2013-10-17

azurelunatic: aerial view of freeways.  (freeway)
2013-10-17 02:22 am
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YAY CAR

Got woken up by the call about my car being done. Acknowledged. Went back to (what must have been much-needed) sleep.

Picked up car. He'd had some of these symptoms before (less pointedly) and it had been a few things. They replaced those parts then. They replaced those parts again, at no cost to me under warranty, and that started him behaving again. Since the dude said that a stretched timing belt could in fact cause those parts to go bad, I went for the timing belt replacement. And they got it under my budget too, which was such a relief. "Now you can eat this month," dude said as I checked out, and not that far off the mark too, hah. I have a little container of chocolate covered espresso beans for them. I should drop it by tomorrow.

He still rumbles at me some when I leave him stopped in gear, but he's always done that, and this is not -- not the same as the bad. I see it like a waveform in my head: usually it is round and a little lumpy, sometimes square, but never outside of the borders. When it goes outside of the borders it is bad. Not too high, not too low.

There's a fuel system leak detection pump that needs replacing; I'll see when I can get that done. More urgently, tires and whatever's up with that power steering fluid. Strong arms will only take you so far, and I have hella commute, which is wearing on the tires.

Refueled. A random older man hailed me as he got out when I was getting back in the car, that he liked my bumper stickers. The stickers on my actual bumper are a rainbow Pride strip and a little bisexual flag square.


This all is such a relief. I told my manager in Tuesday's 1:1 that I was about up to my nose-bridge in work, but having my car back operational would get me below my chin again, maybe even down to my collarbone.
azurelunatic: Vivid pink Alaskan wild rose. (Default)
2013-10-17 12:01 pm
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My tweets

azurelunatic: aerial view of freeways.  (freeway)
2013-10-17 08:32 pm
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Car. Car? Car :(

So on my way back from work when I was changing lanes at highway speed, he lurched a bit.

Then when I was speeding back up from like 40 after "the cone zone", he lurched again.

And when I was contending with a hill on Skyline, he didn't wanna change gears going up hill and expressed this through interpretive dance, or shuddering and refusing to accelerate past that point.

I had a few things to say about that. (Link contains tumblr non-autoplay audio, with a great volume but small variety of barracks-language.)

BACK TO THE MECHANICS.
azurelunatic: Quill writing the partly obscured initials 'AJL' on a paper. (quill)
2013-10-17 09:46 pm
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The unrelenting tedium of mental illness metaphor: why "depressing" is a lazy description

Dear writers of fiction, we need to talk. Specifically, about use of mental illness language in a figurative fashion, such as:

Elly had a depressing job.


a rant. )