Royce's Random Thoughts

Monday-Tuesday: Average. Hate work.

Wednesday: Ice storm drops a pine tree across the yards of my neighbor and I (we live in a row of townhouses). Fortunately it misses our roof, but it takes out my neighbor's gutters and poke several holes in her roof. On the plus side her son is contractor, so tree removal starts that afternoon.

Oh, and I miss another day's pay because I have to stay home with the kids.

Thursday: Come into work late because I had to put the kids on the bus. Find an email from my boss with a list of idiot mistakes I'd made last month that I had to correct. Miss listening to a conference call because I can't figure out how to log in until it's too late.

Friday: Rush to work after dropping off Tracy's car at the ship because it's making knocking noises. Find out we need to get her a new car. (9K engine repairs on a twelve year old car). Make more mistakes at work.

I wanna Do Over...

Just wanted to let everyone know that I'm doing Much Better Now, thanks. Tuesday was a combination of things hitting me all at once, the bank foul up, the car and a couple of other unexpected bills, and the kids reacting to Tracy and I's stressing out that just sent me over the edge briefly. I'm sorry if I worried anyone and I'm grateful for all the expressions of concern (especially a private and very generous one I received).

So, more or less in order.

1. The bank: For some silly reason the bank only made half of my deposit available after I entered it, the rest appearing the next business day. So even though I deposited it Friday evening, nothing showed up until Teusday morning thanks to the MLK holiday.

2. After some juggling, Tracy's car is working again. The $1200 bill the car shop had originally reported for replacing the A/C compressor in her car was reduced to a much more manageable $315, which we were able to pay for by dipping into our home equity account. So she might not be too comfortable in the summer, but at least her car is limping along until mine get paid off and we can replace hers.

3. Other bills, The original source of our weekend stress was our car registration fees with the state that are due at the end of the month. Those will be be paid. It just knocks down our reserves a bit more than we like.

4. Mom is doing just fine, aside from her dog Daisy jumping on her tummy unexpectedly a couple of days ago.

5. As I said earlier, I've applied for three jobs at Holy Cross Hospital. I honestly don't expect anything to come from them, but who knows. Shrug

We're okay. We'll survive until we get our tax returns back and we can build up the reserve in the checking account again. Now that we have our plan of attack sorted out we're both feeling a lot better and the kids in turn are less stressed out.

Christmas Eve we were driving back from moonshadowed's brother's place when the temperature indicator shot up into the red. I nursed it back home and re-filled the anti-freeze, which had been bone dry, to normal levels. It didn't do any good and the engine gauge was still shooting up after about 15 minutes travel. So today I brought it into the shop.

Verdict: There's a hole in the radiator and in the coolant pump. Total cost to repair, along with replacing some vital hoses, would be just a hair under $2K. My mom agreed to cover it (she earns more through her Social Security check and her investments than Tracy I do with our jobs) but it was still humiliating ot have to ask her.

I hate this. I hate not having a good job. I being too scared to look for a better one. I hate feeling like we're on the edge of disaster all the fucking time.

I had 87.85 dollars in my PayPal account, which was going to be used when I hit the $100 mark to buy a LEGO set I was drooling over.

Now it's going to go towards replacing a brake pad on my van. :(

Went to my car to drive home after work ended, turned my key in the ignition, and got dead silence aside from the usual ding ding and a few flashing indicator lights. Which worried me, since I hadn't gotten any warning about a dying battery from a hard start this morning, and the starter wasn't turning over at all.
The AAA first responder did get the car to start with a jump (the battery is seven years old and definitely dead), but his test of the electrical system led to a lot of flashing dash indicators and an asthmatic A/C. So rather than risk stalling out on I-95 he called a tow truck and I had it hauled to CarMax in Laurel. By the time Tracy picked me up from there and we got home it was 8:30. And that's how a 40 minute commute took 3 1/2 hours.

If the electrical system is borked I'm not worrying too much about it. The van is still under it's 60 month, 60,000 mile warranty, so if it does need repairs it's only going to cost me $50 plus the cost of a new battery. Still, I'm going to have to a sick day and stay by the phone to wait for the word from CarMax.

Took the day off today and brought my minivan into the shop. Turns out I lost the ront pad because apparently the rear brakes hadn't been working at all for quite some time. The drums were rusted to the point of crumbling to pieces so those had to be replaced, along with both front calipers and some other things, to the tune of $1284.

So yeah, I drove home last night with one working brake pad.

Which we can't aford at all, so it went on our emergency credit card and called Mom for help. She went along with it but I still got sick to my stomach having to ask her. I am so fucking tired of living on the margins.

Less than a month after I bought my new (new for me anyway) minivan, back in January of 08, I managed to scrape off the passenger side mirror on a circus truck. Which sounds wierder than it was, since it happened to be a Barnum & Bailer tractor trailer parked outside the Mariner Arena in Baltimore. Fortunately a bit of duct tape kept me going until I could find the time to bring it in for repairs. Said time got increasingly distant when the repair shop gave me a $300+ quote for parts and labor.

The situation became a touch more fraught when the repeated duct tapings finally failed and the mirror dissapeared somewhere enroute from my house to the local PetSmart. So I bit the bullet and bought a new after market mirror from eBay in July and for the past month have been losing hairs as I merge into traffic on I-395.

Finally I made it up to my brother-in-law's house and he helped me install it (ie: did all the work while I kibitzed) today. Total installation time, including electrical connections, 15 minutes, zero dollars. Parts cost $34 plus $17 shipping.

Time to affect repairs: Twenty months.

So Sunday Tracy and I got her mom to look after Thomas while we trudged down to CarMax to price vehicles. I managed to find a nice minivan, a Dodge Grand Caravan, with about 40k miles on it for less than $13k. The only hitch is that I can't find the title for my old Taurus, so I may have to go to the MVA to get new copy tomorrow so we can sell it to CarMax and get $250 back. Hopefully before they take a closer look at the thing and realize $250 was way too generous for that hunk of metal, [1]

Now if I could jsut figure out how to switch the mileage tracker from displaying liter to gallons.

[1] Total Problems with my Old Taurus: Small dent in front right quarter, scratches and dings on the roof from trying to haul and overlarge box, damaged rear fender (not visible, so it was a surprise), no heat, no AC, which meant no defroster (so I've had some hairy rides trying to drive home in the rain and snow this winter), no cigarette lighter and major leaks in the oil pan and the tranmission. But it did last me for ten years and 196,000+ miles, which isn't too bad from any persepctive.