6/10/13

How appropriate that I get to talk about John's “new” 610 on 6/10.  Or perhaps not.  Anyhoo, we went to get the car on Saturday.  I mentioned it being in east Texas, right?  Well, it wasn’t so much in east Texas as it was in west Arkansas.  Ok, so it was Texarkana and just barely into Arkansas, but still…  I guess I shouldn’t complain.  I'm not the one with restrictions on my time.  As I said to him during the trip, “I don’t have to be anywhere until 0730h Monday morning.”  So here’s how it went down.  Friday after work I went to Benbroke and got the trailer.  Every time I go there now I worry that they have had an auction and sold all my stuff.  I think I could win the lawsuit especially since they charged me another $625.00 rent for this month.  Anyhoo, they had not sold me stuff so I worried for nothing.  I grabbed the ramps from inside the shop and had a look at how many straps I had.  There were plenty.  I also grabbed the two gas cans full of gasoline which I had intended to remove from the shop last weekend just in case there was an insurance inspection.  I hooked up the trailer and headed back to the house.  Saturday morning John texts me asking my status.  I reply back, “I’m Clark Gable at the drive through.”  When he said something to the effect of “Good,” I assumed he got that I was “Rhett to go.”  I move Fiona out of the driveway and remember the gas cans in the back of the truck.  I finger, “What the hell,” and pour the six gallons of questionable gas into Fifi's tank.  I'm finishing up just as John arrives.  We pile into Fifi and head east.  I say to him, “If the 610 falls through…” and he finishes my thought with, “As if I hadn’t already mapped out the route to go see the Mini on the way home!”  We then discuss the Alfa some more.  He didn’t realize the car has no interior.  He looks up the ad and determines that it appears to have a dash, which would have been a deal-breaker had it not.  I believe the “final” decision was to gopher the Mini… if anything.  The Spitfire was discussed as well and I think the “final” decision on that one was, “It needs to go away.”  Around Greenville we both told how long it had been since we’d either one been that far east on I-30.  He won since I'd been to Mount Pleasant in 2011 with The Seven.  Eventually curiosity got the better of me and I finally asked, “Where the hell IS this car?”  He sheepishly said, “Texarkana.”  I laughed and settled in for the rest of the drive.  Eventually we arrived at the place and saw the car.  It is so totally “Grand Ma” with stock wheels and ride height that I can hardly believe it is the same model as Barbecue Bob.  We grok it and John hands over the cash.  The dude fires it up and drives it onto the trailer where we tie it off.  Of course John has already scoped out the sushi restaurants in Texarkana so we head to the one just off of I-30 and eat.  Meh, it was ok.  We look the car over againbefore heading west.  It is still really “Grand Ma” looking… but it’s in the family.  We roll back home.  We stop in at a rib joint for a pee and some fried pies then hook a right on I-35 in downtown Not Texas so we can take it to 183 and Loop 820 to John's house.  There we drop the car in his driveway and head to the shop to drop the trailer.  After the trailer is locked up we head to my house again.  He heads home and I go in to see what mom has in mind for dinner.  She’s already eaten so I hop in Fiona and go to McDonald’s for a burger… or two.  Yeah, I ate really poorly Saturday.  On the way out to Texarkana, we had stopped in a Cracker Barrel to pee and picked up candy bars and prickly pear sodas… made with real sugar.  I drank three of the four during the course of the road trip.  Oh, and when John brought breakfast burritos, I had him get me a regular Dr. Pepper to drink.  And then there were the fried pies… so yeah, I ate poorly Saturday.  When I got back from McDonald’s, mom asked me to look at something on her TV.  DirecTV showed how to add certain channels we were missing… or so it appeared.  When I called, it kept trying to get me to sign up for Cinemax or something.  I finally hung up and went to my computer.  I fingered out how to change the plan so we would get the channels I wanted and, after clearing the extra expense with mom, switched.  I spent the evening reprogramming my favorites with the remote downstairs.  Sunday I spent watching the Science channel, the Military channel, and History 2… until the remote/box began to act up.  If I tried to surf with the channel up button, it would go one channel at a time for a bit then zoom up like fifteen channels.  When I'd try to surf the guide with the arrow keys, it did the same thing.  I threw the remote across the room, ripped the cables from the back of the box, and went up to my computer again.  I found out how to cancel the second box, the one downstairs, but didn’t do it.  I did revert the plan back to the “cheap seats” though.  It the mother fucker won't work right, I’m not going to put up with it.  If I can't use the guide to see what’s on all those other channels, I'll just watch BBC America, Velocity, and whatever channel is showing “The Big Bang Theory.”  I'm not fucking with the guide or the BVD recorder thing anymore.  And as soon as it fucks me again, I'll cancel the box on my TV.  There’s no point in mom paying $6.00 a month if that TV won't be used.  I fucking hate technology when it doesn’t work… which is ALL technology eventually.  I ripped the fucking Blue-tool shit out of Fiona's steering wheel, I'll cancel the fuck out of the satellite box on my TV.  I smashed the ever living shit out of plenty of laptops… not to mention that damned i-Phone bastard.  And I am just about ready to go back to a plain old “Dumb-Phone” because the Dingleberry is being a cunt-rag as well.  And on that note, I'm going to call it a rant.