rew | ff

Friday, April 2, 2004

My car didn't get towed. Sweet!

Well, either my ankle's not broken, or I'm one bad motherfucker. After waking up in the middle of the night and actually crawling on my hands and knees to the bathroom because my ankle hurt so bad, then almost throwing up from the pain after I insisted on walking back to my bed, I didn't think there was any way I'd make it through work. For the first couple of hours I was walking like Kevin Spacey in The Usual Suspects. After a while, though, it sort of settled into a light limp, and by the time I was halfway through class I was able to walk pretty normally. This is good, because I have to work again tomorrow, and they didn't seem to have a lot of sympathy for my lack of mobility. Not that I wanted a purple heart for coming in to work today, but they didn't seem to give me any credit for not calling in sick, or sprain-ankled, as the case may be. Instead they just seemed sort of annoyed that I wasn't doing things as fast as normal. Oh yeah, and my Rick James-esqe boss did it again... we had a several minute argument over whether a Ford Explorer we were fixing was a stickshift or not. Now, I realize that the vast majority of SUVs are automatics, but this one had not only a manual gearshift, but a goddamn clutch pedal! I may only be the guy who mops up the floors and goes on McDonald's runs, but I know a fucking manual transmission from an automatic. For God's sake. The whole thing was a result of me not being able to work the clutch with my bum ankle, and asking them to move it for me. Someone else had to do it eventually, as the boss man would not allow himself to be trapped by my diabolical transmission lie.

It poured rain today, by Arizona standards. It would have been any old normal day between November and June in Portland, but I witnessed at least 4 rain-caused car accidents, one of which happened literally right in front of a cop, and another that pitted a brand-new Mercedes convertible against a late 80's Honda Civic. The Honda won, striking a blow for the little guy. Everyone at work kept making comments to me like, "Bet it doesn't rain like this up in Portland, eh? (nudge nudge)" Uh, yeah, actually it does, for about 9 months every year. I've played baseball in weather worse than this.

At school, the three of us all passes our end-phase tests and got A's in our classes, Sean and Dane continuing their 4.0 GPAs and me getting mine started. Dane and I aren't going out tonight because we both have to work in the morning, but Sean's out with a couple guys at Bobby McGee's, promising to bring home my waitress crush at around midnight. I planned on using my spare time tonight to post the pictures we took during last weekend's cylinder head swap, but for some reason am having trouble importing them to my computer. Anyway, now it's the weekend, I guess. Supposedly it's going to be in the 70's... I'll believe it when I see it. On Sunday a large part of my brain will become useless for the foreseeable future except for the storage of baseball statistics, hopes and dreams... Red Sox Vs. Orioles on national TV, with Pedro on the hill. I know what I'll be doing, and it ain't no cylinder head swap.

Thursday, April 1, 2004

The basketball gods keep trying to tell me, but I'm just not smart enough to listen... I CANNOT PLAY THIS GAME. Even for fun. Tonight I sprained the absolute living fuck out of my left ankle, at least. It may be broken, but my health-insurance-less, on-my-feet-all-day ass sure as shit hopes not. It hurts pretty bad, though... enough that I'm not going to write very long tonight. I'll just have to see what it looks like in the morning.

Today was another run-of-the-mill one, until I decided to do my Grant Hill imitation at the gym. Work was OK. My ridiculous little tweaker of a boss made another priceless comment... upon seeing me for the first time (he dragged himself in an hour and a half after I got there), he demanded food, and then kept mentioning how hungry he was, trying to bait me into asking him why. I continued my new policy of ignoring him as much as is reasonably possible, and didn't respond with anything other than a "huh" (OK, you're hungry, I get it, whatever). After about 3 tries at prompting me, he gave up and said, (eye twitch) (snort) "yeah, yeah, I'm really hungry.... 'cause I was up all night BANGIN'!!!" I gave him a raised eyebrow and a low whistle (as much as is possible for me... I can't roll my tongue) and walked out of the office. Later he went on a bizarre rant about the movie "Eraser" with Arnold Schwarzenegger, which I confused with David Lynch's "Eraserhead" when he asked me about it, which cause him to get mad at me. He also accused me of screwing up his breakfast order again. I don't think I'm the only one who doesn't like this guy, on the bright side.

Assuming I can get out of the apartment under my own power tomorrow morning, it's the last day of the course at school. Our class is kind of ahead of the pace, so we didn't have much to do today. To fill time, they had us build engines out of paper and masking tape. At one point in my life I can see myself having really enjoyed this, but having built several engines out of metal by now, it wasn't that interesting. I kept myself occupied by building a reasonably accurate replica of a BMW S14 DOHC cylinder head out of computer paper and masking tape for my group's engine... if you don't know what that is, don't feel bad. I'm a freak.

Wednesday, March 31, 2004

Today was remarkable for its unremarkableness. I mean this in a good way. Work was OK, in spite of the guy I don't like and suspect (with no proof, mind you) of being on cocaine being there. I realized with some degree of relief that my job is 90% parking cars, and if they see me out there moving cars around, they're happy. I had previously been under the impression that the main portion of my job was cleaning, and had been running around the shop like a madman with a mop and bucket. Anyway, if most days can be like today, I think it'll be OK.

I'm not sure if I mentioned before that my car is in danger of being towed. Apparently the apartment people think it doesn't run (they put a violation: inoperable vehicle sticker on it), which I find insulting. I countered by putting a note on it that says, "Please don't tow me, I actually run really well," with an explanation of why it has no plates (my 6 hours of work, 6 hours of school, 6 days a week schedule precludes trips to the DMV or, as they call it here in bizarro world, the MVD), so hopefully it'll still be there tomorrow. Dane's going to try to talk them out of towing it when he goes by the office to get our gym passes. If it can remain here until next Friday it should be OK, because we have that day off from school, so I should be able to get all registered and legal. And hey, my job's not all bad... I got a new radiator at wholesale cost, so Tommy John should be ready for the insane heat.

Speaking of which, if one more person tells me, "Wait until it gets hot!" as if it's not hot already (97 degrees!), I'm going to smack them.

And finally, at school the "phase" is winding down... this friday is the last day, and then I move on to "basic electronics." Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, this is something else I already know all about. So far this school has yet to distinguish itself from my high school (admittedly it was a vocational high school). Sean is moving on to what I believe is a class on emissions, and I'm not sure about Dane. I'll clear that up tomorrow.

Cokehead-free Tuesday, March 30, 2004

OK, today was much better than yesterday, outside of Dane getting run over by a car, but I'll get to that in a second. I think the main difference for both me and Sean was getting some decent sleep for once. The oven was off, which may have contributed to REM achievement. Anyway, I felt a lot better when I got up this morning, and even the fact that Sean's car wouldn't start (apparently timing by ear isn't the answer to everything) didn't cause us any real trouble (never go anywhere in a BMW without two 10mm wrenches, I always say).

Another nice thing about today was that it was my cokehead boss's day off. I cannot emphasize how much better this made my work environment. I did have a weird, cokehead-esque exchange with my other boss (who I like), which went something like this:

BOSS: Why is the window in that jeep not rolled down? What if the doors locked with the keys inside?

ME: I don't know, I didn't park that one, but I'll go roll down the window...

(beat)

BOSS (glaring at me): You've got to remember to roll the windows down! It's really important so the keys don't get locked in!

Apparently whether or not I was actually at fault has no bearing on whether or not I should be admonished for something.

Oh yeah, so Dane got run over by a car today. He was standing over the fender trying to help some guys preform a fuel pump test when a dude tried to start the car with it in gear. Predictably the car lurched forward, and ran right over Dane's foot. The guy driving realized his mistake and hit the brakes, unfortunately before the wheel had moved all the way off Dane's shoe. So Daner was pinned to the floor by the foot, and could only point and wave wildly to get the guy to back up, not wanting to attract the attention of an instructor, because he was wearing the wrong kind of shoes. Amazingly he ended up being fine, and even played some pretty decent basketball later in the night.

Monday, March 29, 2004

OK, I officially hate my job. That didn't take long, did it? I'm not sure if I'm just a whiny bitch by nature, or if this really does suck as much as it seems to. Come to think of it, this all sucks. The school, Phoenix, the job, the weather, the sun, the traffic, the sand, the lizards, the people, the local basketball team, the republicans, the various ways you could be killed each day. Sucks. All of it. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Now that that's out of my system, today got off on the wrong foot, as neither Sean nor I was able to sleep a wink last night. I'm not sure if it's because we both took melatonin, and we live in bizarro world where everything is the opposite of what it should be, or what, but we were both exhausted. Or that on the way to work it was clear that Sean's car was running far worse than before. Or that, as I mentioned above, everything just plain sucks. Whatever it was, neither of us was in too good a mood to start the day. My mood was not improved by work, where my suspected cokehead boss repeatedly made me want to go all Latrel Sprewell on his ass. And I don't mean making spinning wheels in my garage, or whatever it is Sprewell does these days instead of choking his coaches.

Some small measure of turnaround was gained, however, when I was allowed to spend part of the day in Sean's class instead of mine trying to help get his car running decently again. Long story short, an exhausted Dave and Sean managed to figure out that we'd miss-timed the car the night before, and corrected the problem as best we could by ear. The upshot is, the car now runs really, really smoothly, much better than before. Taking advantage of being around a lot of sophisticated auto repair tools, Sean ran all sorts of tests and determined that the car is now running around 400% more efficient than it was before, which confirms our theory about the valves on the old head being bent and letting gas seep by to poison the oil. Whew, that's interesting, huh? I'm sure you're all enthralled.

Dane started his job and his new schedule of going to class in the morning today. This kind of sucks because we won't all see each other as much any more, but it sounds like it should be a pretty cool job. We're all pretty worn out tonight, so we didn't go to the gym, but hopefully we'll have the energy to do so tomorrow. I'm going to bed as soon as I post this, where I'll be kept awake by our lovely bass-heavy neighbors. I fucking hate fucking Phoenix goddammit.

Sunday, March 28, 2004

Today was all about working on Sean's car. We were going to pull the head and the steering rack, put new ones on, wire up the new electronic distributor, change the coolant, change the oil and fix the electric fan.

Side note: Man, I wish this Mike Hall dude hadn't won that ESPN contest to be their new anchor. A year of putting up with this asshole calling Red Sox highlights? Come on, we live in Phoenix, things suck enough as it is.

Anyway, it took all day, but we got Sean's shit all done. In the process we were yelled at by old people, pestered by curious neighbors, and besieged by both sunlight and darkness, but ultimately we got it done. Unfortunately, while the car started and ran, all the problems we'd been trying to correct seemed to remain. More on this on Monday. Basically, the steering problem was not affected at all by the new steering rack I put in, and all the work Sean did on the head seemed to result only in a slightly rougher idle. Frustrating. All in all it was kind of fun, though... when the day started out I was really not looking forward to it, but working with Sean and Bobby was nice, and I was glad we got it done. I took a bunch of pictures, and I'll try to post them tomorrow... once again it's getting late, and I really need to catch up on sleep.

Meanwhile, Dane was inventing his own recipe for yet another excellent meal. Unfortunately, he forgot to turn off the oven. I was out and about doing my laundry and talking to Vicky on the phone, and I couldn't figure out why it seemed so hot every time I walked back in to the apartment. We didn't figure it out until midday Monday.

Saturday, March 27, 2004

I had to work for the first half of today, and unfortunately my opinion of my job has changed from "It might be pretty cool," to "It's really gonna suck." I'm not going to go into too much detail, but most of the problems lie with one of my two main bosses. First of all, he insists on calling me "David" rather than "Dave," which I despise on a level normally reserved for cruel dictators and Yankee fans not named Mark. He also treats me like I'm not only a 5 year old, but a moronic 5 year old. He also may well be on cocaine. So basically I want to either cry or break something most of the time I'm at work. On the other hand, the mechanics all seem to be pretty cool. Unless the guy who has to go get everyone's food orders at lunch (guess who) screws up. Then they're not so nice. Fuck. That college degree sure came in handy.

Sean and Dane came to pick me up and had to wait around forever because I had to stay late. Then we went for a halfhearted half-round of folf, followed by basketball, in which Sean and Dane swept me and Aaron 3 games to zero (why did we play that third game, now that I think about it?). Later on we all went to see Dawn of the Dead, which was OK, but far inferior to 28 Days Later, as far as zombie movies go. We went home and I prepared for my one day off of the week by going to bed early. Tomorrow we were doing a shitload of work on Sean's car, so I needed to rest up.

© Long Shot Films 2004