quick update

REALLY quick, as I’m in Charleston and paid for my 24 hour wireless day pass about 23 hours and 40 minutes ago. And I don’t want to buy another one because hopefully I’ll be headed back home tomorrow. And since I have apparently completely lost the ability to type and am REALLY annoying myself right now, I’m going to attempt to make this brief.

I say "hopefully" because after picking up the car today, I made the (very maddening) discovery that it is NOT running well. At all. In fact, it was kind of scaring the bejezus out of me tonight. I actually kept finding things wrong before I even drove away – an indicator light on, it was running really rough, something else that I’ve forgotten now… they took it back and messed around with it and said it was okay, so of course as soon as I get out of their drive the second time, back comes the indicator light and I also realize the speedometer isn’t working. I take it back AGAIN and he tells me to just bring it back in first thing in the morning – they are about to close. So I drive out to Sullivan’s Island, a five or so mile drive. It’s really driving weird. It’s jerking when I press or let up on the gas – weird and very annoying. If I slow down at all it jerks horribly. And when it idles, it kind of makes a PING PING PING! noise, and the trachometer thing jumps up and down in time to it. Not running right at ALL.

Oddly right before I figured out how bad it really was, the service station guy called me to make sure I was okay. Way past his closing time by then. So he gets a few points for at least being concerned. Since it wasn’t driving nearly as badly as it started to soon, he hasn’t heard my whole litenany of woes yet.

Oh, and I’m down here by myself, which seemed like a great idea and lots of fun until all this happened. Now I want a backup mechanical idiot!! Baker B stayed home because we have a plumber coming tomorrow to move the hot water heater before the Great House Foundation Madness starts next Monday – and it is REALLY hard to get a plumber to call you back in our town, let alone actually show up. And we also hated to leave poor little sensitive Stella alone again, right before House Foundation Madness, when she’s going to go stay with Kim in Asheville for a few days and be totally traumatized. She’s very sensitive. And now she’s all alone, without Colfax who wasn’t the greatest company but at least was some company, we hated leaving her by herself again.

Yes, we dote on that cat. And I digress. And I’m about to run out of time. 

There is a glint of good news because after driving out to Sullivan’s Island the first time and having it run so badly, I went back to the motel and then decided to go out again – and ended up driving back out there. Still drove really badly – — but on the return trip it was perfectly fine. I’d already wailed to Baker B about how NOT OKAY the car was, so had to call him back and revise that and tell him, well, maybe it IS okay. Then of course it started acting Not Okay again. But maybe it’s just an adjustment thing. I don’t think they even drove it after putting the engine and the clutch in. I also think it’s a clutch thing, not the new engine. But, what do I know! Just that it’s GOT to be okay before I start off on a five hour trip tomorrow! I may be here another night.

And a quick job update, as I’m still walking on air about that — I don’t start till July 16, which is odd and worked out incredibly well. It’s a long story involving them hiring two people while keeping a retiring person till the end of July (my new job) and they can’t pay all three of us all month so asked if I’d mind waiting a couple more weeks to start. That works out well for me with all this time I’m having to be gone, and Foundation Madness too – and my job is complicated and is going to take some major work just getting it to make the slightest bit of sense to whoever is crazy enough to take it.

Okay, I’ll have to go into detail later. I think my time is nearly up…

Well, it hasn’t cut me off yet – I’ll try to throw a couple of photos in before it does.

On Broad Street

Neat roof with reconstruction