I got a quote on the tires and alignment for the Taurus, $150 of which $120 is a “damn good set of used tires”. I wanted new ones but I know this guy and he says these are a steal. I poked around the shop for an hour but basically it was a day of working around the house. I made up some shelves and painted them. I routed the edges and painted them black. I also redid the window frames on the front of the trailer, since the last person had proceeded to sloppily paint both the frames and the rubber molding a flat white color. My trailer was looking anemic.
While I was at it, I ripped out the kitchen AC unit, which crapped out a day ago. This is not the big unit in the Florida room, that is still fubar. Whoever installed the original unit went haywire with the spray sealer, but I got it all chipped away and cleaned up. That puppy weighed 65 pounds I estimate, because I had to hump it outside for disposal. And it was less powerful than the 49 pound unit I replaced it with. My choices for this evening were to drive out to the coffeehouse to play possibly twenty minutes, or keep busy around the house. The house won.
I also refilled the ink cartridges on the HP, devised the master list for the optical disk database, installed a new handle on the hall closet and began rewiring the kitchen outlets so I can get at them without crawling under a cabinet. I told you, puttering around makes me a happy man. I dwell on the past less than some, but I wonder what would have happened if JP and I had bought a fixer upper five years ago. I think he may have approached his brother for a co-sign but the brother wanted too much leverage over that factor. Or am I thinking of somebody else?
There has been no news or contact from JP for over a week. I met the Filipino lady who Adam says is interested in computer coaching. She is across the street and several doors down. It was dark and was emptying the trash, but she is very light skinned and hair light enough to take blonde dye without turning that horrid off red. She is also quite slim. Ask me again after I see her in the daylight.
It is time for more war movies. I got home four hours ago. I made gourmet hot dogs with horseradish sauce. Iced tea. I bought a big jug of fresh orange juice. There are still some shortbread cookies above the fridge. All I need now is a subservient but talented girlfriend and life will be pretty damn good.
Except maybe for this computer. Nobody realizes it much, but I say there is a real advantage of familiarity of your equipment by choosing to upgrade rather than buy a new computer. This new unit, while incredibly fast, has dozens of problems that need ironing out. It still does not display the inserted pictures correctly and I see that MS has still never fixed that annoying problem of the sound blasting on and it taking up to 30 seconds to open the volume control box and turn the thing down. Only a completely useless prick of a programmer would do such a thing.
The unit also randomly deletes the Arcsoft camera driver. I’m looking again at joining one of the online “detective” agencies that have collected all the private record databases. I figure that is worth $29.95 a year. The ads seem to avoid saying they have a good user interface to find the correct files, so I assume even once you get on their system you are still on your own. Well, I’ve worked lots of database listings before. My question is will people pay to learn what is on file about themselves? I’ll give it a whirl.
When I dropped in to fix a time for my tires, I got this random shot of two heavy duty tire mechanics working on a customer problem. Everyone is happy to report that the patient lived and is doing fine.
Now just so nobody gets to thinking I got mentally sluggish with my new trailer (notice how househusbands get that way), I’ll point out that the map on the wall beside me is much like the same map we have all looked at many times. Nothing ever changes on those things, except the odd political border. Nothing new. Or not? I’m looking at the drainage basin for the Great Lakes. I plan to drive through there soon. I know from grade school geography there are no mountains there. I see the Fox River and the Wolf River near each other in Wisconsin. Me and millions of others, I suppose.
In fact, the map shows their headwaters to be less than 100 miles apart. What kind of big question could be asked about that, I hear them say. Well, I got to thinking. The Fox is part of the Mississippi drainage basin, while the Wolf flows into Lake Michigan. Didn’t they teach us 20% of all the fresh water in the world is in those lakes? If so, where does it all come from? Certainly not from that teentsy little smudge on the map called Wolf River.
I have a large scale map, meaning the anything with a label is probably a major feature. Why don’t I find the rivers that feed the Great Lakes. Starting clockwise from Sault Ste. Marie in Canada, lets find them. There’s the Mississagi, no skip that one, it can’t be more than 100 miles long itself. Ah, the Ottawa – but wait, it does not flow into the lakes at all, it joins the St. Laurence in Montreal, way east.
We are looking for the great rivers that feed all that water into the Great Lakes. Here they are, the Genessee, Sandusky, Au Sable, Pic and Saugeen. What do you mean you never heard of them? A lake cannot exist unless the water flowing in matches the evaporation and water flowing out. That’s a lot of water, chum. I cannot find a single major river within 100 miles of the shorelines that does not flow away from the Lakes, yet there are no mountains to stop them.
So, like the millions of others, I ask, “Where is the drainage basin for the Great Lakes?” What? Well, I mean, I am sure they would ask if they thought about what they were looking at on the map. Maybe they were too busy or something.
