How Do You Say "Hell Yeah" In Bosnian?

I don't have Narcisa's e-mail or phone number and we've been going back and fourth in the comment section so here goes: Laura and I would love to come to Sarajevo and Croatian under whatever pretext you can come up with!

Ahh The Car

Whoever said that posessions clutter your life clearly owned a car. This past weekend, Laura and I went up to Boston to get the car, the plates the registration and of course THE CAR. When we had enough stuff to legally climb into the car and drive it on the roads, we caravaned straight to Laura's mechanic to get the thing inspected, a maiden voyage of about 6 miles. About halfway there something went terribly wrong, the car overheated and by the time we got it to the station, three of the guys there had to push it onto the curb. I called the guy who I bought the thing from and he basically castigated me for not having checked the oil, water and gas guages before driving the car. In the interest of keeping diplomatic ties to the man, who I had at first taken as an honest and nice guy from Iowa, I didn't say that I would hope the fucking thing could have gone 6 miles to a mechanic without farting out on me. For the next 18 hours, Laura and I waited for the news going over different scenarios and trying to take comfort in Massachusettes' Lemon Law. The next day Laura's mechanic, Larry called and said that the car had a busted hose and that it passed inspection. Grand total $85. He also told us that the car was very old and that we shouldn't put any more money into it.

Duly shaken, we headed from Boston to New York, not sure what would happen. About 80 miles out of New York, we stopped at a gas station and filled up the tank. Laura notised that the front of the car was leaking fluid in a little stream about half the width of a pencil. With 80 miles more to go, visions of complete doom and Laura getting more dismayed by the second, I put on my calm and calming face and snagged the owners manual. Under the "common problems" section I found what I was looking for, bought some water and some radiator fixer and fixed the leak in the radiator. I was fucking amazed. In a fit of magical thinking I actually addressed the car as we were driving it and told the car that we just wanted 10,000 problem free miles and then we would retire it or sell it off to someone who can do a better job than us and maintaining it.


Laura and I still don't trust the car as far as we can throw it. It's got all kinds of strange idiosyncrasies that we're in the process of discovering. I had a slight panic attack today when I thought that I had parked it on the wrong side of the street on the wrong day and that I would have to pay a $100 fine and spend a week picking a bright green sticker off the window. For all the crap that having a car entails though, I still caught myself a few times getting the same feeling I got when I first got my license and inhereted my father's '87 Chevy. The promise of effortless transport.

Flaming Bikes of Death

Sometimes I wonder to myself, "what is the most dangerous, irresponsible thing I could possibly do on a bike that would endanger both me and everyone around me?" Luckily, the good Oregonians of Chunk 666 have answered that for me

Missouri On My Mind

According to the New York Times my home state is taking another hard look at its death penalty rules. Apparently the guy who'd been executing people for the last 10 years has been screwing up the death cocktail and blames it on his dyslexia. The doctor is a surgeon and so they tried to replace him with an anesthesiologist. Of the 298 anesthesiologists in the area that they solicited, all 298 said hell no. Happily, my dad was one of them. Way to keep to the hypiocratic oath dad!

Sick

I'm almost never too sick to work, but as I was walking the dog I imagined myself actually going through the motions of work feeling like I am and decided against it. The world shall go coasterless one more day.

This is the first sick day I've taken off because of genuinely being too sick to work in...I have no idea. I had to take one day off of class once my junior year of college because of a nasty fever and cold, which was the first time in my educational career.

Getting Shit Done!

Spent the last week in Massachusettes, New Bedford, Jamaica Plain and Wayland. Laura went up last Saturday to New Bedford to meet up with her friend Alicia and to oogle at her 8 month old baby Anais.



I came to New Bedford on Monday after finishing my Monday deliveries. Alicia's place is a trip, there are five people, three dogs, one cat and a baby living in one house. Everyone chips in to look after the baby, it's impressive.

For our nation's 230th birthday, we went over to Alicia's mom's place a couple of blocks away and had a barbeque. John and Noreen came and John went house on the barbicue. He cooked up some Portugese style linguice dogs, chorizo dogs and some intense ribs. Later than night they drove us back in their new car and we spent the night in Jamaica Plain.

The next day we went to Wayland Mass, to Laura's mom, Val's place. From there on it was all business. Laura has had some outstanding hiccups with her license and the project of the week was to get it all settled. On Thursday we spent the day, and I mean THE DAY in Worcester District court waiting to see a judge. It was quite possibly the saddest six straight hours I've spent in a long long time. The best was the 67 year old man who was being arraigned for assault with a deadly weapon (he hit a nurse when she tried to take his blood) he was apprently weaned off of his drugs beforehand. After we were heading back after the lunch break, we saw him coming the other way. Laura's time in front of the judge was a combined one minute and thirty seconds. Laura is no more in trouble with Worcester nor shall she be cuz we promised each other we'd never return.

On Friday we bought a car. We had checked the thing out on Wednesday, had a little test drive and had gotten a great vibe from the guy who was selling it. The car is a 1987 Volvo 240 DL. It has its own little idiosycrasies such as a broken gas guage and a roll up window that needs a little help but mechanically, it's sound. The guy who owned it owns his own company that makes parts for semiconductors, he futzes with Volvo's in his spare time. It cost so little, the thing has to last but 8 short months to have been worth it. I bring you: THE BLUE BRICK




Currently, the car is chilling near Val's house, we'll be picking it up in a couple of weeks. Oh yeah.

Yeah US Army!

Just got off of the phone with the nice lady at USAA insurance. It seems that the collective bargaining power of the United States Army is going to give me a pretty sweet deal on car insurance. Laura and I are off to take care of her license tomorrow, I have to switch my license over to NYS and then it's clear sailing. I swear...

New Bedford Ho

I'm off to New Bedford Mass tomorrow to meet up with Laura and stay with her friends Alicia, Jude and baby Anais. Should be a damned good time. Topping the list of things to experience are s'more of those linguisa rolls (Portugese chees and pork filled rolls-freaking delicious). Then off to Boston with John and Noreen and a stay at the Mother In-Law's.

In other cheery news, John apparently kicked some major ass on his LSATs. We all knew he was a smart cookie, and now there is standardized evidence to support it.

I bought a home trainer for the apartment. It's one of those contraptions that makes your regular bike into a stationary bicycle in about 35 seconds. It's the height of motivated laziness since I can crank up the AC and watch TV as I give myself the equivilent of a one hour spinning classs. The one downside is that it makes this loud whirring sound as you do it and so you have to tun up the television pretty high. Perhaps a pair of very long earphones is in order. I did a straight hour of it yesterday and soaked through my shirt, shorts and socks. I didn't eat much and when I went to grab a bite to eat with Sam I wolfed down my po-boy like it was crudite. The waitress even commented on it. I was still hungry afterwards and Sam took pity on me and gave me a piece of his fried chicken. He didn't have to ask me twice.

After eating we sauntered over to McCarren park and witnessed the height of neighborhood hipsterdom, the Kickball Championships. A suppose there are a lot of worse things that people can do with their time than dress up in outlandish chlothes and play elementary school games. I notised a huge increase in the number of hipster moms there. Sam wondered aloud what kind of effect it would have on that generation to grow up with their parents playing kickball and listening to Belle and Sebastian booming from movable sound systems. I'm sure they'll grow up just fine, or become the new heads of Bear Sterns, it remains to be seen.

On Friday Laura and I went out to Diner to eat and the place was overrun with kids. I found it pretty funny, since the place started out as and ironic subversion of the old style family restaurant and now has become one. Lately, whenever Laura is sitting across from me at a restaurant and she's staring at something over my shoulder and not following the conversation, there's a 100% chance that there's a baby behind me. The clock ticks ever louder.