5/28/13

Well, I guess it wasn’t a totally wasted long weekend.  Saturday morning I met John at the Fjord dealer where he was having the oil changed in his car.  We rolled form there to Mimi’s for breakfast.  After that, we headed across town to check out the new shop.  I was afeared that the neighborhood was going to be scary, it wasn’t really.  Between I-20 and the shop was a nice, older neighborhood.  I was relieved.  When we pulled up, John called the dude to see if I was all right to come through the gate.  It was and we met him walking up.  He showed us to the “tiny” unit first.  I was not impressed, but not repulsed either.  It was a two-bay unit with one of the rollup doors replaced by rotting wood.  We then walked around the corner to the “big” building.  It was full of his stuff.  He then showed us to the “small” unit which was actually attached to the “big” one with a man-door between the two and an adjacent wall to the “tiny” unit.  It was full of desks and other office accoutrements which he said belong to the city and would have removed before we moved in.  The place is… rustic is a good word for it.  I'm not opposed to it, and it probably isn’t as bad as I'm making it out in my mind, it just seems… well, rustic.  We grokked the place a bit and John asked about price.  I think we decided on $350.00 a month for BOTH the “tiny” and the “small” units.  Basically, we’d get the entire front building.  It needs some work, but I'm sure it will serve us well.  I've just got to get over my trepidation over it being so… well, rustic.  I've shown it to Larry and mom and neither one said that they thought it was a mistake… but they didn’t see the inside.  I don’t know, I'm probably making it out to be worse than it actually is.  Yes, I'm sure of it.  So, after we hung out with our new “landlord” for a while, John and I headed back west.  We checked out business 287, which is just across the railroad tracks behind the new place, and followed it towards downtown.  We discussed what we wanted to do with the rest of the day.  I said I'd really like to move the toolbox home so the insurance folks will have no reason to believe we’re still working on cars there.  We headed to the shop.  We removed most of the drawers from the box and levered it into the back of Fifi.  We tied it down and headed to the office.  The girl said she’d make note that we’re just storing stuff there and we’ll be out as soon as we can… just not by midnight on the 31^st as requested.  At my house we rolled The Seven out and cleared a spot for the toolbox.  It slotted in and the drawers were stacked on top.  Oh, I'd been carrying Mentok (the 6” barrel Judge) loaded with bird shot in case we ran into snakes at the new shop.  I wanted to drop it off and switch to the 9mm I usually carry.  This I did and told mom about the shop situation.  I had John park Fifi while I did this.  We then hopped in Fiona and went to lunch at the usual sushi place… perhaps for the last time.  I then dropped John off at Fjord service and went to the new car showroom to wait for him.  He wanted to see if the new Fiesta ST was available yet.  It was not.  While waiting for him, I checked out a Focus ST.  The sales dude got the keys so we took a test drive.  It was pretty neat, with its turbo and six-speed manual.  I “accidentally” hit 100 miles per hour romping up the access road before dropping the anchor to merge onto the freeway.  John called while the sales dude and I were on the run and, apparently, I am an ass-hat!  Hmm.  We pulled back into the lot and chatted about stuff for a bit.  I gave some non-committal answers about buying the thing then John and I left.  At home that evening, the beebo, or peevo, or what the hell ever that recording thing on the satellite system is called, really pissed me off.  Every show I had recorded locked up when I tried to watch it.  I finally said, “Fuck this!” deleted all of the recordings, and cancelled all upcoming recordings.  If I don’t catch the show “live,” I just won't watch it.  Actually, I was so pissed I was about to ask mom how much she’d save by dropping the second tuner box from the service since I'm also “in hate” with the piece of shit, mother fucking TV in the living room.  Every god damned time the power fluctuates, which it does all the fucking time at that house, the fucking TV comes on and sits there burning the lamp.  I hate the fucking thing.  The PMS thing failing to playback recordings was almost the last straw for my TV watching.  I didn’t ask her to drop that box because I knew she wouldn’t and it would just upset her knowing I was that pissed off.  I wound up reading until I went to bed.  Sunday was a gun show… but I'll tell y'all about that tomorrow.