Category: Good Things

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Sometimes you just have to say Screw IT!

I’ve been trying for 3 days to get a tow truck to get one vehicle to a service facility.
It’s less than 10 miles.

But because…

What? Why is it always so difficult to get almost anything done here? It’s not that there aren’t folks to do stuff, it’s that they’ve always got attitude about it as if they’re the only ones available, and truthfully sometimes they are.

When you try to locate someone else it’s like pulling teeth, there’s tons of scheduling difficulties and lots of hemming and hawing.

So this morning, after spending Monday and half of Tuesday and the first couple hours this morning trying to locate another towing company. I said screw it! I fired up the car that has been overheating, and in the cool overcast I allowed gravity to assist me down the mountain while keeping cool airflow over the engine. I made it to the repair facility before the temp reached 212° F.

The difference between being someone who can drive versus someone who Drives I guess. This is probably why I got almost 100,000 miles out of the brakes on my 1 Series.
If you can gauge the weight and how your car slows down when you take your foot off the gas, with engine braking you don’t really need brakes until you need to stop at a light, stop sign, or because someone else in front of you is slamming on their brakes every 8 seconds.

So I’m at the repair facility and I was thinking about the general difficulties of living where I do.

Things were never as easy as when I lived in dense urban areas. But over the past decade things have gotten a lot harder.

It’s simple things, like mandated inspections. Getting tow trucks, finding someone to do a septic tank replacement, or paint the whole house. Repairs around the house for which I may not have the tools, the skill, or both, are also a pain.

Theres a lot of good about being here.

I love my view, I’m becoming less fond of winters. Even so, the sound of snow, the beauty of full moon on untouched snowdrifts, the rainbow sprinkles you sometime see on fresh snow in the sun, these are things that I will miss if I leave this place. Typically the Summer isn’t too hot or uncomfortable and as in winter, I appreciate the sounds of nature, the beauty of a sunrise or sunset, the rare rain and rarer thunderstorm. I like hiking around the area and having pretty safe places to walk the dog. I enjoy watching the hummingbirds and their battles around the feeder. Their aerobatics always put a smile on my face.

There’s a lot of bad about being here.

One or two neighbors up the road who make things super miserable for everyone else. Slow police response time, The difficulties I mentioned before about getting things done. The exceedingly long commutes to get to basic services. The general cost of everything here in California. There’s no sign of that changing any time soon. I suspect that it’s going to get worse before the state figures out the people they’re increasing the taxation on are the same people they’re forced to pay subsidies to because otherwise those folks are below the state poverty line, but not the federal level.

It’s with a lot of this stuff in mind that I’ve started a pro and con list of remaining here.
It’s questionable if I can stay here without finding a job. There are a lot of memories here. Most of them are happy, but some of them are very sad. Finding people to interact in positive ways is difficult. Dating, should I choose to do that, will be almost impossible. Commuting to a job will be more difficult. Traffic has gotten so bad that even a short commute is not as easy as it once was. Sadly the bad list is outweighing the good.

I’ll keep working on it. It’s been suggested that I pack the dog up and take a road trip to some of the places I’ve been considering as alternatives to California. I think it’s a good idea…

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Why the company of a Dog is better than that of a person.

Your dog doesn’t care if you wander around the house naked. The dog doesn’t judge you if your fat ass shatters mirrors in every room.

Your dog doesn’t care if you say climate change is normal and the end of the world in 10 years is BullShit. Your dog looks at you as if to say who cares? I’m going to be dead and you’re old enough that you’ll probably be dead too!

Your dog doesn’t care if you voted for Trump or Biden. I have noticed that my dog tends to pee on one kind of yard sign more than the other.

Your dog doesn’t care if you don’t use the right pronouns.

Your dog doesn’t care if you say the transgender bullshit is wrong.

Your dog doesn’t judge you on anything but the quality of the treats, the punctuality of you putting food in the bowl, the walk schedule, your ability to play ball and cuddling during thunderstorms.

It’s not correct to say your dog doesn’t judge you, they do. But what they judge you on are real things, in the real world.

For a dog every day is a new beautiful thing, full of adventure and joy.

A dogs exuberance is contagious and my dog has carried me though one of the roughest times in my life.

I noticed today that he’s making me smile and laugh a little more every day.

Lots of people on the other hand are almost exactly opposite of a dog.

That’s why I’ll take my dog over most people every time. Yep, even when he demands to go for a walk in the rain or snow. Strangely, those walks are fun even if we come home soaking wet and muddy. His laughing look makes it worth it.

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That was surprisingly easy and nice.

It turns out that I don’t have to pony up a complete payment for the car.

That’s a mercy! The young lady asked first if I was wanting to refinance it, and I smiled back at her, “With these insane rates?”

She thought about it for a minute then looked at the current rate. “OH!” She said, “Let’s see if there are any other options.”

I patiently waited. After several phone calls, she said, “Here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gong to merge your account into the joint account and then that account will be yours alone. The car loan will then remain there and your automatic payments will continue as normal.”

WOW! Talk about super nice! I’ve gotta say that this particular credit union has been fantastic for the 30 – odd years that we dealt with them. After the fire, when literally everything including our IDs had been burned. It was this credit union that handed us debit cards, and gave us access to our cash because they had photos of us, scans of our signatures, and the smarts to identify us without our drivers license. The same cannot be said of two major banks we were dealing with!

It was amazing.

And once again, they’ve come through making the life of one of their customers easier instead of insanely over complicated.

This is a relief. Now I’ll move forward with putting new tires on the car and have the service done. (Why bother to do any of that if there was any question about me keeping the car?)

Then there’s this. I was out and about with my new iPad and was having a problem getting data on the cellular link. I tried a bunch of things, nothing helped.

“OH NO, I have to call Apple.” Surprisingly I got someone who knew her stuff, she was in Canada and was very pleasant to talk with. We walked through everything and on the Apple side everything should have been working.

She was very sorry but had to direct me to my carrier. It was okay.

Elapsed time on the phone 10 minutes including hold time… Nice!

On the the cellular carrier. Again, got right through to a lovely lady in Idaho. We stepped through normal stuff and then she called someone with a bit more experience. A gentlemen came on the line and said, “I’m going to reset some things on our end, would you please reset your network settings on your iPad? “

I said, “Sure,” and set about that process.

Boom everything started working properly. Elapsed time including hold time about 10 minutes.

So 20 minutes grand total and the iPad is working exactly as it’s supposed to.

Today the power will be off for about 6 hours. Oh goody!