Tag: Car

  • Planning Home Projects

    General Update – The car got fixed, you know, from yesterday. It was the engine thermostat that needed to be replaced. Cost over $1,200 to get it fixed. But the car is back, and all is well in the Universe.

    The other thing that happened yesterday was that the air conditioner that we ordered arrived a day early. See, this winter, we got rid of the a/c unit that was in the kid’s room – it was over six years old, and had seen better days. The plan here is to move the unit in the livingroom (6,000 btu) into the kids room, and replace it with a larger and more powerful (8,000 btu) unit. 6k btu might be overkill in the kid’s room, but it just wasn’t cutting it in the livingroom. (Also, the end of March is a great time to buy an a/c as they are all on sale, to move out last year’s inventory for the new in prep for Summer.) BUT, before all of this installing can happen in both rooms, we need to repaint the windows and trim, so everything will be matching, and the apartment looks a little more unified.

    I say all of this because, as I was hauling the unbelievable heavy a/c unit up three flights of stairs, I was excited for all of the home improvement projects we have. You know of the a/c and window project. Then there is redoing our “mudroom” area by the front door, and replacing the livingroom ceiling fan. There is the touchup painting in our bedroom, and hopefully coming up with a better closet situation. The biggest project of them all is working on the kid’s room. It reflects the interests of an eight-year-old, and not the aspirations of a soon to be teenager. Not sure how to accomplish that, nor what budget for it will be, but I know that it’s important to the kid, so it’s important to me.

    I say all of this because what it really means is that we are coming out of Winter. We can open the windows again, and let the breeze blow through. There is a wonderful peace and tranquility that comes from this time of year. It is fleeting though. Soon, it will be too hot and steamy in the City, and the windows will close up and the a/c’s will roar on. If it’s a good year, we’ll have a comfortable Spring until early June. If it’s a bad year, we’ll be locking up in May.

  • Check Engine Light: The Beginning of the End

    I don’t mind owning a car, and I’m okay with owning a car in the City, but if I had my choice, I would not own a car. I do enjoy how the car allows me to feel free in the sense that I can leave NYC whenever I want, and I would be lying if having a car hasn’t made some tasks/chores a whole lot easier.

    My problem is that I feel like a car is a ticking time bomb, and at any moment, it is going to blow up in my face. What that means is that a car is just a machine, and the more you use a machine, the likelihood of it breaking down increases, and it will break down. That’s just a fact. So, to me, owning a car is just a waiting game until that breakdown happens. Doesn’t matter how well one can take care of the car; it will break down.

    I have been very good with our car. I get the oil changed regularly, go in for a yearly tune up, replace the tires, clean it often and not to brag, I have gotten a little handy with doing some basic maintenance on the car myself. I am proud of my ability to make sure that this car runs well, and hopefully for a very long time.

    But that ticking is never far from the back of my head.

    And on Friday, the “Check Engine” light came on.

    Tick Tick Tick…

    I didn’t fart around, and immediately schedule to have to car checked out today, Monday morning. Driving the car over to the shop, I couldn’t hear anything wrong with the engine; no gurgles, hiccups, chokes, coughs, or anything. She was purring like she always has. Even when I dropped the car off and the tech was asking me questions, he seemed a bit surprised that I hadn’t heard or felt anything. “Let’s check it out to be safe,” he said.

    Maybe, hopefully, the light means nothing. My dad had a Volkswagen Rabbit who’s check engine light came on, and when he took it in, they couldn’t find anything, but the light wouldn’t shut off. So, my dad just put a piece of electrical tape over the light; problem solved.

    I could get that lucky, too, right? Just a bug, no big deal.

    Tick Tick Tick…

  • Snow Fatigue

    I don’t know if that is a real thing, but I am going to chalk up all of my feeling of exhaustion and the sore right elbow that I have to “snow fatigue.”

    Yes, I shoveled our car out of the snow once the blizzard let up. I took the kid with me, but she was only into cleaning the car off for about fifteen minutes. After that, she just wanted to play in the snow. Don’t blame her, I still like playing in the snow.

    After cleaning off the car, we went to the local park and did some sledding. We have a two-seater sled, which we are rather good at. Yet, for some reason yesterday, we just kept heading toward the trees and bushes, or we were tumbling down in the hill. Not that it really mattered, we were having a good time. We even got in a snowball fight; as you do.

    This morning, when I woke up, I was sore. Sore in my elbow, neck, and knees. Add on top of that is the feeling of continual fatigue. I got almost all of my chores done, yet I can’t shake the feeling that if I sit down, I will fall asleep. In fact, I’m having the toughest time staying awake as I write this. I just want to go to bed.

    Making it hard to focus.

    Making hard to get anything done.

    Making it hard in general to generally do anything.

    Again, I blame the snow.

  • ODDS and ENDS: Everything is Green, Son of a Clothes Horse, and Sick Kid on the Couch

    ODDS and ENDS: Everything is Green, Son of a Clothes Horse, and Sick Kid on the Couch

    (Who said that!? Not Me!)

    …And I hope you enjoy the weird AI image that was created for this post…

    Came out this morning to do the Alt Side Parking Dance, and discovered that our little car was covered in green. The wife had parked under a tree, and now there is a fuzzy haze of pollen all over the vehicle. Besides the fact that my allergies started weeping in despair as I felt my nose simultaneously running and clogging up, I also wondered how much pollen could this car collect? Could my car have so much pollen on it that if I drove around the City, even out in the country, it would act as a pollinator? I know the bees are dying off, but if push came to shove, couldn’t we just drive are cars around to, in a very basic rockbottom way, pollenate the world? Just an idea, cause there is a crap ton of tree pollen on my car.

    First of all, let me start by saying this very loaded statement; I love my wife very much. And as such, we tease each other often, as is our want. There are many things she makes fun of me over, but one of the most recurrent jokes of her’s is to call me a “clothes horse.” Going on twenty years, she’s called me this. Until I had met my wife, I had never heard this term before. A clothes horse is a folding frame used inside someone’s house to hang laundry on while it dries, or a fashionable person who thinks too much about their clothes. (I bet you can guess which definition my wife uses for me.) Most specifically, she will uses this term towards me on days when I have a sitting around the home outfit, a running errands in the neighborhood outfit, and then a third running around town outfit. Not that I do this all the time, but it does happen; I have been known to wear three different outfits in one day. So, I was home visiting my dad the other week, and I witnessed my father doing the same thing; over the course of the day, he had three different outfits he would put on. I had never noticed that, nor thought about it, as that’s just who my father is. Now, I clearly see the depths of the influence this man has had on my life, for I am the Son of a Clothes Horse.

    The kid was sick the other night. Like very sick, and throwing up. She was weak, and needed to be comforted, which I was more than happy to do. As she gets older, the opportunity for a snuggle starts to decrease, you know. But I noticed something as we were on the couch at 2am, hoping that she would be able to keep crackers down; That when she’s sick and on the couch in the daytime, I watch whatever she wants to watch – But at night, I make the kid watch what I want to watch. Nothing inappropriate, but it’s my choice. So, the other night, at 2am, I made my kid watch the MST3k episode “Cave Dwellers.” It’s one of my favorites, and to be honest, I wasn’t too concerned with what the kid thought, as she was nauseous and going in and out of sleep. The next morning, she was feeling better, still a little under the weather, but better. And to my surprise, she was making Cave Dweller jokes – like, “I fell on my eight sided dice,” “Gotta a Minute!” and “The tapes not queued up!” I couldn’t have be prouder to be her father!

  • ODDS and ENDS: Euro Cup, Summer Playlist, and Driving Up the West Side Highway at 8am

    (Don’t break the spell…)

    Today is the first day of the Euro Cup. Germany is playing Scotland, and I know nothing about the Scottish squad, so I’m putting my money on Germany. And if this is your first time following me through an international sports tournament, then I need to let you know from the beginning that I have a cursory understanding of these teams, but I make up for it with blind enthusiasm! Also, there’s only so much baseball I can watch during the summer, so I need another sporting competition. But most annoyingly, I will be supporting England, which might be a tad pedestrian for an American football fan, but I really want to see Harry Kane win a cup; Any cup at this point.

    As per my family tradition for summer, the wife and I make Summer Playlists for all the traveling we’ll be doing, especially in the car. This year, the kid is adding her own playlist to the mix. She’s graduated beyond suggesting songs, and actually has some eclectic picks of her own. I have yet to start creating my playlist, but I have a feeling it will be Beatle heavy, with some grunge slipped in there.

    It was a cool morning today, and I needed to pick our car up from shop after it got its annual tuneup. The shop is in that weird area of Manhattan that’s not Hell’s Kitchen, nor is it Midtown West, but what it does afford me is easy access to getting on the West Side Highway to head home to Harlem. And on a Friday morning, there’s no one heading north, so I could put the windows down, blast my music, and have a few moments of enjoying driving; Manhattan to my right, and the Hudson, New Jersey and the rest of America to my left.