rew | ff

Friday, April 9, 2004

Today we had school off for Good Friday. This was an eagerly anticipated chance to get stuff done in the afternoon after Sean and I got off work. For me, it was the only chance I was going have in the forseeable future to register Tommy John. So, as soon as I got off work, I had to run a gauntlet of emissions testing, VIN inspection, and MVD registration all between the hours of 2 and 5pm. It was one of those deals where it seems completely overwhelming at first, with so many hoops to jump through, but it actually all went off without a hitch and I was home by 4 with a registered, legal car for the first time in ages. The new radiator makes all the difference in the world, as the car can sit in traffic in the Phoenix heat and not have the temp needle rise at all. It'll be nice to have a second car, although Sean and I still plan to carpool to work and school each day.

No 9 in the number... that's not good.
Got a 5, though - Nomahhhhhh!

While it all went pretty smoothly as far as emissions and MVD were concerned, I did have a funny experience with the VIN inspection with a lady who thought that a BMW 2002 could only mean a BMW that was made in the year 2002. She was convinced that I'd taken a VIN plate from a newer car and put it on mine, which was obviously stupid and an insult to the VIN inspector's intelligence, as "It's obvious this car is a lot more than 2 years old." I tried to explain, to no avail, that 2002 was the car's model, not year (as BMW has always named its cars with numbers, e.g., 320i, Z3, etc.) but she wasn't buying it, and went to get her supervisor. Luckily he was an older guy and recognized what was going on immediately, and it all worked out fine from there. Ever since the year 2002 came along, there's been nonstop confusion with these cars.

After Dane got home from work, we all just sort of hung out for a while watching the Cubs and Braves game on TV. It went deep into extra innings, and we finally had to leave for another mini-party at Aaron's before it was over (the Cubbies went on to win in the 15th). All three of us had to work in the morning, so we knew it would be an early night, but we didn't leave before I BEAT SEAN AT DARTS, winning a 5-player game of cricket 488 - 455 or something like that, with a double-bullseye to close it out and pass Sean in points at the end. This is the first and only time that I have ever beat Sean in any game that involves any kind of throwing of anything.

Thursday, April 8, 2004

Tonight we all did cocaine and ludes and I think a little LSD, and it was a lot of fun. Sean met a stripper at the bar and last I saw they were headed off across the golf course, naked, on Dane's motorcycle. I got really ripped on a mix of speed and heroin and realized I could see time, which allowed me to build a small electric circuit to tune the air/fuel ratio of my car. I don't know what happened to Dane. There's a girl named Brandee in the main room, and I've got to get rid of her before she breaks something else. We have no school tomorrow, but we do have to work, so I'd better sober up and get to bed.

None of the above is true, except the part about the electronic circuit.

Wednesday, April 7, 2004

I'm going to take a minute here today just to sort of break down each of our schedules. I rattled mine off to Kramer last night and it seemed to blow his mind, so maybe it's worth noting here.

Dane. 5:30am - Dane wakes up, gets dressed, and leaves the apartment just as Dave's alarm is going off at 6am. He is remarkably quiet. By 6:30am he's at school where he remains until 12:45pm. He then rides back to the apartment, where he takes care of annoying little things like checking out gym passes, paying rent and fielding irritating phone calls from me and Sean. By 1:30 he's at work at Infiniti, staying there until 6 and then braving rush hour traffic to get home by 6:30-7. He then has the apartment all to himself until Sean and I get home at around 8:45pm.

Sean and Dave. Sean's alarm goes off at 6:10am, although he is probably awakened more by me barging into his room to put in my contacts. He and I are out of the apartment by 6:25 and, if we're making good time, at Dunkin' Donuts by 6:30. He graciously drops me off at work and hopefully makes it to Toyota by 6:45, as he starts work at 6:50. After parking cars and doing other lot attendant things until 1:00, Sean heads up to my work, or runs a couple errands, arriving at the Circle K across from my shop by 1:30, when I am released. If I'm not running late, I'm in the car by 1:30, and we head to school. We're both there until 8:15, we hang out in the parking lot to avoid the insane rush out until 8:30, and are home by 8:45, where we meet up with Dane and head over to the gym. By 10pm we're usually done playing basketball, followed by lifting weights until around 10:30. Then back to the apartment for TV and food-making, and then we're all three usually in bed between 11 and midnight.

This is the story Monday through Friday. I work every Saturday from 7:30 to 4:30, Dane works every other Saturday from 7 to 4, and Sean works about one Saturday a month from 6:50 to 4:30.

Anyway, as far as today goes, it was pretty run-of-the-mill for all three of us. I had a small scare that I wouldn't be able to register my car... apparently you're not allowed to modify your car's engine here. It's an emissions thing, and it's bizarre, because even if your car gets much better milage and produces far fewer emissions with the mods (like my fuel injection as opposed to the car's original 1969 carburetor), it's illegal as long as it varies from the car's original equipment. But as it turned out, it's ok, because those rules apply only to cars made after 1980. Apparently as long as my '69 passes the tailpipe test, the only original equipment it has to have is the gas cap. The gas cap. What the fuck? Neil called me while I was on lunch break at school - he was at Camden Yards watching the Sox / Orioles game. I'm probably going to miss the Sox this year, so it was cool to be there via telephone as Johnny Damon went 5 for 5 and made an amazing catch in center field.

Tuesday, April 6, 2004

I have to give some props to Arizona for the whole shunning daylight savings time thing, because it means that the Daily Show comes on an hour earlier now (no one schedules TV for Mountain Time). Therefore, I can watch it without making my mornings impossible. I love the Daily Show. Isn't it amazing how they don't even have to make jokes about Bush anymore? They just run the tape and let him make a complete ass out of himself every single time. I feel like I get more real, unbiased news from them than I do CNN.

Today I went to work, as normal, which went as well as it could, other than the fact that the shuttle van I drive threw its serpentine belt near the end of the day. This meant I had to drive various customer's cars for the remainder of my shift. The only problem with this is, why are the cars in a repair shop to begin with? Because there are things wrong with them. My tweaker boss wanted me to drive an Explorer with a pretty obvious transmission problem all the way to Peoria to pick up a customer, and I refused. He then had me take the customer's own car to pick him up. This seemed weird to me. Adding to the list of problems I have with my job is the fact that they're making me, and therefore Sean, dangerously close to being late for school each day.

Anyway, school was normal. I almost fell asleep a couple times, and I think I was actually half-asleep while taking notes for a while, judging by the nonsense I discovered later to be written on my paper. My plan to eat mostly food I make myself has worked so far in that I A) am spending under $5 a day, and B) have yet to get sick from my own cooking.

On the way home, Sean and I checked up on the Blazers (who were in the process of kicking the shit out of the hated Lakers) via my cell phone while I waited for a call from Kramer, who recently moved back to New York from Germany and is thus reachable by telephone. Unfortunately, in the process of checking Blazers, Red Sox (W), and Yankees (L) scores, I forgot to turn my phone off of "silent." Poor Kramer tried to call me several times before I finally figured it out. We talked for a long time about things like getting old, moving to Germany, and whether or not it's in good taste to give your dog a nickname based on a terrorist.

Jon Stewart for president!

Monday, April 5, 2004

Did you know that they don't recycle in Arizona? Having grown up in Portland and attended Hampshire College, this is really weird to me. I was never really aware of recycling; it was just always there in the background. Now that it's not an option, though, it feels really weird to just throw empty cans or bottles (or cardboard, for that matter) into the trash. Sean and I briefly entertained some Seinfeld-esque plans involving driving a truck full of cans to another state, but, sad as it is to say it, we just don' t have time in our lives for recycling right now. Hampshire is erasing my transcripts as I write this.

Today was the first day of the new phase at school - for Sean it's Drivability, for Dane it's Automatic Transmissions, and I'm in Basic Electronics. I think I might actually like my class, even though I learned all about Ohm's law and the like my freshman year of high school. The teacher is from Chicago and has a "Da Bears" accent... I have yet to determine if he's a Cubs or a White Sox fan. Sean put some new spark plugs in his car today, and now it starts right up every time. This is good because, in spite of its new radiator, my car still won't be legally drivable until Friday, when we have the day off of school and I can get to the MVD.

After we got home, we went to the gym and I got talked into playing basketball on my bum ankle. I had to limp around a lot, and I was hyper aware of the position of my feet the whole time, but we got a good game of 4 on 4 and it was pretty fun. Then we got home and I had a whirlwind of food preparation to do - I'm spending too much money on crap food at the school, so I've learned to cook chicken (I can rebuild an engine, but I can't cook for shit) and am taking goofy little sandwiches to school with me. I will probably get beat up for my lunch money pretty soon.

Sunday, April 4, 2004

Hey, I finally got my shit together and uploaded those pictures from the cylinder head swap, exactly one week later. If you have Flash, which you damn well better these days, they're showing up on the right over there. If you don't have Flash, for fuck's sake, get with the program, man.

Anyway, today went by pretty quickly, seeing as how we were all up late and/or sick the night before. Sean and I went to a "party" at Aaron's house, which was a lot closer to just a couple guys hanging out than a party, and Dane stayed home with a minor case of food poisoning from Subway. The party devolved into a viewing of 28 Days Later at some point, which Sean and I were all for, but we ended up not getting home until around 3:30am.

Click the pictures to toggle through. You do have Flash, right?

Having batted the cycle with Sean's car last weekend, the only goal this time around was to put a new, oversized radiator in my car. I don't have a drill anymore (one of many things I long for up in my parents' garage in Portland), so I mounted the radiator using zip ties. This will be pretty embarassing if we ever do any work on my car at school, but hey, it works. I tested the car by intentionally overheating it somewhat, then connecting the electric fan circuit after the thermostat opened. Even though we were just siting there in the parking lot idling, the coolant temp dropped rapidly to the middle of the gauge once the coolant started flowing through the new radiator. Success! And they say diagnosis is the hardest part of car repair. Anyway, give me some license plates and a transmission that doesn't leak fluid all over the place, and I may actually be responsible for my own transportation some day soon. After the car was done, I talked to Anna for a while on the phone and then we squeezed in a half-round of folf. On the way to the folf course, I preformed my first ever freeway-speed car repair, leaning out the window to re-install one of Sean's wiper blades as the rain started coming down. As far as folf went, though, it was supper windy, and we knocked off early. There was a big storm a-comin', and I have to admit that for the first time I appreciated the desert aesthetics. The mix of clouds, rain, and sunset on the horizon was amazing.

The other thing on the adgenda today was the Red Sox / Orioles game on TV at 5pm. Suffice to say it didn't go the way I hoped. But now that baseball's started, I have a 6 month long distraction that will help me get through school to the point where I'll be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel. After the game I got going on my laundry, and Sean and Dane are already in bed. I'll be following them soon. A special thanks to Arizona for sticking it to the man and not observing daylight savings time... while all you guys are losing an hour's sleep, we're coasting along as normal. Yee-ha.

Saturday, April 3, 2004

I worked today, and it was pretty much your standard stuff. I resisted my homicidal urges for 9 hours, then Sean picked me up and we went home. We met up with Dane and the three of us went to the mall (!). Dane needed some basketball shoes (I use the word "needed" loosely here), and I had to get some resistors from Radio Shack so I can build a simple electronic cicuit that I can use to set the air/fuel mixture on my car. Remember, I'm a freak. Dane had to work, too, and he seems to be getting disturbingly fond of Infiniti cars. Sean and I might have to have one of those inteverntions pretty soon if he keeps talking about how nice the 6-speed transmission is in the G35 (or whatever a model of Infiniti is called).

I took a couple of pictures of my mangled ankle, which you can look at if you are not easily grossed out by clicking on the first part of this sentence. Sean and I decided to go to a small party at Aaron's house, which is way out in the suburbs. We didn't realize that it was a barbeque as well as a party, and we ate beforehand at Subway. Whoops.

© Long Shot Films 2004