My car needs an oil change. It has 6500 miles on it. For weeks, I’ve been wondering when it would need its first oil change. The manual doesn’t say anything, I logged onto a website that doesn’t say anything, nothing says anything. This weekend, an orange icon depicting a wrench lit up on my dashboard, and then there was a message declaring that my oil’s life has 15% remaining. 15% of what, exactly? What would it be like to have a little light in the dashboard that is the inside of my cranium, and it would light up when I had 15% remaining? I’d probably still wonder, “15% of what?” right up until the end. Probably not a good feature.
The porch is still in shambles, because I had to get new treads custom-made, and that took some time. But it’s looking like Mars Lumber (yes, really) should have my custom-made cypress treads finished this week, and hopefully I’ll finish the porch-steps-replacement project while…
Julie’s taking her niece to New York City this weekend. I’ve been to New York City for the weekend before. I hope they don’t blow all our money on oysters and strip clubs.
I did all the plumbing and electrical wiring for our powder room. It was years ago, but it’s basically held up so that makes me a plumbing expert. Except the supply-line valve behind the sink occasionally springs a leak and I’m not sure about this but it looks like it might be coming from one of my expert sweat joints. In the past, the leak has fixed itself if I just left it alone and didn’t bother it for a while. We have really hard water. I think the water is hard enough to fix the leak. That’s my theory and I’m sticking with it unless or until the baseboards or drywall in the powder room rot or mildew.
Hard water is a capricious bitch though, and it’s no friend to dishwashers. You probably already knew this, but a dishwasher is basically a watertight chamber with a couple of racks and some spinning sprinklers attached to them. Hard water clogs the sprinkler holes over time, and then you think your dishwasher is a piece of shit, the door of which deserves to be slammed and kicked and cursed, until you realize a pipe cleaner and five minutes of your composed effort could have saved you hundreds of dollars in repair bills and countless loads of hand-washed dishes. But like I said, hard water is a capricious bitch. Fixes your leaky sweat joints, lands you and your dishwasher in the poor house.
I have a migraine today, and it is several kinds of bad. Usually, my migraines consist of sensory sensitivity and visual impairment, but aren’t especially painful. Today, I’m fielding a relentless headache to boot, and my friend Tony who sits next to me at work and is an unconscious foot-tapper while he codes is playing the longest Pantera song you could imagine with his feet and while my heart really loves Tony my head is fucking dying up here and does anyone have about 1800mg of ibuprofen?
Julie’s birthday was this weekend, and I just love her so dearly. I threw her a little party, for which her parents and her sister’s family came over, and the boys even put down their Minecraft for long enough to come eat ice cream and watch her open presents. She quit Facebook a few weeks ago, and it was interesting to see what it was like to celebrate a birthday without a stream of “happy birthday!” wishes arriving via cellphone. A few people even texted or called her! Like real friends!
This space intentionally left blank, because mystery and potential.