From August first till my birthday on the 10th I didn't drink. I did it last year as a sort of cleansing before turning 28, did the same thing last year. Now think here, when was the last time you didn't have anything to drink for 10 days? It had been exactly a year for me. I found myself a little crankier at the end of the work day, feeling extremely good in the mornings and after 8 days, I was down about five pounds from the last time I weighed myself a few months ago. I developed this nervous tick that I haven't suffered from since I was in college (a need to click my teeth together and take shallow chest breaths), which has pretty much gone away since my birthday. I can't say that the absense of booze made me a mental or physical superhero, but it did improve my faculties a notch or two.
The birthday itself was a pretty low key affair. I haven't been training so much these days, so I just ran to work (5.5 miles), something that I think I'll do again soon. I would have run back, but I had to pick up the dog and drop him with Rose for the weekend as I went to Shannon and Tim's wedding on the Cape. After squaring the dog away, Laura and I went off to my favorite restaurant, Little Giant for an incredible meal.
Driving to the Cape was nice until it wasn't. We escaped the majority of incoming Cape traffic, but the car started leaking more and more. We dropped the thing at a place called Frank's Citgo near where we were staying and had Frank take a look at it. He told us that the coolant pump was shot, how much it would be and then gave us a lift to our bed and breakfast and walking directions to a good restaurant.
On the way home from the Cape, we again escaped the traffic only to have the whole enginge disengage on the highway, along with the brakes with just enough time for Laura to ease it off to the side of the road and for me to grind it to a halt with the parking brake. A tow, a taxi, a train, the subway and a 10 minute walk were all that it took to get home, eleven and a half hours after we left that morning.
Today I found out that the timing belt was what gave up the ghost. Generally, they're to be replaced every 60,000 miles, which would mean that this sucker will be the third or fourth that the car has seen.
There's a certain logic that might say that since we've replaced so many major mechanical things on the car and have had a wide variety of professionals look the thing over in the 1000 or so miles that we've driven the thing, that perhaps we've reached some kind of equilbrium. After this, 70,000 miles of free sailing, you've replaced all the big shit. On the other hand, Laura and I are leaning towards the logic used by pit bull owners whose dog has twice bitten their small child. Either through adoption or lethal injection, we going to get rid of the thing.
So, if any of you 8 people that read this have a friend of a friend of a friend who's in the market and is an expert tinkerer and/or licensed mechanic then steer 'em to me.
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