Saturday night thoughts

It’s Saturday night, and I don’t have to work.

*blare of trumpets* please

I did have to work Saturday night last weekend, and for a couple of years I did too, because I delivered the Sunday final edition, which comes out tonight/Sunday morning; but in June, I broke my foot doing the Sunday final, driving the stepvan which had not passed DEQ.  It was NOT running very cleanly, and I was overcome by fumes by my fourth stop and virtually fell out of the stepvan and broke the fifth metatarsal bone in my right foot – the little toe’s bone by the arch of my foot.

I heard it break, incidentally, but since I’ve always had weak ankles – they twist fairly easily – I had assumed that it was the ankle that gave way.  I did finish my route that morning.  I had about 600 more papers to drop off here and there; and managed to do that despite the growing pain, cuz, you know, I am a conscientious employee.  Besides, what was I gonna do?  Who’d deliver the freakin’ papers if I didn’t?

And no, I sincerely doubt anyone who pawed through my papers gave it a thought, that the guy who brought them had done so on a broken foot, just so they could grab the third copy in the stack and fuck up the two or three around it.

attitude alarm!

I did not deliver the Sundays again until last week, when that loser, the number two driver 

(more attitude!)

all but begged me to do his route for him, so he could sleep in and announce the softball games that Sunday. 

Pussy.

Ok, ok, well, I’m entitled to some attitude.  I have never pussed out on any of the paper runs.  Like sitting at a microphone and talking is such hard work – what a pussy.

 

 

Well, off on a tangent, fer sure.  Wow.

 

 

What I originally intended to write was that I don’t have to work tonight, and that since there ain’t shit to see on TV tonight, I’ll go to ABC.com and watch some back episodes of "Lost".  You can do that, you know, on streaming video, commercial free, more or less. 

Got hi-speed internet and ain’t afraid to use it.

Today, I fully experenced the joys of money to spend.  I was fully reimbursed for my expenses at DMV to get my Class B CDL for the buses by the ed. district and the check finally cleared, leaving me with more money than I am used to at the end of the week for the first time in many, many years.

My van, my dependable beast of burden, has given me some 23,000 miles of use so far, since I got it out of a tow yard last year for $337.50.  Those who’ve been reading for awhile will know that I have spent many times that amount on the van to keep it runing right, but they’ll also know that I regard this van as the best used car that I have ever bought.  (strictly speaking, that "honor" really belongs to a 1983 Mercury Zephyr 4 door that "we" had, but my (ex) wife owned and paid for that one, so the van really is the best used car I have ever had.  The A/C even works on it!  First used car ever!  (all the other ones, well, they had the parts, but the A/C didn’t work.  At all)

My automatic transmission has been making "service me soon" indications for awhile, and I have more or less successfully ignored them, but ya know, if you do that long enough, they die on you, and not in your own driveway, usually.  That expense check cleared today, so I drove over to Jiffy Lube and had the tranny flushed and filled, and my willing beast is very willing again.  Normally, transmission fluid is supposed to be bright red.  Mine was black – it may never have been changed before, kinda like the timing belt that broke in late winter/early spring earlier this year.  It was the original timing belt, and served for just over 150,000 miles, about 4 times longer than it should have.  It was the original, installed in 1990 timing belt, so maybe that black fluid too was original.

OMG!

At Jiffy Lube, that replacement was $89.95, and for too long, that has been a fantasy figure, as in "what do I sacrifice to do that".  Since I had worked that extra shift last week, I was able to fully pay my monthly bills this last week and to pay for the CDL too.  Three weeks ago, I had gotten my first check from the Ed. district for my time training to drive their buses, so I had pre-paid some bills and had, well, not money to burn, but close enough for gov’t work, and have had a "surplus" of funds for the first time in years.

Next week will be payday again for the buses (once a month paychecks, but still- more than I had before, yo) and the joy will truely arrive – I won’t be living paycheck to paycheck (papers pay weekly, but…) for the first time in too fucking long to think about right now.

The Joy is back in my life!

 

 

Awhile back, I was "researching" my van’s engine online, trying to find out more about the OHC 4 cylinder engine that powers my van.  I know for sure that in the past, I would have wanted the biggest engine I could get in a Chyrsler product minivan, a 3.8 liter V-6 – more power, you know, but these days I am SO happy that I have that 4 banger.  It gets what is probably the best mileage of any car I’ve ever owned.  It can move 45 bundles of Sunday papers (almost 400 of ’em) with out protest.  It moves over 900 dailies without a murmur.  It is not the speediest engine available, but it is the least thirsty, and these days, that counts for far more.  Far, far more.

Anyway, I was researching it, and found some "get more power" tips online.  The factory gap for the spark plugs is .032, but if you gap ’em at .040, you’ll get about five more horsepower out of it,

and it is something you really notice.  Like I said, it’s not a high power engine, so a little bit more is very noticable.  ‘Course, more power is slightly less gas mileage, but that’s ok – it still gets 18.33 miles per gallan hauling my papers around, and that’s good enough for me, especially since the boss pays my gas at 15 miles per gallon, and that when I got it last year, it was getting 14 point something per gallon.  I have little incentive to tell him I get better mileage that that, do I?

I don’t think so.

Even better, although I rarely drive it on the highway, my van gets almost 30 miles per gallon on the highway – the best mileage of any used car I ever had – even the Mercury got only 27 mpg on the highway.  And it’s long gone now anyway.

No small thing, this, especially this last summer, but the A/C works.  It works!  Yaaahooo!

That next paycheck, the buses paycheck, I’ll go and get my A/C serviced too.  It is a bit low on freon, which is now banned for production, so freon, which used to be dirt cheap, is now $50 a pound, and I need, for a total refill, about 1 and a half pounds of it.  And I don’t NEED that much.  A/C works in the winter too – it dehumidifies the air, and since it has been known to rain a bit here (massive understatement) that will be a good thing to have working later this year.  In fact, the rain will be here in a few hours and will not stop for days.  And rainy season has been known to last from October to June here.  Really.

Having clear windows makes drivng MUCH easier.

 

 

So, improved the tranny’s action.  Got more power.  Still have money in the bank (no ramen tonight, no.  It was a Papa Murphy’s take n’ bake pizza tonight, and there’s half left for tomorrow too.

Life is good, and getting better.

 

 

Since the car wreck in 1998 (which, seriously, is the best thing that’s ever happened to me) life has been a fairly steady course upwards and onwards.

God got tired of me bitching ’bout my life and slapped me upside the head and said "Boy, you think you got it bad?  Look at this!" and showed me first-hand how bad life could be. 

Yeah, I got a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) in the wreck, so I got to see others who will never come back from their injuries, who are fucked for the rest of their lives.  I got depressed after I graduated from college (after the wreck yo) and did a mental health program and got to see and meet lots of people who were and probably still are way worse off than me. 

God said, "Boy, you need some perspective" and gave me some, and I lived through it and am a better guy for it.

You ever wonder why I write "upwards and onwards"?

You ever wonder why I say "it could be worse"?

You ever wonder why I say "Perspective is Everything"?

It’s because I KNOW those things are TRUE.

 

 

It’s my night off.  And ya know, I’m going to enjoy it.

*****