“Tired”, A = F, Heavy equipment, Unhappy Feet, Dumb, Quitting for Dollars
My head is chock full of stuff, so refill your coffee.
I never knew tires could translate into such headaches. I have had enough tire issues since Thursday to last me a couple years. It all started on Wednesday afternoon. I get a call from Ali that starts with “You aren’t going to be happy…” She had the car and noticed when she pulled back into the parking lot at work there was a warning light on. It turns out it was the low tire pressure light. The passenger rear tire was totally flat. Ali said there was a cut or puncture in the sidewall.
Ali said she had no idea how it would have happened, she didn’t remember hitting anything or anything else unusual. Of course my reflex reaction is skepticism, but after a few questions about it I tell her I will be over to put the spare on. We had been in the middle of another long dry streak but I just happened to be lucky enough to have this happen precisely when it decided to rain. So I get a ride over to Ali’s work with umbrella in hand. I ask Ali if she could come out and hold the umbrella over me while I put the spare on.
Putting the spare on didn’t take very long. Despite Ali’s efforts, my clothes got soaked from the rain. I didn’t care. My mind was now focused on a resolution to the problem. When the sidewall is punctured that means the tire is trashed, they won’t patch it so we were going to have to bite the bullet and buy a new tire. Before I left the parking lot with the car, I called the dealership and made arrangements for a new tire to be put on Friday. The tire costs 150 bucks plus labor, nice… Oh well at least that will be the end of my tire woes.
How wrong I was. Tire problem number two came to light Thursday, at lunch. I was driving my truck through a drive thru, on lunch break from my SQL training class in Fort Myers. I had the window down and as I rolled around the building I heard this noise coordinated with the rolling tires. After I picked up the food I parked, got out and looked at the driver side rear tire. I swore out loud as I saw a huge f’ing screw embedded right in the middle of the tread. Damn it! Luckily it wasn’t leaking fast, but for the second time in two days I had to come up with yet another tire game plan.
The tires on the truck are OLD, in fact they are the original tires meaning they are 8 years old and have 77,000 miles on them. Even with their age and mileage, they actually have decent tread on them however they are very hard and lose traction very easily. I have been meaning to get them replaced for at least the last three years or so. Well I wasn’t going to pay to have the old tired patched so after getting out of class around 4, I decided I would head right to Sam’s Club and have a set of tires put on.
I get there around 4:40 or so and notice there is no one at the counter. Eh no big deal, I would look around on my own. The Tacoma has odd size tires on it that don’t use metric sizes like 99% of the tires out there. Instead of something like P245/75 R 15’s it had 30″ x 9.50″ tires which they did not have. No big deal, I figured the guy there would be able to help me translate into a metric equivalent.
So finally I track the guy down, an older hispanic guy. I tell him what I have on the truck. He makes a concerned face and we walk over to an aisle. He has 31″ x 10″ tires but not my size. He was going to just shrug his shoulders and move on but I pressed him about it, asking about a metric equivalent. He didn’t know or didn’t care to try to figure out what metric size tire would work but instead said I should look at the sticker in the door jamb that lists the tire size.
Ok so I hurry out to the truck, find the sticker and see that it lists the tires as P225/75 R15 ( I later found out that is the size of the standard tires on steel wheels, which I didn’t have) So I go back inside to report my findings but am annoyed to see an old geezer has slipped in there and was being attended to. I was very patient, for awhile. However this old fart wore out my patience as well as the three other people that piled in line behind me.
Evidently what I gathered from listening in was this old man took his car to the dealer and they said he needed tires. He didn’t like the price they gave him. He took his car to Sam’s. They didn’t have the right style of tire that was recommended for his car. That should have been the end of it. But no, instead this old bastard goes into a long drawn out Q&A session with Pablo, asking if he thought his tires were bad, asking what grade of tire should be used if he is driving 6000 miles a year and various other assorted bullshit that was maddening to listen to. The geezer was oblivious to the people that were waiting in line to actually buy tires. After 15 agonizing minutes he finally left.
Before I got to talk to the clerk again, he gave keys to an obviously annoyed man. As he took the keys, he mumbled “Two freakin hours to replace one tire…..” As I was waiting for the old man to finish catching up on old times with Pablo, a woman in line behind me said she had been waiting and hour and a half for her car to be done. This wasn’t looking good.
So finally I get to resume my transaction with Pablo. I tell him that the sticker said 225/75 15’s. Ok great, he punches it into the computer to show his inventory. He says he has 8 of the one brand and 10 of the other brand. One tire was a few more bucks than the other but I opted for the more expensive choice and said “Ok, I will take four of those..” Pablo got a look of surprise on his face, seemingly startled that I actually wanted to buy tires. “You want to get these now??” he says. Um yes, I would like to get them now. Oh, I don’t know if we can get it done before we close (at 6) So Pablo checks and comes back and shakes his head. No we can’t do it today but we open at 10 tomorrow! I can’t come back at 10 tomorrow, I say. I say how I could come back tomorrow around the same time but I didn’t want to get there and once again be told they can’t do it. Pablo shrugs and I leave, annoyed.
As I am driving up the road I come up with plan B, there is a super Wal-Mart on the way home. So I swing into there and go into the automotive center. Much like what I saw of Sam’s “technicians” the Wal-mart mechanics looked equally disinterested. I go up to the counter and am behind a line two or three deep. As I am waiting, my ears tune in to the conversation the young couple in front of me is having with what I assumed was one of the Wal-mart “managers” I hear the couple talking about missing lug nuts, a tire that keeps going flat and I see the manger shaking his head up and down although you could tell mentally he was shaking it back and forth. I decided that saving a few bucks wasn’t worth dealing with buffoons. I left.
By the time I got home the tire was starting to sag some, I had to address it. So my plan of action was to put the spare on, throw the tire with a screw in it in the truck bed and get them replaced on Friday, sometime. Putting the spare on was another effort in frustration. The spare for the truck was full size but mounted under the bed, held up with a cable attached to a bracket. I couldn’t figure out how to release it without pulling out the manual. To get it down you had to attach three metal parts together and then jam it between the license plate bracket and tailgate until it mated with a crank assembly that lowers the cable. It says in the manual to turn counter clockwise to lower the tire. So I am laying on the ground and reaching up and cranking at the same time so I can make sure I am doing it correctly. I crank and crank and crank. Is it an optical illusion or is the tire not moving an inch? After the day I had I was incredibly frustrated by this point. Again I am swearing loudly, frustrated that I can’t get this damn tire down. After trying no less than 5 times cranking counter clockwise, for the hell of it I turn clockwise, the tire comes right down! Son of a bitch! After that I had the spare on in short order but it was low on pressure as well.
Well I figured I would just slap on the handy dandy inflator that Ali got me for Christmas. One problem, I can’t find it. I look repeatedly in the two spots it could possibly be and am unable to find it. Again, more loud swearing, I am so frustrated. So I hop in the truck and tear off to the gas station to drop three quarters in the air machine to fill the tire. When I get home I tell Ali about my extremely frustrating day.
So my plan was this, leave for class early and check out Tuffy Auto Care which was very close to where my class was and see if they can help me. If they can’t, go to Sam’s again after work and roll the dice. However when I got off the exit I see a brand new tire place on the left so I figure I will give them a shot. It was a pleasant change to walk in the lobby and have no other people waiting and instead have TWO people at the counter ready to help me. I explain what I wanted and the weird size of my tires. They give me several options. They did not have that exact size in stock but could have it by the afternoon. However they also had something in metric that would fit in stock which would be a better price. When they quoted me an out the door price of just under 600 bucks I cringed a bit. That quote was with the full road hazard protection on all the tires which adds maybe 150 bucks to the price. Normally I would say thanks but no thanks to the extra protection however they hit me when I was in the right frame of mind for the pitch. Since I have been in Florida, I have had to have tires patched at least 5 times. It would be nice to have that shit covered so I said ok.
The guy says they can pull it right in and do it right away. I look at my watch and see I have 40 minutes till class starts. I ask him how long it will take. “An hour” he says. Dejected I tell him I have class in 40 minutes. The clerk tells me to wait a second, fearing that he would lose the sale. He goes into the garage and yells to the mechanics, asking how fast they can do a set of 4 tires. He comes back in and says that they might be able to get it done in 35 minutes. Ok fine, I say, knowing it will make me a little late for class but I was ok with that. I hand him the keys and they whip the Tacoma into the bay.
True to their word they had it done in 35 minutes but that was without the alignment that I paid for. He asks me if I wanted them to align it now or later in the day after class. I ask how long, he says 20 minutes, I say ok. Again they were done in almost exactly the amount of time they said however I was going to have to come back anyway because they didn’t get to fill my tires with nitrogen which was part of what I paid for. I went back on my lunch break and got that done. So even though I paid a pretty penny, I was satisfied because I received some quality customer service.
On Friday Ali got the tire replaced on the Camry so I figured I was finally out of the woods with tire issues. Nope. On my way back from the volleyball tournament on Saturday afternoon I get another call from Ali. The tire on the tractor went flat. She tried to get the tractor back to the shed but she drove the tire right off the rim. Grrrrrr. So although I just got home from a depressingly bad volleyball tournament (more on that later) I immediately wanted to address this latest f’ing tire issue.
So I get out various prying tools and use various things to try to stabilize the rim while I attempt to pop the tire back on. Nothing came close to working. Although I knew Ali was only trying to help by getting the tractor back into the shed, I was annoyed that she drove it off the rim. At one point after my 50th unsuccessful attempt to pop the tire back on I grabbed the tire iron and slammed it into the ground as hard as I could, I was so annoyed. As daylight was fading, I gave up and resigned myself to having to take the tire to a garage to get it put back on.
Sunday morning my garage choices were limited but I had the bright idea to go back to Super Wal-mart, they are open Sunday. Even though I didn’t want to buy automobile tires from these boobs, surely they couldn’t botch putting a yard tractor tire back on, right? So I walk in carrying my tire half hanging on the rim and tell the woman behind the counter what I need. One of the mechanics was there and he said he never put a tire on a smaller rim like that and he wanted to check with another guy. I told him that when this happened once before, I took it to a garage and they had it popped back on in 30 seconds.
So the guy he asks comes out and mumbles something in spanish to the woman whom it turn tells me he said he couldn’t do it. The guy walks away so I deal with the woman. I said how it didn’t make sense since another garage could do it easily. I said “So he won’t even TRY to do it??” The woman shrugs her shoulders and starts attending to the next person in line.
In the meantime the original mechanic came back and I started in on him about how it was lame the guy wouldn’t even try to do it. He offers to try, he takes it out to the machine and then motions for me to come out. He shows me how the machine wouldn’t grab onto the rim, it was too small. Evidently they had no manual way of doing it. Defeated, I thanked the guy for at LEAST trying. I drove around a bit looking for any other tire place. The only place I found was closed. Another round of frustration.
So when I got home I told Ali about my latest failure. She offered to call around to see if she could find any place to do it. While I was out on the BIG tractor (more later as well) she took the tire to one of the places she found. They didn’t have something needed to do it but referred her to another place that actually wound up doing it, for free. Finally the tire issues have all been addressed. I asked Ali to take a peek at the tires before driving it out of the shed from now on.
Ok like I said, I was at training last Thursday and Friday for Transact SQL class. T-SQL is the language used in writing database statements. It turns out the class was more geared to a DBA, someone that does nothing but work with databases all day. A lot of the stuff seemed extremely confusing to me. The class had half dba’s and half non dba’s in it. The “database dumb” people did progressively more web surfing as the class got progressively more complicated. Oh well I got a good manual out of it that I can use as a reference to help me with database aspects of my job.
On Thursday Ali had a big moment at work, she quit, sort of, but not really. Earlier in the week she had found out that the other local Manor Care, whom instead of having a dietitian in house, contracts out one, was paying this person nearly double what Alison makes. She is paid this to do maybe 25% of the job duties that Alison currently does. Ali freaked out when she found this out. So after some discussion with me she came up with the following action plan.
At her annual review on Thursday she told her boss the deal, how she was going to become a contractor, how she knew what the dietitian at the other facility was paid and how she hoped that they would keep her on as a contractor (at the new big rate). It was a power play, Ali has the facility by the balls or at least it seems that way. Her boss took the news surprisingly well although she is not the ultimate decision maker. To make it official, Ali turned in a resignation letter, giving 4 weeks notice, fully expecting to remain there, just in a new role at the end of that month long period.
Ali was extremely excited about the situation. It could potentially translate into much bigger paychecks, freedom from being under the thumb of her employer and more flexibility in her scheduling. I however am more cautious. I pointed out to Ali that we had to be ready for the possibility that they could come back with a big FU in spite of how it would hurt the facility. If that occurs then we become the ones that are scrambling. The odds are that things will work out in Ali’s favor with this but I certainly am not going to be counting the chickens before they are hatched.
So on Saturday I made my return to tournament volleyball. My knees only felt good enough to do so within the last week or so. They had been hurting since the last tournament that I played at the end of April. Randall signed us up to play A level, a step up from the BB that I have been playing for the last 7 or 8 years. I had played A a few times but never with great results. However at the last tournament we had a strong showing in BB so he felt ok with putting us in the next bracket up. I didn’t really care either way.
Well that little letter translated into a BIG difference in my experience on the court. It was a pretty miserable day. The conditions were less than ideal. It was windy, the court was filled with nasty rocks just below the surface and the sand was heavy and thick. Things started out ok, we beat a team that probably belonged in BB themselves. We had a big lead on them but wound up almost giving it all away. We managed to scrape a couple point win out at the end. After that it was all forgettable.
The remaining three games were bad, real bad in my book. My timing was just off on hitting and I repeatedly would misjudge sets and wind up hitting them low into the net. I was so frustrated. Other aspects of my game were less than good as well which just added to the bad vibes. When you are playing A against quality teams you really pay for your unforced errors and we made a bunch of them ranging from serving out, mishitting, shanking passes, you name it. Granted the three teams we lost to were all very good.
By the time the last game rolled around, I pretty much felt like I didn’t belong on the court. I just had no confidence. There were a couple times where I finally got everything timed up to hit a ball hard only to have it squarely blocked back at me. A full blown temper tantrum was boiling below the surface for most of the day but I managed to escape with only short outbursts. The easiest way for me to tell how lopsided those three games were was to realize that I hardly took a sip from my gatorade bottle I had next to the court. The points against us came with little effort. Either we would commit an unforced error or the other team would be drilling serves or hits by us, neither of which takes much effort.
It was really discouraging. All the good feelings from the Deerfield tournament were replaced with questions of why I was subjecting my joints to month long recovery periods only to get embarrassed on the court. Of course if we played BB it may have been a different story, who knows? Out of Randall and me, I definitely had the worse of the days. I have had times when my team has underachieved but usually it seemed because my partner received all the serves or underperformed. That wasn’t the case Saturday. I was the weak link and it isn’t a role I am comfortable with at all.
The new rules they implemented 5 years ago really gutted my game ( making the court smaller and rally scoring). Along with decent hitting, I used to have a pretty strong serve that I could run points with often. However those serves that used to normally land inbounds are now out of bounds with the updated court dimensions (3 feet shorter all the way around) The rally scoring makes aggressive serving risky as a serve out or into the net results in an instant point for the other team. I really need that serve to be competitive in A.
I should have known the day was going to be shitty. When I arrived and was walking up the sidewalk, I see something moving on the sidewalk. As my eyes focused I was horrified to see it was a baby bird. It was not real developed but it was pretty big, about the size of my palm. It was moving it’s head a bit but was obviously in bad shape. I look up to see where it could have come from. All that was above us were power lines with a palm tree off to the side some distance away. I had no idea how it would wind up there. So I drop my cooler and volleyball bag in the middle of the sidewalk and pick up the baby bird. Of course the reality was I knew this thing was going to die and I think it may have actually passed as I was carrying it around. I walked around, looking for a place I could put it so it was out of harm’s way instead of getting trampled by some moron that isn’t paying attention. Finally I find some hedges with shade and I gently laid it down there and rubbed it’s head. It made me feel terribly sad, certainly not the emotion you are looking for before a volleyball tournament, poor thing. I think it may have been a baby seagull based on it’s size. I thought about it many times during the day but dared not go back to where I put him.
There was another odd moment when I went into the bathroom to relieve myself before playing. I open the door and almost run into a naked black man. He was changing clothes but instead of deciding to do it in one of the 5 or 6 empty stalls, he decided to change 3 feet inside of the front door. It was very odd and I made sure to not look in his direction during my time in there.
After our last game we quickly packed up and then went to eat at some place with Jeremy and his partner that supposedly has the world’s BEST burgers. It was within walking distance of the parking garage we parked at. It is called Le Tub. It is a rundown looking place right on the water. Jeremy was there once before so he prepped us. The first weird thing was this place does not accept credit cards. I didn’t know there were any restaurants in the modern world that didn’t accept credit cards in 2007, unreal. I was a bit cash strapped so this concerned me. The second weird thing is although we sat down and got a table right away, after we placed our food order, with us all getting the world famous 13 ounce burger, the waitress told us the burgers will take at least an hour, maybe an hour and a half. Jeremy prepped us for this as well but it still seemed crazy. The waitess explained that they only have a small grill that they prepare the burgers on and since they are so big, each one can take 35 minutes to cook. Oh well, we drank beer and shot the shit to pass the time.
The burgers came out a little quicker than expected, maybe 45 minutes or so. They were huge. I don’t know if it was the best burger I ever had but it was definitely quite good. It should be for 11 bucks! So my share of the food and drinks conveniently cleaned me out of every last dollar I had in my wallet. Randall later rebated me three bucks so I would have enough money to pay the toll back across the alley. I planned to pay for my parking fee with a credit card.
That plan went out the window. This garage had an extremely asinine way for you get out of it. Instead of driving up to a guy at the exit and paying for your ticket, you are supposed to walk up to a machine (which only takes cash), insert your ticket, pay the amount it spits out and then leave the garage within 15 minutes of paying for your parking. This was incredibly inconvenient and stupid to me. Randall suggested that it may be their way to eliminate sticky fingered parking attendents from the transaction. To me it was someone not enagaging their brain. Luckily Randall had enough cash left to pay the parking for Jeremy and myself since we dropped our wad at Le Tub. What a stupid, stupid parking arrangement.
So once again I have a pair of cracking knees and hurt pride to boot. I am not making the same mistake twice and am skipping the 300 workout today to give my body a bit of a break.
I talked to my neighbor that just got the new tractor on Saturday night. He asked me if I wanted to borrow it on Sunday to which I enthusiastically said YES! He brought it over and showed me the basics of how stuff worked. It is a big 29 horse model with both a front end bucket and a leveling blade in the back, perfect for bringing up fill from the back. After my failed lawn tractor tire repair trip Sunday morning, I hopped on the tractor and had at it.
Driving this tractor was a big change from the hydrostatic Cub Cadet where you simply push a floor pedal down or up to go forward or backward. This tractor had 12 speeds controlled by two different shifters. In addition you had two different ways to control the throttle, a pedal to lock the axle to give you full 4wd, another lever to go forward or backward and then the controls for the front bucket and the rear box blade. Growing up we had a tractor that was a little smaller that we used to cut the grass however it didn’t have nearly the toys this one had.
It didn’t take me long to get the hang of using it. After 5 or 6 trips back to the pit I had a pretty good technique in place for scooping up the maximum amount of fill with each trip. There were A LOT of trips. I filled in 4 different low spots on the property and also used the box blade to level out one of back yard sections which is filled with mini-ditches from when it was used as a potato field. In all I was probably on the tractor for 3 or 4 hours. I got a lot of dirt moved. Flattening the dirt was more of a challenge. I wound up getting it pretty flat but went back over each area by hand with a rake to finish it up. It was hot as hell yesterday and sitting behind a big diesel motor made it even hotter. I went through a six pack of gatorade.
I also found out that a big tractor like that is awesome for knocking old stumps out of the ground as well as plowing down unwanted weed/trees. It was a lot of fun. For letting me use it I filled up my neighbors two 5 gallon cans with diesel as well as buying him an 18 pack of Bud Light. I made sure to hose the tractor off and return it to him as I got it. I certainly would like to get my hands on it again.
On Sunday evening we finally got around to watching Happy Feet which I downloaded to my Tivo with Amazon Unbox a week or so ago. It was an effort on my part to fulfill Ali’s wish to see more happy, fun movies. Ugh. This was like a musical with singing, dancing penguins with a plot that loosely posed as a film with an enviromental message. There were a handful of cute things about it but by the time it was done, I was fine if I never saw another damn singing penguin for the rest of my life. It was just annoying. Even Ali didn’t really like it. Afterward she looked up info about the movie and was surprised it received several “best of” awards. I didn’t dig it all, I give it a C.
Up until late Sunday, I had not played WoW since Wednesday, a pretty long hiatus for me. It wasn’t a real conscious thing, I just either didn’t feel like playing or had others things to do. Although Ali is going up to PA starting on Thursday for a few days so I have a feeling I will be making up for some lost time.
My speech has been wonderfully shitty for a few weeks. It’s just difficult for me to speak without the intended listener asking me to repeat myself or else they just simply flash me a look that lets me know they don’t understand what I am saying but act like they did anyway. While that is annoying and frustrating as hell to me, what really freaks me out is how I “misspeak” even when typing. You would not believe the proof reading that goes into this blog. I will totally leave out words in a sentence or type in a totally different word than I intended, similar to what happens to my speaking attempts. I have to go through it 3 or 4 times till I get all the f ups out of there. I take my one aspirin a day to keep those adhesions from building up in the brain that supposedly contribute to alzheimers, however I think whatever is going on in my f’d up brain is something equally bad, just different.
