Well things have picked up greatly. Back on Thursday the 20th,
I wrote about all this garbage that had suddenly happened. Pretty much everything solved itself in one day and I had a great weekend.
Friday morning, I went with my dad and Ryan to a Portland junk yard to help pull parts off junk cars for Ryan's new Dodge Neon that he's hoping to have ready to drive back to college in Minnesota in 2 weeks. I was hyper lucky to find a car similar to mine with all its engine mounting screws in place! We were able to snag them and they worked perfectly in my Penguin. My car now runs much smoother and more solid and all of us now believe that my car could have been missing mounting screws for as long as I've had it (3 years) just because of how much better it now performs because the engine is properly secured to the frame. I'm back on the road. Best part? They didn't bother charging me for the three bolts. Yay!
The CB radio issue is no more. Previously, Ryan and I wanted to get these cheap-o walkie-talkies from Radio Shack but after driving 20 miles, the Shack said they didn't have any. Well, as strange luck would have it, Emily, Ryan's girlfriend who goes to college with him in Minnesota and also lives here in Portland, and her family are going on a cruise this weekend in which they needed communication devices. Her family bought 4 CB walkie-talkies and have said we can use them on their road trip back to college. This saves us some cash and trips to the Shack!! WOO!
My Xbox was super easy to fix as well. The LEDs that weren't working simply had hot glue in the way of the connections. 5 minutes with a hobby knife later and they all were going. I now have LED lights inside my Xbox's DVD-ROM drive and on the sides that shine out. It's completely excessive but fun.
Everything that had to be fixed was fixed just before a weekend trip to Seattle with my siblings and Franko. Caught a fantastic Mariners game Sunday in which we witnessed the first-ever in-park home run at Safeco Field. An in-park homer is one in which a runner is able to hit a ball and run all the bases and score while the ball is still in play on the field. If you think about it, that's incredibly hard to do because the team on the field has to screw up HARD to allow a runner to hit all the bases when they're in control of the ball. It was a Mariners runner so all of us were on our feet. What had happened is our guy hit it and it looked like a home run but it bounced off a sign and came back into the field. This is ruled in-play, not a home run, but the players in the outfield were so confused that they just let the ball sit, thinking it was a home run. Finally, someone ran up and grabbed the ball but it was too late, our guy was home. Unreal.
Now I'm back home and it'll probably be a week of work. I've been criticized more than usual lately from my folks about not having a job. My savings are reaching a point where I can't continue this charade much longer and I'll have to put my dreams and the experience my college diploma afford me on hold as I look for more available work. Service industry anyone? Not that there's anything wrong with working in the service industry, but I didn't graduate college to sell clothing to 10-year-olds or flip burgers. I saw Clerks 2 the other day (Hysterical movie BTW), so I have even more respect for normal people who realize they're happy where they are in whatever job they're in. I can only hope to reach that level of bliss or pride if I ever find myself in a job I never expected I'd be in.