for a while i was thinking that spending over $3K on the scrambler rebuild was silly. especially now, since i could really use that money. but every time i get in it, it's like therapy. over the holidays, i was at my parents house (where the scrambler lives during the winter) bumming over being single again for christmas. mark, who is still job hunting and has somehow made his last two paychecks last like 6 months, was also in the same holiday rut. i was sitting there with mom watching home & garden TV when i realized that i had not gotten the syracuse sunday paper for my weekly job search. so i called up mark and proposed that we drive all over the north country in search of a paper at like 11 at night. no small feat, since the syracuse paper is a little harder to find, and we were gonna do it driving the scrambler.
it didn't wanna start at first. it's been sitting there in the snowbank for weeks. it needed a jumpstart and a hello kiss. (kinda what i needed, too.) you know, i was really bummed out that evening til i got in there and took off over the hill with a rebel yell, happy as hell to be alive and driving. no heater? no problem.
mark may have thought otherwise about the no heat thing, but we had an adventure we can't forget. nothing too crazy, really, it was just good to get out of the house. the search for a paper ended at the first gas station we looked, but we didn't stop there. for some reason we continued on in search, making several u-turns, wrong turns, and a couple fairly innocuous left hand turns while listening to "i've been everywhere" johnny cash and "shut up" by black eyed peas (among other things in my latest CD mix.) it was at some point while doing donuts in a snowy parking lot that mark encouraged me to quit my job. (a good idea, if only i had somewhere else to go.) we ended up at denny's, and you can read all the greasy details of that visit on mark's site. my Moons Over My Hammy was delicious and no doubt took years off my life.
it would be nice taking a couple years off my life, actually. heck, i could drop from age 26 to 24...or 23...22 even. that woulda helped on new years. mark came down to celebrate with me, and my initial idea for celebration was to change the water in my aquarium. hmmm. not exactly the first thing people do on new years eve, i know, but it had to be done. we ended up driving all over syracuse looking for a place to be at midnight. armory square is the place to be. apparently, that is, if you want to get shot up and killed, which is what happened at a club down there some time after we passed thru. luckily we had already decided to head elsewhere before that happened. i dragged mark into this place called the Country Club, which is right down the road from my job, and was the hot place for us crazy Morrisville students when i was a freshman. we were surprised to see the clientele was not at all the college scene we were expecting, although we did have a good time. lacking anyone to kiss at midnight, i instead called so-n-so in texas on the cell phone. good'n'uff, i guess. even though we are getting old for the club scene it was a good time and we polished our game (i don't really have "game", but hey, what's a white boy to do?)
and oh yeah, i finally got some fishies. some really cheap ones in case they can't handle the toxic levels of ammonia that are apparently present in my tank. they seem happy so far. and i can sit there and stare at them forever and forget that i hate my job and need a new life and can't afford people food (let alone fish food) and so on and so on. and remember Sonic the cat? so do i. he's in that cat box in the sky, apparently victim of some chemical poisoning. you know, i can make dead cat jokes all day long, but when you have to put a good cat down, it sucks. *sigh* i really should have asked the cute vet receptionist for her number. you CAN'T turn that down when you're carrying out a dead cat in a box with a tear in your eye. or maybe you can. i'll never know, cuz i didn't ask. guess i'll have to find another stray to take to the vet so i can talk to her again. oh, and thanks to the guy with the little dog named annie, cuz he gave me forty bucks out of the blue to help pay my vet bill. thanks, dude. you know, i didn't even get his name.
final cat cost tally:
3.93 (whiskas cat food with tender morsels!)
2.99 ("Kat Kit" Shit box, complete with litter)
5.66 (store brand cat food and more litter)
25.00 (vet check up)
35.00 (euthanize fee) (saved the $20 disposal fee by doing carry-out--just like pizza)
-40.00 (from the cat lover guy)
0.52 (approximate value of 2 hours lost wages while at vet)
it sucks burying a cat on christmas day. especially when the ground is frozen.
oh, i found the coolest thing the other day while at walmart. a hand-held trackball. sooo nifty. mark ridiculed me for buying it. it was actually great until it stopped letting me move the cursor to the left. as you may have guessed, moving to the left of the screen is helpful at times. so i'm back to the mouse, and the trackball goes back to wallyworld. Mark: commence eye rolling, please.
