Tag: car

Help fix Jill’s car!

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My sister has the worst luck.

She’s been ill and has been told by her doctors to minimize the time working and try to focus on getting better. But in October, something happened that has made her really upset. In the span of a few short weeks, the brakes went, the ball bearing decided to be on the verge of failing, the battery died and had to be replaced, the starter stopped, and then worst of all…the timing belt broke.

And when the timing belt broke, the car broke too.

My sister has next to no money. The cost to replace an engine is prohibitive, but the whole family needs that car running again. So we figured we’d see if the Internet wanted to help us out.

I know it’s a tight season, but anything you can donate will be a help.

You can find the donation widget in the sidebar (third down) or by going to https://www.youcaring.com/jillscar.

Thanks in advance for any help you can give. And even if you can’t help, maybe you could pass it on.

beauty in destruction

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My kid sis was in a car wreck on Saturday. She’s got a sore neck and received a concussion in the accident, but she’ll be fine. This is the taillight of her car — it got crunched but it looks fixable. We don’t know much beyond that, but I admit that I love this shot of the aftermath of the accident. It’s strangely beautiful despite being of a smashed taillight.

Been meaning to share

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image

This is an abandoned car in the parking garage I park in.

[tftc] Attack of the Quack

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[Fifth in an occassional series about things I see on my commute.]

Today, on my way home, I get up on the freeway, and a couple vehicles in front of me, I see a truck. It looked like this:

Hmmm, says I, it’s a Duck truck. Now, I don’t root for the Oregon Ducks, but they play in the same league as my beloved Cal Bears, so it’s still nifty to see. I begin to wonder if it might be the equipment truck. I decide to overtake and I snap one more picture of the side of the truck as I go by:

Keep on Duckin'!Photo by retstak

It made me laugh. So I asked over on Addicted to Quack, an Oregon sports blog, about what that truck was. And sure enough, my guess was right. You see, the Ducks played Tennessee in Knoxville on Saturday night, and the afternoon commute hours today were just right for the Ducks’ equipment truck to be passing through Sacramento on its way home to Eugene from that game.

I wonder if Cal has a similar truck?

detritus

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In no particular order:

  • My souvenir book and program guide for the worldcon just concluded in Montreal came today. My cat is thankful to the committee for providing her with cat toys. Cat toys? I hear you ask. Well, you see, in order to keep the souvenir book flat, somebody attached package straps, and my cat seems to think these make wonderfully awesome toys. This is why I voted for the folks in Montreal; I knew they would be thoughtful like that. ;)
  • Had to take my car in for servicing today — it needed an oil change. Not a big deal. On the way home, I found somebody with a car that had a license plate of RIP BUD, a license plate frame that read “In memory of my son Bud”, and one of those in memoriam stickers in the back window. I understand that grief is a powerful thing, but I’ve got to wonder what the story is that made somebody feel the necessity of shelling out for personalized plates to bear his/her grief. Guess this is one of those things to file away and let the brain see how they can make fiction from it.
  • Got my first distribution of the eAPA out as the OE. It’s a bit scary being the dude in charge, but I think I can handle it. It’ll get easier from here on out, I’m sure. That said, I’ve got to start trying to figure out how to get new members — I love the ones we have, but new members are always fun. So if anybody out there reading this who isn’t already in on the fun that is the eAPA and want to join in, it’s once a month in pdf (and if you don’t have a pdf writer, I can turn it into pdf from Word or Open Office documents without a problem). The folks in the APA are nice and we don’t bite unless you ask really nicely. So come on…whatcha waiting for? Join in the fun. Toss me an email.

And I think that’s pretty much all the news that is news across the nation. At least, at the moment.

So we’ll leave this with a question: what sort of detritus is in your head at the moment?

Things to do today

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I’ve put together my ballots for both the 2011 Worldcon and 2010 NASFiC, and am heading off to mail them, along with my mother’s job application.

I also have to go to the library and straighten out a technological problem — the new self-checkout machines are awesome, but if they don’t record that I’ve paid my fines despite taking the money out of my bank account, then we have a big problem. Okay, well, it’s relatively minor amounts of money compared to some of the library fines I’ve racked up, but it’s still money. (I also have to go switch books around, but that’s less of a problem.)

Then it’s over to the grocery store to get the ingredients for chicken soup. Yeah, it’s the middle of summer, but the temps are only in the eighties today, so it’s a good day for soup. Besides, for an improvised recipe, I make pretty darn good chicken soup.

I also want to get some writing done, pay a few bills, clear a couple boxes out of my room (or at least make them more organized), do laundry, get my old car up on craigslist, and deal with some email backlog.

So yeah, that’s my day. What are you all up to, my friends?

Proving physics concepts the hard way.

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If you had been following my twitter on Saturday, you would have seen the following entry:

Was in an accident.

I twittered that from the ER, where I was waiting to be seen for injuries sustained in said accident.

The key point here is that I’m alive. Injuries were a sprained right knee and a sprained right thumb, as well as a cut/bruise across my chest, which I suspect was caused by the seatbelt. It’ll all heal, given time. The occasional replay of the accident in my head will probably also fade, although at the moment, it’s difficult.

What happened? Well, I had just come over a hill, and was scanning ahead, when a U-Haul truck down in the intersection I was approaching caught my eye. Which means I didn’t see the brakelights in front of me until it was too late. Whoops. I tried to stop, but I suspect the brakes locked. (There’s some skid marks on the pavement.) The airbag went off.

This all wouldn’t have been so bad, except the car belongs to Mom and Dad, and I feel awful because they didn’t need to have to be looking for a new car now — money’s really tight. And I’m also in the market for my own car, because I had been driving theirs because my car simply wasn’t reliable.

They’re being really nice about it. But I’m just frustrated at the whole thing. And I need a better job, because if I could help my folks out…

But I’m alive. That’s the important part, right?

not in my happy place

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So yeah, I’m not in my happy place these days. Wednesday was a headache-inducing day, as I sat in the office and couldn’t focus because they’re fixing the light rail across the street. This involved heavy use of the pile driver. So far today, the pile driver has not been invoked, so I’m hoping I’ll actually be able to get some work done.

Then there was the accounting test, the less said about the better. I may lose my record of straight A’s at ARC. I’m sorta resigned to it, as I’ve been having a lot of trouble this term. It’s been busy, what with starting the new job and mom getting a job and whatnot, and some things just have to slip.

And then I get home from the test and find this:

S4010026

S4010027

Yeah, some asshole went and wrote gang graffiti on my car. (I found it last night, but I took the pictures this morning.)

Is it too much to ask to go back to Tuesday and have a do-over on the rest of the week?