing phone tag with. I consider it a good sign that he has tried to call me more than once, even though we haven’t gotten ahold of each other. That probably means he would like me to work for him (woot). Hopefully it doesn’t mean that the job is terrible. I’m trying to stay positive. Also, we started the thank you cards yesterday (after a ton of hassle, procrastination and exhaustion). We only have a dozen or so left, so we will probably finish them tonight and ship them off. Because we waited so long, we were able to include professional wedding pictures with all of them, so at least there’s a bonus.

– I probably shouldn’t be posting at work, even during lunch, but I really am starting to dread this place, more so than when I started, so if they fire me, I don’t think it will be all that tragic.

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Yesterday I went up to my parents’ cabin to hang out with a gathering of my dad’s relatives. Lezlie showed up as well, briefly. There was a lot of beer, and plenty of grilled foods and a game I’ve never played before, that I will probably never play again, involving beanbags and some boards with holes in them. I can’t aim. Or throw. The weather was very nice for a gathering though, a little bit of sun to keep it warm, but not enough to drives us into the lake.

– I finally finished uploading my tubing pics, after Lezlie practically accosted me yesterday for not having her AirChair picture up. I was hoping to get more family pics yesterday, but as usual I forgot my camera. I did see some more photos from the wedding, but unfortunately my aunt Fran who took them didn’t know how to get digital copies. If all else fails, I might ask for some hard copies and then just scan them up on my parents’ scanner. I’m pretty sure more of my friends have pictures too, but none that I’ve seen yet…

– All of this photography stuff makes me want to get a nicer camera, but then again, I would rather have some new clothes and a real TV stand, so a camera will have to wait. Possibly for awhile.

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Last Saturday I went to my aunt and uncle’s cabin for some badly needed tubing. I got in several rides on various tubes, and I also tried barefoot skiing off of the boom (a metal pole that you stick off the side of the boat and hang on to). I was generally sore from the waist up from hanging on for dear life, plus a few minor bumps and bruises (namely on my chest and lower back from hitting the water so hard I thought I hit a person), but I was shocked at how sore my legs were from dragging on the water in my attempt to barefoot ski. I never made it up to my feet, but I think with some excersize I might be able to. Instead I just dragged on the surface of the water, which didn’t hurt at the time, but my legs are still sore to the touch from it, and over the week bruises have come to the surface from mid shin up to my thighs. For some reason it amazes me that water can cause bruises.

– Randomly, as I was leaving, some guy almost drowned and my uncle ended up saving him. A pontoon in the middle of the lake ran out of gas and one of the guys on it decided to swim to shore without a life jacket to get more. I’m not sure if he thought he would just swim back with a jug of gas or what, but what happened was that he got about 30 feet from shore (I would estimate that he swam almost 200 feet) when he got horrible cramps and started to go under. The lake in question drops off pretty quickly and so he couldn’t push off the bottom. Also, this guy was rather buff, so he lacked the bouyancy of body fat to keep him afloat. He started to shout ‘help’ really loudly, and then started to go under. My uncle happened to be near the pontoon when this happened, and the people aboard saw what was happening, attracted my uncle’s attention and he headed toward the guy, pulling him out of the water as he went under for probably the last time. How insane. Things to be learned from this: do not try to swim across a large (busy) lake for gasoline without a lifejacket and make sure you have people watching you if you decide to risk it.

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Okay, obviously I feel I’ve had an eventful day, since this is post #3… Anyway, our produce share had some fun things that we decided to eat right away. One was fresh sweet corn, likely picked last night or early this morning, so VERY fresh. It was quite yummy. Had Keith stuck around for dinner, he could have had a share, but he took off, so that left 6 ears between Ethan and I. We had no trouble polishing them off. We had been planning on making cauliflower soup, and I discovered that our cauliflower had gone rubbery. Thankfully we got more cauliflower, and it was purple! So, yes, we had purple cauliflower soup. It was incredibly yummy, especially considering it had very little fat at all (a tablespoon of butter for about four servings of soup). I even took a picture, because hey, it’s purple soup. I’m debating starting a new set on flickr for random food stuffs, but I don’t know.

Since moving, I have felt more and more motivated to get a covered litter box, since the cats have poor aim and that leaves me cleaning the floor of their messes every few days, and also leaves the bathroom smelling rather unpleasant. I finally broke down today and we headed to PetCo to get a new, un-pee-over-the-side-able litter box. While there, a cat scratching board caught our eyes. Also since moving, we haven’t had anything that is okay for the cats to scratch, so they’ve taken to the off limits couch, which is looking a little tattered at the edges now. I can’t blame them for needing something to scratch, so now they have it. The funny part is that it came with catnip to get the cats interested in scratching it right away. I’m not sure about most cats, but Pester and Peeve basically went crazy for about half an hour scratching, rubbing, tackling, rolling on and cheeking the board. It was very cute and entertaining, and hopefully means our couch can remain as intact as it is.

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Wow, a responsible journalist that is trying to reduce the hype about West Nile Virus. I like the statistics about dying in your own covers. That’s somehow very amusing. I hope that if I get West Nile Virus, I end up suffocating in my covers before the virus kills me.

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I’m busy getting ready for work, so I’ll make this short. I decided to put up wedding pictures on Flickr so that people who don’t need to know about this website don’t have to. I’m only about half finished with photo adding, so there will be more soon. Please feel free to share the address with anyone who might want to know and to leave comments on the photos.