New Car Smell

After an almost $1300 bill, the car (affectionately referred to as the "Chick Magnet") was released from the shop with a brand new clutch.

And some valve cover gaskets, because leaking oil all over the city is apparently a bad thing.

I had to make that decision that every owner of a used car has to make when it needs repairs.

What's the breaking point between doing the work and just selling the car?

I paid $2300 for this car about five years ago, and since then have paid over $5000 in maintenance and repairs (not including insurance and gas - and the new clutch).

So I have to ask myself: Why the fuck am I sinking so much dough into my 1991 Toyota Tercel? It's not like it's a classic. It's not perfect in every other way. Hell, I'm not even that sentimental about the thing.

It's just my car.

But it's a good car. It's a good city car. It's small, it has good mileage, it's clean. Other, more sensible people might say: "Sell it and use that money to buy another car."

The thing is, though, is that I'm not going to buy a new car. I'll just buy another used car. And if I get another used car, I'll just have to deal with more mechanical issues.

At least with this car, I know the mechanical issues. I knew it needed a new clutch for a number of years, and finally had to bite the bullet. I know it needs an alignment.

When I drove it away today, the car definitely had a different feel to it. It's like "whoa, so THAT's what a clutch is supposed to feel like!"

The thing is, I was somewhat disappointed. I knew my car. I drive it every day. I know its ins and outs. I know how it drives, how it feels. And when I drove it away from the repair shop, it felt different. It wasn't MY car.

So, in a sense, I did spend that money to get a new car. It's just the same as my old car in every other way, except it has a brand new clutch.

I guess I should get it aligned now.

This whole Tosh thing

When the news broke yesterday about the rape jokes, and twitter and facebook started blowing up with anti-Daniel Tosh sentiments, for some reason I started feeling guilty.

Like, a culpable guilt. As if I was involved somehow. I couldn't quite figure it out.

I don't make rape jokes. And in fact, when I'm reviewing acts to perform at SketchFest, if you have a rape joke in your set, I put you in the "no" file.

So why was I feeling guilty?

And then it dawned on me. I felt guilty because I had watched an episode of Tosh.0 once.

Once.

See What Happens

Not quite sure what set this guy off.

I walked out of the Tractor Tavern, heading towards my car parked a few blocks south. I walked down Ballard Avenue, and at 20th I altered my trajectory to cross the intersection, but as I looked up the street, I saw a car coming, so I stayed on my side of the street and when the car passed, headed across the intersection towards the east side of Ballard Avenue, just south of Conor Byrne.

That's when I saw this guy in a white t-shirt yelling and walking swiftly towards me.

Honestly, I don't remember exactly what he said, but the gist of it was "Yeah, you think you're tough? Come on, motherfucker!"

Since I don't actively seek out confrontation, and since I didn't do anything that would have aggrivated this dude, I at first didn't think his vitriol was directed towards me.

But it was, and that soon became clear.

I was still in the middle of the intersection when I realized he was heading towards me quite directly, and I doubted that he was mad at me for jaywalking.

"Come on, motherfucker! I'm gonna beat your fuckin ass!" he yelled at me again.

"Sam, come on man," I heard the other dude say.

The problem here was that, since he obviously misinterpreted something I did (starting to cross the street, then not because of the car, then crossing), I felt the need to clear everything up. To say "hey man, I don't know what's up, but I didn't do what you think I did, so we cool."

An alternate version would also be "fucking lay off, alright?"

He was still a good 20 to 30 feet away, still walking towards me, but not running, and that was the important part.

I kept walking. Part of me wanted to confront him. To stand up for myself. I knew his name, I knew what bar he'd been at (either Conor Byrne or Lock 'n' Keel), and I figured his friend would intervene on my behalf since he was trying to calm Sam down.

Part of me wanted to have this fight, to engage this dude to tell him what I thought of his attitude. And if I got my ass kicked, then I'd at least have a lawsuit opportunity. Yes, part of me was thinking this way.

Most of me, though, knew that engaging him, and insulting him (whatever I said would have been an "insult") was the wrong approach. And so I kept walking.

"That's fucking right, you keep walking!" I now heard from behind me.

"Sam, come on man. It's not worth it," I heard his friend say. "Come on, man."

I hit the sidewalk, and kept my pace heading southbound. Sam, north of me, kept walking towards me.

"Turn around, see what happens!" He yelled towards me.

"Sam!" his friend yelled.

 I didn't hear footsteps running towards me. If I had heard him running, I would have turned around, ready to confront him. Instead, I just kept telling myself "don't engage. Don't engage."

That would have been the trigger. I've seen this behavior before, and Sam was just looking for someone to provoke him. Walking away, as I was doing, not turning around, was the "safest" bet. Sam wasn't going to come after me if I didn't give him any reason. He just needed to assert his (albeit pathetic) manhood.

And, a few seconds later, he let up. When I reached the next block, I turned to make sure.

When I reached my car, I decided to drive past that intersection as I was heading out. I guess I wanted to get a good look at him, in case he'd found another target and a witness was needed.

And not because I wanted to run him over.

70 Years Ago

For the past few years, I've procrastinated on cleaning up my grandfather's memoirs to publish them. I've decided that the best way to get this done is to just focus on spelling and punctuation. I'm not allowed to fix his grammar or factual mistakes.

I'll save that for the epilogue.

Anyway, Grandpa was a second lieutenant in command of the 21st Quartermaster Car Company stationed at Fort Lewis. He was 29 and engaged to my grandmother, Margaret. Grandma was living in McMinnville, Oregon, working as the society editor at the local weekly.


------


Now to Pearl Harbor, the day that "will live in infamy," according to President Roosevelt. It was Sunday and Lt. Quinn and I were lolling around in our quarters reading and writing. The radio was playing some innocuous tune and I was thinking that in a few minutes I would have to bestir myself, strap on my .45 revolver and walk to the battalion headquarters of an engineer company where, during a brief ceremonial revue of area guards, I was to take over my shift as OD (officer of the day).

The area of my responsibility included several units in my end of Fort Lewis. Each unit contributed, by roster, men as guards and officers as officer of the day.

I had just risen from my writing desk when the radio announcer stridently reported that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. Quinn and I stood glued to the radio for a few minutes, appalled and excited. I couldn't wait any longer and almost ran to take over my OD post. Quickly Fort Lewis was rousing from the somnolence of a Sunday to a state of almost hysterical animation.

Early that night as I was sitting in one of the engineer battalion offices, having only minutes earlier visited all guard stations in my duty area, the telephone rang. It was a guard stationed at an enlisted men's beer joint in my area. He said there was a riot and he needed help.

I grabbed two of the largest men in sight and armed them with baseball bats (enlisted men in the newer units had not yet been issued arms). We jumped into a jeep and raced to the beer joint. Inside, men were packed like sardines, many of them drunk, all celebrating in advance of the action they knew was coming. Every voice in the room was in high gear. Several fights were in progress.

I was too short to see over all the heads and wasn't sure what was going on. The two enlisted men and I shoved our way to the bar and I jumped on top of it. I blew my whistle and motioned in the direction the two men should take. Without laying the bats on too heavily, they soon broke up the fights. I was herding everybody out when the MPs arrived and took over. At least the men had let off some steam that night without much damage.

The next day war was declared against Japan and, soon after, against Germany and Italy. Nineteen US ships had been sunk or otherwise destroyed at Pearl Harbor and 3000 Americans killed. A tight lid was placed on Fort Lewis, nobody could get on or off the Post without special orders from Corps. There was a feeling that the Japanese might be right off the west coast and we might be bombed or invaded. Total blackout was ordered and most units, including mine, were ordered out into the prairie hills east of Fort Lewis for the night,

We bivouacked at night, using only the blackout lights built into the lighting systems of the newer cars and trucks. It was confusion on a vast scale. The next day the Army was reassured that we weren't about to be invaded; we returned to the post. But Fort Lewis was buttoned up tight for more than a week.

I was on the phone to Margaret as soon as I reached our unit area. We decided to get married the following Friday, December 13, if I could wrangle approval to leave the post and go to McMinnville. My friend, the colonel, Corps Quartermaster, gave me that permission.

We are the 9%

I was in the Ballard Fred Meyer last night, looking over their micro-brew and import selection. I didn't want to drink much that night, just wanted to sample something new during dinner.

A fellow shopper stepped up beside me. "Looking for a Belgium ale?" he asked.

"Not particularly," I replied, a little shocked that a stranger was talking to me. "Just looking for something new, you know."

He pointed to a pint bottle. "Have you had this yet?"

"I think I have," I said, recalling the bottle as something someone brought to my birthday earlier this year.

We stood there in silence, then he said, "Have you had Doghead Fish* Ale?", and pointed down the aisle.

"Which one?"

"This one," and he picked up a four-pack of bottles and handed it to me.

"It's good, eh?"

"It'll knock you down," he said, and walked away.

I looked at one of the bottles, and saw that this particular beer was 9% alcohol. For context, your normal beers average between 5.2 and 6%. Figured that's why it was sold only in a four-pack and not your usual six-pack.

So I put it in my basket, along with my frozen dinner-in-a-bag and colored pencils, and went home to subsequently consume all four bottles.

So much for sampling.

*or "Dogfish Head Ale" - I can't be responsible for remembering such things.

The New Normal

Facebook and Twitter have become the new blogger.

I don't write much online anymore, obviously. I'm active on other social networking sites - where I can post without thinking too much.

I also write every day in a journal I keep on my computer. A Pages document that sits on my hard drive. Perhaps at the end of the year I'll read through it and think something's special enough to post online.

Or maybe it'll all be too painful.

I also want to invest in a new laptop next year, so maybe when I get a new lappy I'll be motivated to write more, but for now I guess I'll have to deal with the fact that I've posted around 6 to 7 entries for all of 2011.

Perhaps I'll just kill this here blog, like I did Write That Down. Sure, it'll still be online, but understood that it's a dead blog.

And maybe sometime in 2012 or 2013, Google will decide to erase all blogger URLs that haven't had any activity in the last 12 months. Won't that be something? Remember Journalspace?

Anyway, I was able to keep to my New Year's resolution to write every day for this year, perhaps I'll be able to write every day next year too, but at least publicly.

So what I'm saying is I may kill the blog, but don't give up on me yet.

Jesus...

Benefits of the Position

"Leniency for a Rocketman?" I ask the Parking Enforcement Officer as I walk up to my car. He was in the process of writing me a ticket for my expired sticker.

"Well, I guess," he says, looking up - then doing a double-take as he noticed my outfit. "This is your car?"

"Yes. I know it's just a Tercel, not a rocket, but..."

"Okay, I gave them a break, so I'll give you a break too," he says, pointing to the people getting into the Lexus behind mine. "Fairness for all."

"Thanks," I say and march towards the metering station.

"Hey," he stops me. "You said this is your car?"

"Yes, it is."

"You have to move it."

I point to the metering station. "I can't just buy more time?"

"No, you have to move it after two hours," he says gruffly over the honking.

I don't want to get off his good graces, so I do a quick about-face and head towards my car. "Oh, okay. I didn't know. Thanks."

The people leaving the space behind me - the ones who also got a break, almost hit an SUV as they're pulling out. Hence the honking. The honking and road rage continue down the street. When the two cars are at the intersection, the driver of the SUV gets out to confront the Lexus, which speeds away around the corner.

I put my goggles on and drive away.

Carefully.