5/19/06

I'm not sure what Spiderman was trying to say with the aside about the Scion xB. [ That you should get one! - SM ] Was he suggesting that the xB does NOT get good mileage? That’s what it looked like to me. Anyhoo, last night after dropping Roger’s BMW off at the shop I stopped by the Toyota dealer by my house to look at the two-door Yaris. They didn’t have one but they did have a five-speed xB. It was the first five-speed xB I have seen. I took it for a test drive. I liked it. I think I'd still rather have the Yaris though. Like I said, it ain’t about the mileage, it’s about having a small car again. Besides, the Yaris will have the same engine as the xB and will be smaller and lighter. If the xB scooted along as nicely as it did, imagine what losing a few pounds will do for the “performance”! Of course I'm not doing anything until I get to see and drive a Nissan Versa. Oh, Roger’s BMW, let me tell that story right quick. I finish up with all my stuff for the day at about 1600 or so. I run back up to my desk to schedule this morning in Petey (the PDA, remember?) and see that I have e-mail (this stupid mother fucker still won’t let me use the article “an” before the word “e-mail.” I hope Bill Gates’ tiny and flaccid cock falls off and he dies of a painful infection of his hemorrhoids.) from Roger. He, Roger, not Tiny and Flaccid, is back on campus and is ready to go get the car. We meet up and head out. His battery is totally dead so he has to buy a new one. We take it to the BMW shop and he installs it. The car starts up and I'm somewhat impressed by that fact. Of course there is no air conditioning and only the driver’s window rolls down. I climb in and break loose the brake pads from the rotors and get the thing to roll forward. The BMW dude crams 35 psi in all the tires and we are on our way. The car pulls well through the gears but I'm not pushing it very hard. At about 50 miles per hour there is a scary shimmy in the steering. Nice! I go ahead and roll into it a bit to see what happens at 60. The shimmy goes away but the whole car has a touch of vibration. It isn’t too bad so I press on. About the time we cross under I-35 on Loop 820, something blows into my left eye. I blink on it for a while and just as I'm about to decide I must pull over to get it out, it goes away. I press on. At I-20 I turn west to cut over to Gun Club Road, or whatever the actual name/number is. When I stop at the intersection I notice the sound of something plastic dragging the ground. I decide to stop under the bridge to see what it is. I don’t stop after all. I'm not sure why either. I press on. Oh, I do remember why I didn’t stop, as soon as I got rolling, say about 5 miles per hour, the sound went away. I figured I had picked something up and it fell out again. It didn’t. At the next stop I heard it again. This time there wasn’t a really good place to stop so I pressed on. Hey, it isn’t my car, why should I care? We get to the shop and I park the thing. Finally I get out to look for whatever it was. We can’t see anything amiss, or even a mister! Anyhoo, all in all I have to say that it wasn’t the scariest car I have ever driven. In fact, it isn’t even the scariest BMW I've driven! That 633csi I used to own was much scarier once I started looking into it! John and Stephen, the muffler dude, are they’re talking about John's red 510 so Roger and I take off. (I just have to comment that the grammatical error just then was NOT my doing. Tiny and Flaccid, may he die in great pain, made that change.) We find the source of the noise as we are driving to the gate. It was an intake tube that had fallen loose. It contained the air inlet temperature probe and would explain the two or three stumbles that the car made while driving. We took it back and put it in the trunk of the BMW. From there we went to Sweet Home Chicago and ate. Monica wasn’t there but Groma said he’d tell her we came by. From there we went back to the office to get the Pimpmobile and on the way Roger said we should go to some other restaurant and eat again! Fuck me! I told him, “We just ate! I'm not eating another dinner right after WE JUST FRIGGIN’ ATE!” Not five minutes later he was complaining about being too full! I chose to be the bigger man and not point out that he wanted to go have MORE food just a few miles back. I'm flabbergasted every time I eat with him. This isn’t even the first time he’s suggested going to another restaurant right after we’ve eaten! Well, speaking of eating, it is lunchtime so I'm off to have some. Have a swell weekend.