Current mood:	exhausted
Current music:	Rick Wakeman - Minas Truth
Entry tags:	angst, cars, chicks, computers, danielle, employment, life, mazda

This year blows
I'm still using the folks' computer, and it's driving me nuts. If you have any comments on my computer issues mentioned in earlier posts, please speak up (or type up), no matter how insignificant you might think your advice is.

My car is in the shop again. It died just short of getting to work on Saturday. I woke up at 3:30 AM to be there by 5 on my day off (I'm not even supposed to be here today!). I only wound up getting about an hour of work done, so I paid $65 for a tow so I could make ten bucks.

So my head gasket is blown. The resulting pressure caused my radiator to suffer irreparable damage. At the very least, I'm looking at $207 to replace the head gasket and valve gasket, $347 for a new radiator, $22 for an oil change as this coolant leak has fucked my oil, $60 to flush and refill the coolant system and $450 for an estimated six hours' labor. The total for repairs is about half of what I still owe on the overpriced heap.

I think my next resort will be to attempt to reason with my dealer. If I say to Hell with this car and let him take it back, he could either do so and fuck my credit, or make a deal with me on a new car and continue making money from me. I think that would be preferable to sinking over $1000 more into this car.

Why is this year so awful already? Here's Smeg's 2004 year-so-far-in-review!

• The only dog I ever liked died. The folks have two new dogs; a St. Bernard mix that's a puppy, and a two year old Pomeranian with a terrible begging habit. Duncan was so fundamentally different I don't even know where to start.
  
  
• I fell in love to be let down. I'm not over Danielle in the slightest. In fact I still try, although I may not post about it much in here. Everything about her, every nuance or mannerism or expression makes me feel like I haven't in a long time, but she's almost certainly a chronic, pathological liar.
  
  This has gone far beyond the point of maintaining optimism in the face of doubt. She still never calls me, whether she tells me she will or if I call and get her voice mail. Yet every time I talk to her, she has some new story, some new drama, some new excuse and tells me she still wants to go out. I'm not going to let her turn me misogynist, but I'm still at the point where it's hard to imagine anyone else exciting me like she does.
  
  
• Garden Ridge filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and has closed eight stores and one warehouse so far. Work has taken a turn as we've started receiving double the usual amount of freight, as one warehouse has started shipping to us before the other has been emptied out, and we've also received freight for closed stores that's been redirected to ours. Coupled with the number of associates who have already found new employment (we're talking about people who made the job bearable), we just can't come close to managing it all. We have merchandise coming out our ears and I still have to try to find room to unload more every day.
  
  
• My computer is comatose. It's worked flawlessly for six months, and all the components should still be under warranty. It's still a pain in the ass to deal with, and I'm practically lost without the thing.
  
  
• My car has been in the shop three times now this year, and since August I've already put $700 into it on top of insurance, gas and payments. She has 135k miles on her and just isn't worth the upkeep anymore. I think it's time to put her out of her (my) misery.

2004, in short, blows.

On a lighter note, I cut my hair (no pics till the computer works again). I'm still not quite satisfied with it, but I guess it looks OK. It's more rugged and less metro than I was aiming for, and I'm told the result is more Hugh Grant than Takumi Fujiwara. I don't know what to think of that, but as long as transvestites don't start hitting on me I guess it could be worse. I think some gel experimentation is in order.