Flash Fiction Challenge

From the flash fiction challenge at Terrible Minds. This weeks challenge was to use 3 of the following 5 words in a story of 100 words. Enzyme, Ivy, Bishop, Blister, and Lollipop.

And here we go....

Bishop leaned on his desk, unwrapped the lollipop he'd taken from his son's Halloween candy. Rolling the candy around his mouth he picked up his pencil and went back to the statements he was working on. From the page to the monitor and back he worked, looking for a place to make $50,000 disappear. He felt a sore rising on his cheek. blisters forming on his fingers where they had touched the candy. His lips, hot and swollen. His throat closing. He got up, stumbled to the mirror. His last thought; wonderment at how Bernard had found out.

...Ends

Thanks Chuck, that was fun.

Congratulations Darnell

I wanted to give a quick shout out to my cousin-in-law Darnell on getting his Handling Screwdrivers post picked up by the Lee Valley Tools website. You can check out his article here. For more from Darnell, check out his blog http://thewayiwood.blogspot.com/. Really fantastic stuff.

Once again, Congratulations Darnell!!

I Am Judged!

Good look from Cam, no?

Promotional Banner For My Next Band

Thanks to Lisa and Tim for the inspiration for this. I'm gonna print up a bunch of these and paper the neighborhood with them.Which one do you like better?

Remember, two wrongs make a Wronger.

My Four Seasons #2: Hockey (and to a lesser extent Basketball)

This begins with the Winter Classic. A recent phoenomon that takes a regular season NHL hockey game and moves it outside. This is an attempt to make the rest of us feel nostalgic for those good old days when we all went out and played shinny on the pond. I never played on a frozen pond, or frozen water for that matter, but I do get a little teary eyed seeing the sun gleam off the outdoor surface with the nostalgic background music.

Youth hockey kicks off in August with evaluations, and practices. The actual season begins in October, but with the Thanksgiving break and then Christmas and New Years the youth hockey season seems to really get into gear in January. The run up to the playoffs begin in February and by the end of February it's time for the end of year tournament. Busy weekends, running from rink to rink for team practices, skills clinics and games. Loads of opportunities to avoid house work. Can't work around the house if you're taking your kid to the ice rink.

Youth hockey ends and the NHL playoffs begin in March. With 8 best of 7 game series going on at the same time it really is March madness. The Divisional rounds lead to the Conference Finals and then the Stanley Cup Finals in June. It's still kind of strange to see hockey being played in June, but I love it.

My Four Seasons: #1 Football

I've lived in the Portland Metro area for the last 30+ years and this has been the wettest winter in memory. Now that summer is starting to poke it's head around the corner I'd like to use the next few posts to take you through my four seasons. My year starts in the fall and if you think that's because of the beginning of the school year I'd bet you'd be right.

Football Season

This starts with the NFL's Hall Of Fame Game which is usually held the last weekend in July. The new class is inducted into the hall on Saturday and the game is played on Sunday. Football season takes me through the turning of the leaves and the shortening of the days. 

Watching NFL pre-season games through August, then the start of high school and college seasons in September. I even got to spend the last three years watching Cam play youth football, complete with 2 hour practices every weekday in August. 

The season can be marked by discrete events. 

Monday night football celebrates Halloween is a favorite. It's nice to see someone besides Raider fan in costume at the game. 

The Civil War game between Oregon State University and The University of Oregon establishes bragging rights for the rest of the year. 

High School playoffs start in November and gives parents across the state a chance to take a child's game too seriously. I'm not looking down at them any more. It turns out I'm one of them. 

Thanksgiving in the USA provides us with an opportunity to watch the Detroit Lions play. I'm convinced that this is a public service provided by the NFL to keep us safe while in a turkey induced coma. 

Bowl Season in college football begins in the middle of December. The best of the rest play in bowls like the New Orleans Bowl, Beef 'O' Brady's Bowl, the Hawaii Bowl, and the Little Caesars Pizza Bowl to name but a few. It used to be that the big boys played their bowl games on New Years day, but that date keeps getting pushed off into the new year. The 2012 Allstate BCS National Championship Game will be played on January 9th.

In the NFL the playoffs get into gear in January with Wildcard weekend, the Divisional playoffs, and the Conference finals all leading up to The Super Bowl.

My Old Pickup - Final Update

Hopefully this will be the final update in the My Old Pickup series. I got it back last week and it's been driving well. It still shifts hard. I'm still trying to get over the amount of money it cost me to get the transmission fixed. I guess it still comes back to the same question - Did you save money by not buying a new car, or did you throw good money after bad by trying to resuscitate the old girl.

So far so good

My Old Pickup - Update

I went to pick up the old beast this evening from Landmark Ford in Tigard. I paid the bill and they brought my old pickup out to the front of the building. The paperwork they gave me told me that I had two bulbs that were burned out. I asked Chris, the assistant service manager, why they hadn't replaced them, or at the very least asked me if I wanted them replaced. Apparently those were out of stock. They needed to be replaced urgently, but not here, at the garage, where you take trucks and cars to be fixed. Sweet.

My wife drove my truck, and I drove the Scion that I had borrowed from my folks (Thanks Mom and Dad! You're the best!). Things looked good until we got about half way home. I'm following Heather and she makes an unscheduled left hand turn. I followed her as she turned into a cul-de-sac and rolled her window down. The check engine light had come on again.

Joy. Back to Landmark Ford. We'll find out what's going on just give us a couple of hours and I'll give you a call.

Now the upside to this fiasco is that I know more then I did when I started. For instance, did you know that there is a left heated exhaust gas oxygen sensor as well as a right heated exhaust gas oxygen sensor? I didn't know that. It turns out that one of the sensors that got replaced last night was the right heated exhaust gas oxygen sensor. Today the left heated gas oxygen sensor went out. Chris, the assistant service manager, tells me that when I had my transmission worked on these parts weren't removed, but were allowed to hang down. They weren't put back in after the transmission work was finished, but instead were zip tied up out of the way. In fact the left heated exhaust gas oxygen sensor was so kinked up from this that it became a minor headache for the service tech to get it out.

OK, so now I've got questions. What in the world were they doing at Tualatin Transmission. Now I get to go back there and talk to John Floyd Sr. about their practices. Is this common practice for them? Do they always leave these parts off? Are the HEGO sensors optional? The other question I have is why would the service techs at Landmark not look at the right HEGO sensor. The left HEGO sensor was off, and they found that. They told me that it looked like it happened during the transmission repair. Did it not occur to anybody to take a look at the other sensor? Are mechanics not allowed to show initiative anymore? "Sorry, but the diagnostic machine didn't tell us anything else was wrong."

Now it's going to cost another $270 and the part won't be there until tomorrow. Great. Hey MGM Grand, what are the odds that this is going to stay fixed after I get it back this time?

My Old Pickup

The transmission on my poor old pickup finally gave up the ghost. I guess I shouldn't say finally, because it's only got 156,000 miles. That's not a ton of miles to have on a vehicle made in 1994. Never-the-less the transmission went kaput.

Fortunately I wasn't left stranded. I've been limping along for about a month now in a state of denial. The pickup would start off well, but then it wouldn't shift up. I'd have to get to about 35 miles an hour in first gear before I could let off the gas and let it shift into what turned out to be third gear. I finally summoned up the courage to call the mechanic. I told him what was going on and he told me to bring her into the shop. So I made arrangements to borrow a car from my folks (Thanks Mom and Dad! You're the best!) and took her in.

I got a call the next day. "It's a transmission problem." Not a big surprise, but I was still holding out hope it was something else. "We're not going to be able to fix it here. I'm gonna recommend that you take it down to Lafayette." Really? For those of you wondering I live in Tigard, OR which is south of Portland, OR. Lafayette is about 25 miles farther south. It takes anywhere from 35 minutes to an hour and a half to get down there depending on traffic. "You can't recommend anyone closer? I don't ever get down that way." "Nope, he's our transmission guy, sorry."

OK, well I'm not going to drive down to Lafayette to get this thing fixed. So I start to search around. Nobody I asked had a transmission guy. Makes sense to me. Up until my mechanic told me to go to a transmission shop it didn't occur to me that those things were different. Live and learn. I wouldn't go to an optometrist for a  knee problem. So I'm searching online and there are more conflicting reviews then I've seen in a long time. People seem to either love the shop they went to or hate it.

I settled on a guy in Tualatin, much closer, who had some pretty intelligible, and positive reviews. I made the appointment and took my old pickup in. I got there at 4:30pm and they close at 5pm. There was nobody to meet me in the office. That's fine. It's a small, independent shop. They don't want to spend money on a receptionist. I stick my head out into the bay's and I still don't see anybody. I hate it when this happens. I don't want to wander around out there looking for somebody. There's some really expensive equipment out there. I might look at it wrong and have it fall over. Then somebody will come out.

I rattled some paper, coughed, waited, coughed, called out, coughed again, and rattled paper. Finally someone pokes his head out. Aha. Turns out the owner had knocked off early that day, even after I told him I was coming in that evening, and this poor guy didn't know what needed to be done for me to drop my old pickup off. Dandy. We went back into the office and he rummaged around until he found some forms that looked vaguely appropriate. We filled them out and I made sure to get a copy of the form just in case. I left my key and left with a prayer on my lips.

I like supporting locally owned, and independent businesses, but there is a sort of minimal level of professionalism I expect. This was not meeting those expectations. If there was another shop in the area that had similar reviews I would have bolted. There was not, and I was to the point where I was getting worried about getting stranded on the side of the road. That was back on the 9th of June.

I expected to hear from him on Friday. I did not hear from him on Friday. It would be too much to expect them to work over the weekend. Monday, I didn't hear from him so I called at 3:30pm to find out what was going on.

"Oh yeah, you have a tranny problem. It's not shifting into second gear." Headdesk, Headdesk.
"You don't say." I said.
"Oh yeah, I just test drove it."

Great, you've had it for almost two full business days and you've driven it. That bodes well for the future. He tells me that he can get it fixed and it should be ready to go on Wednesday. I was ready for the problem to be gone and I had already decided that a 1200 dollar bill on a vehicle that is running well is better than spending $16,000-$18,000 on a new vehicle. OK John, get it done.

Wednesday I'm waiting for a call. No call. Finally at 3:30pm I call them. Oh, they're a little backed up, but they'll be done by tomorrow. Thursday I call again to make sure my old pickup is ready to go.

"It's ready, but it's really shifting hard now. The check engine light came on. We hooked it up to our computer and it gave us some strange code we hadn't seen before. Something about a vacuum leak. That's probably been going on for a while now huh?" No, no that has not been happening for a while now. The check engine light has gone on once before, 10 years ago. Great.

So I pick my old pickup up from Tualatin Transmission. Sure enough, it's shifting hard and after about five minutes the check engine light comes on. I drove it to work on Friday and the same thing happened. I fumed over the weekend and then made arrangements on Monday to take it in to my "regular" mechanic. Turns out there are a couple of sensors that need to be replaced, one of which will require a retro kit. Did I mention that my old pickup was built in 1994? Oh yeah, and the hard shifting? "It looks like they put a shift kit on when they rebuilt the transmission." Wait, what?

A shift kit is something that you put on higher performance cars to get a more positive shift. Automatic transmission cars will sometimes drive in two gears simultaneously depending on speed and load on the engine. If you're racing, or going off-road you might not want that, so you put on a shift kit. This makes the transmission engage in only one gear at a time. The trade off? The transmission shifts hard. It saves wear and tear on the transmission, but the drive train takes the brunt of all that extra force when the vehicle shifts gears.

Sweet. "Can you tell me why they would do that?"
"Well a lot of the transmission shops will put a shift kit on so they can preserve the transmission. Did they give you a warranty?"
"Yeah, 2 year, 24,000 miles."
"They're hedging they're bets that you'll get there by installing the shift kit."

So the pain moves from the rebuilt transmission to the original drive train. I believe I hate them.

I'll be getting my old pickup back today and I'm hoping that everything will be in working condition.
Wish me Luck!

Day 8: Disembarkation

Whew! Thank goodness today is over. Cruises are funny beasts. They treat you like royalty for the entire trip, right up until the time you leave, then they practically throw you off the ship.

Woke up at 6:00am today in order to get through the shower and dressed before breakfast. Breakfast was served at 7:30am in Parrot Cay. That was good, Parrot Cay is my favorite dining room on board. We had a chance to see all of our table mates for the last time. It was nice to be able to say goodbye.

Then it was back to the room to grab the last of our stuff because the room stewards need to prepare the rooms for the next guests. We grabbed our bags and headed up to deck 9 to wait for our Disney character to be called. The ship disembarks kind of like airplanes get boarded. Instead of calling your row, there is an announcement calling your Disney character. Our character was Goofy, and that turned out to be a bad call for us. We were the last people called to disembark, and so the queue's began.

First a line to get off the ship. Shuffle, shuffle, step...shuffle, shuffle, step. Finally off the ship onto the gangway, shuffle, shuffle, step...shuffle, shuffle, step. Cam did fantastic through this whole thing. I was super happy with him. Off the gangway into the terminal, shuffle, shuffle, step...shuffle, shuffle, step. Oh, be careful now, things open up into four lines as we prepare to go through customs. Shuffle, shuffle, step, ironic because we're going through Canadian customs in order to drive south through U.S. customs later today.

Canadian customs was polite and thorough as always. They seem to be more consistently nice then you'll find in the States. Through to baggage claim, grab the baggage cart! Don't want to carry those bags all the way to the car. Now to find the luggage. Funny, it was all together when we put it outside the door last night. How did it get so spread out here?

OK, we've got the bags now it's off to the elevator, you know they have 2 of them here at Canada place. Yes there was a line for the elevator. When people are getting on the elevator with a weeks worth of luggage you know the it's going to take some time. Shuffle, shuffle, step. Finally we're downstairs in the parking garage. Hey look, the car's in one piece. Thank goodness. Load the bags and we are off.

On the road to the US border. Clear sailing all the way to the crossing. Once we get there though, trouble strikes. 75 minute wait to cross the border. That can't be right. it's pushing 12:30pm now. Maybe that's a hold over from the morning rush hour? Now Cam needs to use the restroom. Goodness gracious.

So here's the coolest thing that happened all day. The line to cross the border is creeeeeeeping along, and we're coming up to the duty free shop. The line is moving slow enough that we probably have just enough time. "Come on Cam." We jump out of the car and buzz into the shop. Quick, run to find the restroom. "Might want to hurry, that line could start moving any time now." Cam headed in and I start pacing. Fortunately there is a window looking out at the line so I can see Heather. The line doesn't move for a bit, but then it starts creeping. Uh Oh. I don't want to go in and tell him to hurry, because that might freeze him up. Come on buds, the car is about even with us. Here comes Cam, drying his hands. He throws the paper towel away and steps out. "Come on Cam, we've got to go. The car is moving." Out the door, across the bushes and about a 20 yard dash down the road and we are back in the Escape. WooHoo!

Two pictures to share.

I'm not going to talk about the trip south through Washington. It was uneventful.

It's good to be home.