(no subject)
Insert obligatory much lost time comment here. I'm finishing up training. What a roller-coaster ride. On the 4th I leave for Tennesee for a month, then down to working with our guy from Oklahoma for a month which will leave me based out of home. Jez is undergoing slow progress. Bug will have the timing work done early next month...full timing set, rocker arm ($64 for ONE exhaust arm! Even from RA!), finally get somebody else to fix the plug seals I could never get to seal right. If that doesn't kill the noise then it's a bearing and I'll flip a table. Working out moving timetables, catching up with family, being hilariously sick, went to Chicago with R and got a proper fedora (not the modern abomination trilbys) which is quite stylish. Hard to believe I've lived in this hotel room since October. I don't really give a hang about my surrounds, I guess, if I'm not at home.
Speaking of, apparently the new bigger place will be hosting Kat and Dom until August or so when they are going back to Hawaii. This willbe ......interesting, in every Chinese curse sense.....and I won't say there's not other tensions at work and at play but if I don't keep a spark of optimism then I'm pretty much stick-a-fork-in-me dead inside.
Michigan winters suck. I'll be very glad to get back to somewhere warmer. I got my 90 day raise, a fleet card, an airline card, a rental car card, tools, health insurance, a 401K plan that I need to enroll in. I feel like half of a responsible adult, but I want to get back to where I have the option to NOT drive a damn diesel cargo van every day.
Also I have acquired yet another Thinkpad. This makes three--the T42 in car limbo hell at Forged, the T61 that Z was using until his PC finally arrived, and now this little X61 my brother scored at a police auction for $5. I had to put a new battery and SSD into it but it's a hell of a little system. How good, I'll find out, when I live off it for the next month or so...all my worldly goods up here are going to have to be packed away in the van and I'll live out of the christmas-present backpack/carryon and laptop bag. The GOOD news there is that the guy in OK/TX I'll be training with just stopped by the shop to trade his old van for one of the new Mercedes Sprinter vans. So while I'll be riding bitch extensively, it'll be quiet.
And I can catch up on Car Talk.
It's been a hell of a ride, and I'm still more or less on top of it.
Speaking of, apparently the new bigger place will be hosting Kat and Dom until August or so when they are going back to Hawaii. This willbe ......interesting, in every Chinese curse sense.....and I won't say there's not other tensions at work and at play but if I don't keep a spark of optimism then I'm pretty much stick-a-fork-in-me dead inside.
Michigan winters suck. I'll be very glad to get back to somewhere warmer. I got my 90 day raise, a fleet card, an airline card, a rental car card, tools, health insurance, a 401K plan that I need to enroll in. I feel like half of a responsible adult, but I want to get back to where I have the option to NOT drive a damn diesel cargo van every day.
Also I have acquired yet another Thinkpad. This makes three--the T42 in car limbo hell at Forged, the T61 that Z was using until his PC finally arrived, and now this little X61 my brother scored at a police auction for $5. I had to put a new battery and SSD into it but it's a hell of a little system. How good, I'll find out, when I live off it for the next month or so...all my worldly goods up here are going to have to be packed away in the van and I'll live out of the christmas-present backpack/carryon and laptop bag. The GOOD news there is that the guy in OK/TX I'll be training with just stopped by the shop to trade his old van for one of the new Mercedes Sprinter vans. So while I'll be riding bitch extensively, it'll be quiet.
And I can catch up on Car Talk.
It's been a hell of a ride, and I'm still more or less on top of it.