icebluenothing | Entries tagged with truck

My poor dead truck is finally gone.

It had been sitting in my parking space at my condo since it died, over a year ago. I tried researching how to donate a vehicle to charity, but it all seemed terribly complicated -- I'm deeply phobic about incorrectly filed paperwork, and the one place I found that said they took care of all the paperwork never called me back.

I was going to drive the truck down to Olympia to give it to my sister, hoping that I could avoid having to go in reverse at any point the whole way down, but it turns out that if you let a truck just sit there for a year, it won't start the next time you try to use it. Who knew?

The management of my condo had been gently asking me all this time when I was going to get rid of it, and when I was going to stop parking my car in visitor spaces. Not too long after I failed to get the truck moving again, they finally put a note on my car saying they'd tow it if I parked it in a visitor space again. Fair enough, I figured.

In the end, I went to Pull-A-Part, a wrecking yard in Lynnwood, and found out they would indeed tow it away for free and take it off my hands for spare parts if I signed the title over to them. I wouldn't even need to be there for them to pick it up. So that's what I did, and one night I came home and it was just gone.

-----

Why a whole year?

Part of it's just the inertia and procrastination that plagues so many parts of my life. But it was also just frankly hard to do.

My dad told me, after he bought me the truck, not to fall in love with it. He told me too late. It was my first car, something that brought me my first real taste of freedom and independence and responsibility. I didn't get rid of it for so long because I didn't really want to.

. . . . Why is it so hard for me to let go of things when it's so easy for me to let go of people?

.... And then the roller-coaster swings around, and my life goes back from suck to awesome. In no particular order:

I've been doing a few days work here and there for Trace again, the same person I was working for last year, and he thinks he's going to have a lot more hours for me in the not-too-distant future, which is excellent.
Had much fun at endorphan's birthday.
Also had a very pleasant evening on bhaiku's birthday.
The new car, a 1995 Subaru Impreza, is entirely awesome. I'm sure I'll miss my truck, but my new love is helping me get over it in a big, big hurry. It has such amazing luxury features as:
- A driver's side door that closes all the way
- A driver's side window that's not constantly slipping out of its track
- A working interior dome light
- Working A/C
- A passenger's side seatbelt that works consistently
- A tape player!
- Reverse gear!
It's also mad sexy.
I should have a day job soon, to keep me eating between bouts of working for Trace, thanks to saheeb138. I have a second interview tomorrow at the copy center of the Office Max he works at, and that practically guarantees I have the job.
Someone I don't even know emailed me out of the blue and asked if I'd do some freelance CGI work for them. I said yes, of course.
imsosquare gave me the low-down on how to get cheap dental work. Thanks, sweetie!
windbourne continues to be unimaginably awesome.

Holy crap. My life just went from zero to suck in less than twenty-four hours.

I broke another tooth last night. On a chicken strip. Again. The first time that happened, I managed to get it taken care of, but the second time I chipped a tooth, I just ignored it for a few months because I didn't have the money to take care of it; but now I've chipped a third tooth, and it's pretty major, so I'm having to go to my parents for money for a dentist, and they have enough trouble of their own right now, so I feel like a dick.

So that sucked. And then this morning, my truck kind of died. It runs and all, but it won't go into reverse any more. Which is problematic.

saheeb138 thinks it's probably the transmission.

I've put way more than enough money into my truck at this point, and I think this is the last straw. My dad had already planned on leaving me his car when he died; when I told them my troubles today, they decided to just go ahead and give it to me now. Which is good. But I feel awfully guilty.

So like I was saying: on Monday I took the truck into a Jiffy Lube for an oil change, and then afterward, I noticed that the brake light no longer went out when I took the parking brake off. I tried going back to Jiffy Lube to see what they had to say about it, but they swore up and down they hadn't touched the brakes, so.

Wednesday I took the truck to Walt's Auto Care Center, just across the street from SIXBOX, and dropped it off for them to have a look at it.

I went back yesterday morning when they called me. (They called at 7:45am, for Chrissakes .... ) The guy I talked to showed me where some of the problems were. Basically, the seal on the axle on the left rear tire was broken, and leaking fluid that's screwing up the brakes. (The guy who did the inspection thought I might need a new axle, but the guy I actually talked to thought that was nuts.) They also wanted to "bleed off" all the existing brake fluid in the system and reset the valves. The front brake pads are a little worn, but basically fine, and can be left alone for now. I really liked this guy -- he walked me through everything, showed me where the problems were, made sure I understood what was going on, and basically didn't seem like he was trying to screw me over.

The price he estimated for me was about $360, plus tax. Which, well, is a a lot. But I was a little relieved, actually. I thought it was going to be a lot worse than that.

See, a different mechanic told me over a year ago now that there was about a thousand dollars worth of work that needed to be done on the brakes.

I figured they were just trying to screw me over for money, but I've also been thinking, "Jesus, what if they were serious? Am I driving around a timebomb, here?" I've been worried all this time I'd have to drop a grand into getting the brakes fixed, eventually, so $360 didn't sound that bad.

I picked it up today -- it runs fine, the brakes work great, the light does go out, and I have a huge, huge load off my mind.

Current Music: Peter Murphy - Cuts You Up

Let's see ... bunch of things I've been wanting to mention on LJ.

I actually worked for a living on Friday. Got a call from someone at Superior Technical Resources last Thursday, asking if I was willing to work a one-day contract for spaceandtech.com to help them with some vexing Javascript and CGI issues. I said sure. It was a lot of fun; I enjoyed breezing in, fixing their problems, and leaving. It's like being a superhero. Or having a great one-night stand. Pretty office, with curving white walls and natural wood panelling and glass surfaces, downtown near the waterfront. It gave me a little taste of the web developer lifestyle again, and I realized I miss it. (Of course, this was also my first time using the unstable piece of crap that is Microsoft Front Page. That wasn't quite so much fun.)
Been spending a fair amount of time with madness237 lately, thanks to hanging out at ulrich's place. He seems neat. It's good to hang out with someone who has as much of an obsession with cult horror flicks as I do. He wants to make a movie next year based on my story "The Leak," and I think I'm gonna let him. He's also introduced me to what he calls the best translation ever of the Tao Te Ching, and I'm inclined to agree.
I'm probably going to be leaving town for a month, and spending the time living with my sister Cheryl. She's 16½ years older than I am, and consequently we didn't grow up together, and I've never had a chance to spend as much time with her as I'd like. I'll be helping her with work on her house and garden, taking some time to write, and just getting a break from my life for a while.
Main thing holding me back from heading down to Olympia is my truck, at the moment. Noticed the day before yesterday, right after I got an oil change, that my brake light wasn't going out, anymore, when I released the parking brake. The truck feels to me like there's a lot of resistance when I drive it, as if the parking brake is jammed. I've taken the truck to a Walt's Auto Care Center, and despite dire predictions from retcon and wendolen, the guy there thinks this sounds relatively minor/inexpensive. I hope to God he's right. They'll call me tomorrow.
Spent a fair amount of today playing around with the Amazon.com Web services SOAP and XML APIs. They're easier to use than I thought they'd be, but don't seem nearly as flexible and useful. *shrug*
Also spent a big chunk of today on IM, much to the shock of many. I've now found a Trillian skin I don't hate looking at, so this might become a more regular and less world-shaking ocurrance. We'll see.

Current Music: Timo Mass - To Get Down

Never got a chance to mention yesterday -- but we replaced the battery in the truck, and all is once again well. Many thanks, again, to

ulrich and

autumngray for their hospitality and help.

Current Music: 6fg - Succubus

I knew things were going too well.

They really have been, too -- been out getting more exercise, with treebyleaf this time. Three times around Green Lake on Monday, and up and around the trails at Saltwater State Park yesterday, and then we had a lovely dinner with Blue and her boy.

Saw Lilo and Stitch the other day and loved it to pieces. Watched Scooby Doo today and thought it was a heck of a lot of fun.

After the movie today, I decided to swing by ulrich and autumngray's place since I was in the neighborhood. Hung out for a while, and thought I'd head on over to Aurafice.

Trucky no starty.

I got someone to give me a jump, but it did no good. The battery just wouldn't take a charge. So I'm spending the night here, and catching a bus to buy a new battery tomorrow. Yay big fun.

Beautiful day outside today. Shame I slept through most of it.

Woke up after a ridiculously overlong afternoon nap and decided it was much, much too pretty to stay inside. Briefly considered spending the evening out in the courtyard, or maybe over at the little park across the lake from here. But the sun was already at a steep slant; it wouldn't be too long, I thought, before buildings and trees threw those places into shadow. I needed to get right down to where the sun was, to where there were no shadows; I needed to get out to the water, to Golden Gardens.

The trip down that winding road worried me a little. The truck just isn't handling . . . right. Nothing I can quite put my finger on and describe, but I can tell it's ailing. The transmission, most likely. It's unsteady and uncertain and in my most paranoid moments I was afraid it would tumble right off the road. But I arrived without incident.

Pretty night. A little too breezy for sitting still and reading the book I'd brought with me, and I couldn't make myself comfortable sitting in the sand, besides. So I found myself walking down along the beach instead, which was fair enough; I need exercise even more desperately than I simply need to get out of the house.

I was listening first to a sampler of 6fg songs; they're much on my mind today since they've asked me to write their band bio for them. When I started my walk down the beach, I was listening to Achtung Baby, U2's best goddamn album. (You can keep Joshua Tree, thanks -- I know it's most people's favorite, but not mine. I much prefer all the pain and distance and introspection that hang suspended in the super-saturated solution of Achtung Baby's layers of found sound and guitar. It's a sprawling psycho-sexual hand grenade of an album.)

The music put me in a melancholy mood, and I found myself walking, eyes downcast, contemplating blackened bits of wood from a thousand beachfires strewn and forgotten in the sand, and the shifting and impermanent marks of a thousand thousand footprints from people who had been there before me.

Oh, and I bought a hot dog.

Current Music: Condor - Ordinary World

Wow, I haven't posted anything in my journal since Christmas Eve. I better catch up.

I've been busy having a fine holiday season. Let me tell you about it.

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Current Music: George Clinton - Atomic Dog

Finally received my check from Design Works Interiors for the website I built for them, so I figured I had the financial wherewithal to go out and buy new tires for the Annabel Lee today. Went to deposit the check and found that the bank was already closed. Well, not a problem -- I should have enough money to buy tires with, and I can deposit the check on Monday.

Went and bought the tires. Expensive things, tires. But I can actually feel the road under the truck, now, and I no longer feel like I'm in imminent danger of sudden flaming death each time I go out, so, yeah, money well spent.

Wasted the entire evening downloading and installing half-a-dozen different MP3-ripping programs, none of which work. Feel tired and frustrated. Decide I need to get out of the house for a while before I can do any writing. End up deciding what the hell, I may as well go to the Mercury.

Drive to Capitol Hill. Spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to figure out how to drive to a bank I can easily get to when on foot. Go to pull out a little cash for admission to the Mercury, maybe an XTZ Tea. Insufficient funds. Wha -- ? Hmm, my account balance is negative. Looks like I didn't have quite as much money in my account as I thought I did when I bought the tires. Briefly entertain the fantasy of standing outside the Mercury until someone who loves me enough to pay to get me in happens to come along. Go home.

On the way home, keep thinking of ways to cheer myself up that would cost money. I could stop and get ice cream -- oh, wait, no, I can't. I could stop and get some cloves -- oh, wait, no, I can't.

Arrive at home in black mood. Caller ID tells me wendolen called minutes before I arrive. I'm frustrated that I missed her.

Listen to voice mail.

She'd calling to remind me that tonight is the Leonid meteor storm, and that despite my pessimistic predictions, the sky is clear.

Tonight, the earth passes through the dust ring of Tempel-Tuttle, a comet that orbits the earth every 33 years. The Leonids are usually no big deal, but tonight we're supposed to be passing through debris left by the comet during close approaches in 1733 and 1866, so there's the chance of seeing hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of meteors per hour.

Around 1:00 is the best time to see them, wendolen tells me. I should look to the east.

I may not see anything. No way of telling. But I'm going to try, and it won't cost me anything. And she was thinking of me.

Tonight might not be so bad after all.

Current Music: Good Courage - A Question of Time

I realized, as I was sitting reading my book, that what I really didn't want was to spend another sunny Autumn day here, inside my little box. I wanted to get out somewhere, do something.

My life is spent in a larger box, my travels normally bounded to the north by Vancouver, to the south by Portland. In my mind, there is nothing to the west but water, death by cold and wet and green; nothing to the east but desert, death by sun and rock and sand and bleached white bone. I've broken out of that box a few times, but not many, throughout my life.

Today, I wanted, really, sun on my skin; to be out somewhere in desert and scrublands, to stretch out on a rock like a big lizard and drink in sunlight. I wanted to touch the death that waits in the east and come back.

I decided that what I wanted was to go to Eastern Washington.

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