Thursday, October 18, 2007

Catching Up


I probably shoulda posted yesterday, but I obviously didn't. I'll see what I can do about catching up with stuff.

Tuesday was my nephew Jesse's 21st birthday. Being a drinker, how could I possibly not go? My sister (his mom) said that they were just going to have a little dinner/drink thing at a family restaurant in Burien called The Elliott Bay Brewhouse & Pub. When I got home from work I went online to find the phone number of the place to make sure it was a "family" place so I could take Sarah. I was actually planning to find out from my sister when they were going to start eating and then just pop in for beers afterward. When I logged on however, there was a message from Jesse in MySpace that told me his mom had invited me to dinner with them. I texted Sarah and told her that if she'd drive us up in her car that I'd top off her tank for her. She picked me up a little later and away we went.

You know what? Her car has phenomenal sound in it! I have heard plenty of radio playing in it, but never a cd I guess. She had a cd of Fantasia playing, which for all of you that aren't familiar with it, is classical music. I was blown away by how clean and rich and full it sounded in her car! It was the best sound I ever ever heard in a car. Seriously. I told her I wanted that car back. Hahaha.

I was teaching her little bits about reading traffic patterns and when it was okay to speed (i.e. if everybody else is) and it was a pretty smooth trip. We got there about 5 minutes before they did. Besides myself and Sarah, it was just Jesse, his girlfriend, his sister, and his parents. It was great food, and what a heaping plate of fries that came with each one! I had a blackened ahi sandwich and it was great. I ordered the house brand Hefeweisen to drink, and Jesse and his parents followed suit. It was obvious that they didn't really care for it though. I was the only one that finished mine. Okay, okay--Both of mine. Jesse was plainly disappointed when we ordered though. He didn't get carded! Here it was, his 21st birthday, and he wants to produce his license with flourish and confidence, and nada. Nothing. I almost went over to the waitress and told her, but decided against it. Oh well. He'll get carded plenty of times in the future I'm sure. We went over to their house briefly afterwards for ice cream, but didn't stay long because Sarah had homework to do.

Right near my house we stopped and I topped off her gas tank. I was surprised--The gauge showed about 3/4 of a tank of gas, but it took $21 to fill it! Wowsa. Good thing it wasn't empty! When we were on our trip, it took somewhere around 40 bucks to fill it most times. Obviously, her gauge isn't very linear. No gauges are accurate from top to bottom... They always move faster at the top or bottom.

Teresa has been in almost panic mode lately about heating her house. The bill she just got was $152 for both gas and electricity, which I don't feel is that far out of line. For crying out loud, her house is 1500 square feet on the main floor and 1500 square feet in the basement. The best thing she could possibly do to ease all her worry are two things that she won't do: Get rid of the 2000 square feet of shit that she is hoarding, and downsize into a smaller house. Neither will happen because they are directly related. She won't get rid of anything at all if there's the slightest chance she might get a dollar for it "at the next garage sale," and because she has so much shit, she can't downsize. She's going to have to face that reality one day in the future though when Sarah moves out... Anyway, she's been running all around trying to seal up furnace vents in the basement and stuff like that. She called me last night all concerned about the furnace filter. I told her even if it was clogged it's not going to affect her usage any that she would notice, but I would blow it out next time I was over there if it would help. I think the smart thing to do would be to buy an insert for the fireplace. We moved into that house in 1998 I think it was, and although there is a fireplace in the living room and one in the basement big room, neither have ever been used.

I spent a few hours last night completely reloading my laptop. That's the one that sits on my coffee table downstairs, and it's what Sarah uses to do her homework on when she's over. I had removed the antivirus software I had on it a while back--Mainly because it slowed it down so much. I also wasn't that worried about it because there wasn't anything really on the computer except Microsoft Office and some web browsing stuff. Sometime in recent history she got something on it that screwed it all up. Who knows how those things get in, but it was enough of a problem it rendered the computer practically useless. It screwed up a lot of things. After all the time I spent reloading everything last night, I opted to put the antivirus software back on. I only considered whether or not I would have anything to lose if it contracted something, but I failed to consider how much time I would spend reloading it. It's at a perfect spot now, so maybe I should look at "imaging" the whole hard drive. That way I could just reload the whole thing all in one step.

I think I may be onto something there...

1 comment:

Rhon said...

Rick,
Good post!