Journals : 2008 : March

2 March 2008 | Link this

I think I'd be extremely embarrassed to tell anyone I lived on Mourning Dove Drive. Reflective Penguin Parkway, maybe, but not Mourning Dove Drive.

3 March 2008 | Link this

Among the strange things an insomniac can find on TV at 3:30 in the morning are tidbits such as the 1963 "I"ve Got a Secret" episode that features a very young (and pre-Velvet Underground) John Cale, whose secret was that he'd recently been part of a tag team 18-hour performance of Erik Satie's "Vexations". His co-contestant was the only audience member who'd sat through the entre performance.

It was interesting stuff, indeed, but I'll have to admit I still would've preferred being asleep.

19 March 2008 | Link this

At certain points in life, one finds oneself at a crossroads. I found myself at this one over the past weekend. There's no real significance here, and nothing that will explain my two week absence. I was just amused to have found myself midway between Pinetops and Conetoe.

My cool activity for the day was seeing this guy speak, which gave me a bigtime geek stiffy. I rememeber being really excited about this project when I read about it in the Chronicle several years ago and then, for some reason, forgetting all about it. I think I originally had trouble accessing the site and then sort of forgot to go back to it. Anyway, this is very sexy stuff, and it's sort of the whole reason I got on this whole Library and Information Studies kick and entered graduate school at age 43.

So how was your spring break?

23 March 2008 | Link this

I've been holding off on writing about this because it makes me sad.

About a week ago, I was driving home from work, and I noticed that my car was making sort of a clicking noise, and it wasn't accelerating very well. It was also idling really badly. Mark and I were leaving town that night, so I didn't think much about it until Monday morning, when I took it into the mechanic. He told me the engine was "just about shot" and didn't really elaborate, but charged my ninety bucks for the diagnosis. So I then took it to the good mechanic (the one I should have taken it to first), who took only a few minutes to tell me (at no charge) that I had a burned out valve, and that replacing it would cost eight or nine hundred dollars.

My car is a 1991 Toyota Corolla, with 175,000 miles on the odometer, peeling paint on the exterior, a broken key stuck in one of the doors, and bad shocks. Some of you may remember when I bought it, over eleven years ago, following its predecessor's disturbing death by arson. I love this car. It's taken me on two round trip cross-country journeys (one in 1997 and one in 1998) and another one-way crossing as well. It survived numerous break-ins in San Francisco, and took me to Fresno and back many weekends in 2001 and 2002, before Mark and I cohabited. We've been everywhere together, and it's given me almost no trouble at all, aside from a big scare which turned out to be a minor thing in central Texas in 2005. I thought it was indesctructable. But it's not. And I can't justify spending so much money (probably more than its current book value) on this repair.

Which means that my Corolla is about to go to car heaven. Its tags and insurance (conveniently coming due on the next month or so) will not be renewed. I'm going to run out its last tank of gas (I filled up the day before the calamity) driving back and forth to work, since I'm comfortable walking home from there should it die on the road. And then, I'll either scrap it or donate its carcass to a worthy cause and take a tax deduction.

I drive my cars until they die. I'm glad this one didn't die a slow, lingering death like my Firebird and my Duster, nor a violent death like my Scamp, my Tempo, and my Cavalier. I'd like to go that way myself when my time comes.

I'm really going to miss this car. I'll probably never have another one that will compare.

25 March 2008 | Link this

Seems Hillary Clinton is going to be just a couple of blocks from my house on Thursday afternoon. Probably just as I'm trying to drive home from work.

29 March 2007 | Link this

I hate when I post an unfinished (and likely never to really be published) journal entry here by accident.

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