Nothing Important, in Short Paragraphs

We hit the road tomorrow. Motel in Santa Ana. Google says it's 442 miles. Another 7.7 miles to UC Irvine. That's where Skzx will be continuing his eddication. We're all going for new student orientation.

I enjoy driving. Even that long straight stretch of I-5. People complain, but not me. Maybe it's a temperament thing.

We have to take the car. Really isn't room for three adults in it, unless one of them is very small. None of them are. But the back seat can be a cozy place to read if given enough pillows.

Car because the truck is going to blow a pulley bearing and we don't want to take it anywhere until it does and is then fixed. Truck doesn't have an awful lot more room anyway. When we bought it the bairns were not yet full-sized and didn't mind the back seat was not designed for full-sized people. It's used for long trips even so, and we manage all right. But not this time.

About a week ago the car's CD player jammed up and nothing I could do yesterday fixed it. Apparently CD changers are unreliable. Also it didn't have an auxiliary audio input. No way we were going that far with nothing but radio. After much hawing and gnashing I went to Fry's and bought a new one. Took me all frickin' weekend to put it in.

Battery had reached its end too. Original with the car, six years old. So with the dash all torn apart I went and did the battery, which adventure included searching high and low for a battery carrying strap because mine broke, and replacing the terminal clamp on one cable because the old one had corroded away and was holding together mostly out of habit. No one anywhere sells carrying straps anymore and I had to borrow one and was lucky to get that. Oh, the stories I could tell.

Why all weekend? Well, you know, new radio replacing stock, nothing fit, multiple trips to the hardware store, etc. etc. But it's all in now, and it's cool because it has a USB port. All I have to do is fill a USB thumb drive with MP3 files and I am set. Love it.

We will miss our puppies.

Lost two today. New owners took them to their new homes. I can almost hear them crying for mama. Only six and a half weeks old! They are so cute, the very essence of adorable if essence can include the pervasive odor of puppy shit. Indeed it's drifting out of the open garage window and up and in through the open window right by me here upstairs. Gosh, will sure miss that.

They're not just hairy blind mole rats anymore. They are full of play and mischief. Come to their pen and they will run to you and crawl over each other to get close. Step in and they will crowd you and bite your ankles and untie your shoes. Mix of labrador and golden retriever -- we could sell them for a lot more than we do but we're not in it for the money, we just went puppies and friends to be happy together.

I believe strongly in capitalism but I'm not very good at it myself. I'm more in it for the individual liberty angle, which more well-meaning systems never really manage very well. I could never sell something at a price set by demand. Just give me what I think I put into it.

Doesn't feel like vacation. I'm taking my company-issued laptop and will check on things periodically. How can I not? My group has three people in it. Two if you don't count me. And though it's late Sunday night to me, it's mid Monday afternoon where the action is, and judging by email, the action ain't slowing down. So as a self-preservation measure I'm going to sort of work now and then -- self-preservation in the sense of avoiding a total conflagration of escalating issues by the time I return next weekend.

I don't mean to sound important. Some of what we do is put out fires, essentially. And letting them smolder gets you burned if you're not careful. That's all it is. Nothing important.