Oorgo

Wait, what was I doing?

I've been remarkably un-verbose here the last while, and I'm sure visitors are underwhelmed at the posts that finally do emerge. Truthfully? I haven't had any time in my day to sit down and focus on writing anything.

There.. right there... I was interrupted for 25 minutes and now I've lost my train of thought.

OH right... posting...umm...

I'll have to find a couple minutes later today to finish this train of thought, whatever it may be.

OMGHSTUBC

Just found out probably one of the coolest things that's happened to me in a long time: one of the bands I play in is opening up for Maraca at Saskatoon Jazz Festival on July 2nd.

If you've never heard of Maraca, that's fine, they aren't played on public radio in Canada or most of the US, but they are an absolutely wicked band from Cuba. I was right pissed that I was going to miss them in my home town on June 30th when they were playing, but now I'll see them live anyways, maybe even finagle my way in with the band and have some drinks, shoot some shit. Infinitely cool.

Bumper this, buddy!

Your Bumper Sticker Should Be

If you can read this, I can stop suddenly and sue you

Found thru: CTG

Innovations in podcasting

Ted over at Rocket Jones has stumbled across a great new innovation: Podcast for the Hearing Impaired. I was amazed at the clarity of the session.

Clusterf ... er... post

As you may have noticed I haven't been updating this place much, and if you're even a little upset about that I'd be all like "wow.. yeah.. whooo...sheeit... sorry...". The funny thing about this is that not really that much has been happening, but enough to prevent me from posting. Apparently my lack of content doesn't stop people from dropping by from Googlyland to the ol' blog looking for what their b1rthday means, and the je0pardy theme song... the hits seem to be ramping up on those intellectually fulfilling topics.

A couple of weeks ago we signed a heloc to catch up on some evil debt and give ourselves some room to improve other things (home, new car, etc.). I'm happy with it, but now it looks like we should have asked for a couple of K more, meh, we'll live. We're looking at maybe this fall buying the new car if interest rates are good. The heloc has freed up almost 500 bucks a month in bills we were paying to various evil credit cards etc. I really think if I would have waited even 2 weeks longer we would have been completely sunk, June would have obliterated us financially.

We were about to cancel one of our credit cards but along with it there were the travel rewards that would disappear, so we used them to get a couple nights in Calgary at a hotel, and visited Vulcan AB for their Galaxyfest on Saturday. The kids and the dog stayed at my mother-in-laws, making it our first trip alone in about 4 years or more. It was pretty damn nice: sleeping in, travelling places by simply getting in the car not congregating the brood, no statements such as "Stop that!", "Put that down!" spoken, and freedom to watch whatever we want on tv. Vulcan was ok, but we didn't really spend that much time or go to the gala or supper, just passed through

Last night I found out I can almost carry my own weight in dumbells... I helped my supervisor move and carried his dumbells out to the moving van. I got out there and he goes "Whoa! Dave!" .. and then proceeds to count out how much I was carrying. 125 lbs (ok, it's about 15 lbs less than my own weight, but still pretty damn good for someone who doesn't work out).

Sucking a hole in my pocket

IN the ongoing saga that is my moneypit of a car, now that the weather is warming up the car is starting to overheat, mostly when you drive at slow speeds or turn the AC on. I phoned up my mechanic brother-in-law (not mechanical brother-in-law, although that would be cool), and he thinks there's some blockage in the coolant system.

I think that when I took the thing in to Crappy Tire 6 months ago they either put in a defective waterpump, didn't hook it up correctly, or screwed something else up. My reasoning for this? As soon as I started driving the car after they worked on it the temperature gauge was up a notch or so. I didn't make a fuss at the time because it was winter and it didn't seem to be causing any problems unfortunately now it's summer and the fuckin' thing is overheating.

I'm taking it to another shop tomorrow morning and get them to fix it, if it IS CT's fault I'm taking the bill back and shoving it in their stupid insufficienly educated faces.

[update] It's in the shop... the guy says it looks like a blockage of some sort, but he can't tell... but if the thing wasn't drained properly when they replaced the water pump it apparently can damage your head gasket. I would say most likely from the back pressure or air in the system? I don't know, I'm not a mechanic. Fuckin car.