As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, the worst year in a long, long while was capped off by discovering that my car had been wrecked and towed without my knowing about it. I finally got the pictures I took at the junkyard up for the horror and edification of all and sundry. Long story short, my car was indeed totalled, undrivable, time for an insurance payout. As usual, Captain Corner Case strikes again and everything was way the hell more difficult than it ever really needed to be. Where should I start?
Well, happy friggin' new year, everyone. It's 2021.ev at last, the year when the Internet is supposed to look like this or something.
Of course it's never that easy. 2020.ev had one final kick in the crotch lined up, this one for me. I may as well tell the story as it unfolded, because that's how it seems to make sense. You may as well get your buckets of popcorn ready because why not, it's story time with Uncle Bryce again.
So, 31 December 2020.ev. I had an errand to run (one of precious few these days …
I had a feeling that we'd be in for a bad one today - yesterday afternoon felt and smelled like snow and the air was crisp and cold. Last night I wasn't sure at first if it was raining or snowing. By the time I went to bed there was no question about which it was, though I must confess a little shock this morning when I discovered that the snow/sleet/rain last night had turned into a quarter inch thick rime of ice coating everything outside, from the bannister and front steps of my apartment building to the parking …
Much of the DC metroplex is still digging out from under what has been dubbed Snowpocalypse 2009. At least where I live, the main roads are in pretty good shape, albeit they're down about three feet of clearance so they're more like one-and-a-half lanes in both directions. The side and back streets haven't really been plowed and are still touch and go should you need to drive on them. Generally speaking, unless stoplights are involved the snow removal strategy seems to consist of sunlight melting the snow, brave drivers breaking up the ice as they go, and the powers that …
This morning I took a short drive around my neighborhood to survey what damage I could from my car. I didn't take too many pictures because, frankly, it's not safe to drive and try to take pictures at the same time. The apartment complex Lyssa and I live in seems to have suffered damage to only a couple of evergreen trees, but seeing as how I haven't gone hiking to see what was going on I don't feel comfortable being quite so optimistic.
After a surprisingly short period of time, I found out what happened to my car when it broke down a couple of days ago.
As it turned out, the thermostat which regulates the cooling system went bad. What happened was that the thermostat erroneously decided to start reading MAXTEMP (which would mean that the engine block was about to melt down); it dutifully sent these messages to the microprocessor controlling the engine. The CPU erroneously decided that the cooling system had fouled up in some unspecified manner and commanded the water pump to start feeding coolant to an overflow bottle …
A couple of weeks back I took my car in for 55,000 mile maintenance, during which it was discovered that the water pump was starting to leak, which necessitated a couple of extra hours of work on the part of the car dealership to replace. I figured that everything was hunky-dory with my car, and indeed for a couple of weeks it was.
Earlier tonight after getting off from a whiz-bang day at work, I noticed that the 'check engine' light had blinked on somewhen after I got on the Beltway headed south to go home. I didn't think …
I spent a good ten minutes marshalling my thoughts to write at least a semi-interesting post about the past couple of days but every time I start typing I can't seem to string six words together into a coherent sentence. To put it simply, sometime Wednesday morning the sick-to-my-head feeling turned into a full-blown cold that's had me running at reduced capacity all week. When you factor in running around to multiple sites for multiple meetings for work, I haven't had much energy left after the fact. Since then my days were fueled with Sudafed PE and espresso and my …
Last weekend wound up a bit in the air due to an emergency at the last minute - one of Lyssa's relatives died unexpectedly and the family was hastily reconvened for her funeral, which was held on Saturday. because I'd been on the road the weekend before, I didn't have to make the trek back to Pennsylvania, much to my relief. Grant picked up Lyssa sometime on Friday while I was at work and returned to their homestead, which left me with some time on my hands. The first thing I did was move my car maintenance appointment back to Saturday …
Lyssa and I changed our plans last weekend because a) there weren't nearly as many RSVP's for the Starcraft LAN party we were organizing, and b) because there were some things that we had to take care of because we'd been putting them off for too long. That morning we sent out word of the cancellation, had a quick breakfast, and then set out for Maryland to take care of things.
There. Nice and fast, so that nothing else has a chance to crash on me.
