Back from the trip

I'm back from my trip. I made the first leg of it successfully, then cut it short and came back.

I drove from here to White Pine in eastern Tennessee. That was my grandfather's birthplace. There is no family presence there at all now – I didn't even find relatives in the two town cemeteries. But at least I can say I saw the place, and I have some vague idea of the environment in which my grandfather grew up more than a hundred years ago.

I got sick while I was there. I decided that rather than try to drive up into Illinois and take Route 66 back home, I'd just come back the way I went, straight through on I-40. By the time I checked into a hotel in Jackson, TN, Wednesday evening, I had a severe sinus headache, fever, chills and a wracking cough. I coughed so hard that all the coughing reflex muscles in my chest and diaphragm ached, and it hurt to cough and even to just roll over in bed. I coughed so hard that sometime during the night I gave myself a nosebleed. When I awoke the next morning, the bed looked like Sweeney Todd had been sleeping in it. I still felt bad and wasn't sure I should try to drive home, but decided to risk it.

As it turned out, I felt much better once I got out of the hotel and under way, which made me wonder if some sort of carpet shampoo or other chemical had made my illness even worse after I checked in. I got home about 6 pm Thursday. I had forgotten to take my blood pressure medicine with me, so I took it as soon as I got home, went straight to bed, and slept through until morning.

I got up Friday, took more bp medication, and then went back to bed for most of the day in bed, still coughing a little and feeling generally listless. Later in the afternoon, I went out in the back yard and did a little cleaning up. I suddenly became immensely tired, and almost collapsed into my favorite chaise lounge. Then I began to feel nauseated. 'Surely I'm not going to barf,' I thought. 'I've eaten almost nothing in the past three days – what am I going throw up?'

But my stomach kept churning, so I pulled myself out of the chaise lounge and headed for the bathroom in the garage. As soon as I was up on my feet, I remember, I thought, 'Wow. I'm feeling really detached from reality right now.' I took a couple of steps toward the garage. I remember thinking, 'I'm still here. I'm still here.' Then I was looking down at the ground and thinking, 'How long I have been standing here?' Then there was a loud THU-WHOMP, and I remember having a brief but definite feeling of calm and peacefulness.

And then I was on my back, looking up at the sky. There was a breeze blowing across my face, scattering fallen elm and crape myrtle leaves around me. Although I had not felt a thing, not even a sensation of falling, I knew the sound I'd heard must have been me hitting the garage, then sliding down the wall to the ground. I had a couple of scrapes on my right arm, but other than that, no bruises or bumps.

I rolled over on my stomach and laid there in the grass awhile. I felt grateful to have had the opportunity to have been brought down face-to-face with the grass and the earth and the fallen leaves, with a warm autumn breeze still blowing. Bailey looked at me from across the yard, and slowly wandered over to see what I was doing. Gaston the cat appeared on my other side, stuck his nose in my face, then went back up on the deck.

I'll need to be more careful about overdoing the blood pressure meds.

I've got more to write about this, but not right now.

A trip

I've decided to take a road trip now that I have the new car. My father's side of the family hails from a little town in eastern Tennessee which I have never seen (and neither did he). I'm going to drive out there and have a look at the place. I'm not sure what I'll do after that, but I'm sort of thinking I'll go north through Kentucky up into Illinois, connect with route 66 about halfway between Chicago and Springfield, then drive home from there.

November

It's November now.

Buyer's remorse

I'm having a lot of second and third thoughts about the new car.

I had been weighing the decision to buy a new car for about a year. I have a 2000 Chrysler minivan. It has only 86,000 miles on it, but I've taken such poor care of it that it runs as if it had 250,000 miles on it. I didn't feel I could trust it on a long drive.

So, I had been batting around a number of alternatives. One alternative was buying a second, smaller fuel-efficient car to augment the minivan, which I would keep for hauling stuff from Lowe's and The Home Depot and other 'dirty' chores. Among the cars I considered were the Toyota Yaris, the Mini Cooper, the Scion icebox car – whatever that's called, and the VW New Beetle.

Another alternative was unloading the minivan and buying a new one, and continuing to own only one vehicle.

Yet another alternative was just keeping the old minivan and doing nothing.

I had batted these possibilities around for month after month, until finally, last Tuesday, the transmission crapped out on the minivan. Fortunately, the thing was in the driveway when it suddenly went ka-WHUMP and refused to go forward anymore (although it will still back up).

'Enough putting this off,' I thought, and I called a friend to take me to a VW dealership just a couple of miles from my house. My credit union has a branch right across the street. So I told the salesman which car I wanted, went next door and got a cashier's check, and drove off the lot in a new 2009 VW Beetle.

Did I do the right thing? I don't know. It's a lot more fuel efficient than the minivan, but it gets the worst mileage of any of the small cars I considered. I drive less than 10 thousand miles a year, so I don't worry as much about gas mileage as do my friends who drive 30,000-60,000 miles.

The VW is also, from online reviews I've read, probably the most maintenance-intensive of the cars I considered. And there are no cheap fixes: even the water pump, made of plastic, costs about $1400 to replace.

Was this a wise decision? Should I have waited longer? Did I let ego drive me to buy a 'salsa red' Beetle that really stands out compared to my safe, sane white minivan? Will I regret buying a car with the New Beetle's reputation?

This car is a lot of fun to drive. But I feel like I'm just driving my ego around. And the Bedetle, being a Beetle, has that kind of 'toy car' feel its sixties predecessor had. (I drove a beat-up old used beetle in college, and I'm sure that nostalgia also affected my purchasing decision.)

I'm still going to try to get the minivan repaired. I'll try to get an estimate next week.

New car

Bought a VW Beetle today. It's red.

Nothing I need to know

Many months ago, I posted a couple of items about so-called 'celebrity news' cluttering up my brain. I tend to see this stuff as the intellectual equivalent of the junk piled up in my car and house. There must be hundreds of bits of such stuff that I wish I could just wipe from my memory.

It occurred to me recently that there's also a lot of non-celebrity news that I don't need to know or want to know. This is especially true about second-hand news (ie, gossip) about people I barely know or don't know at all.

It's not so much that I'm morally outraged by the stuff as it is that I just don't want more clutter in my brain. It's like getting that damn 'Buyer's Guide' from the newspaper every week. I don't subscribe to the paper, and I never open the guide, but it shows up nonetheless — a regular weekly nuisance. At least I can throw it away unopened; the junk news that I hear around the neighborhood just stays stuck in my brain.

There's not much I need to know anymore. I spend a large part of many days sitting in the backyard watching birds. Now that fall has arrived, I often sit with the fireplace going, watching the flames and listening to music.

I'd be happy to trade about half of my supposed knowledge for an equal amount of wisdom.

Perspective

This video has been making the rounds lately, so maybe you've already seen it. It's about the 10 thousand previously undiscovered galaxies – not stars, but galaxies – found a few years ago by the Hubble Space Telescope.



It's harder for me now to get worked up about stuff happening on our own little pebble in space.

The greedy, megalomaniacal fucks are still running the show, as they have since the dawn of civilization. But as much as they might like to screw up the whole universe for the sake of a great fourth quarter or NBA season tickets, they'll never be able to.

Allergies

September has historically been my worst allergy month. I'm in the middle of allergy foo again right now. This year hasn't been as bad as some years past, though. Although the rain promotes ragweed growth, it helps keep down the dust in the air.

Nevertheless, I have had some mostly sleepless nights because of allergy attacks.

Another update

Now at the Red Cup. There used to be a regular weekend morning gathering here, but all of its participants seem to have moved on. So I'm out here on the patio by myself.

A smart and very laid-back Black Labrador has been hanging around my house for the past three weeks or so. I would guess he's about a year old. He recently acquired a collar, but has no tags. I think he belongs to someone on the street behind me.

He already knows how to play fetch, and I taught him to sit last week. I let him in the back yard to play with Bailey one day last week, and they had a great time chasing each other around the yard.

You may remember last year we had the stray pit bull wandering the neighborhood. I think this dog may be from the same house, although there are different people living there.

Next update

Finished breakfast at Jimmy's Egg. I'm wearing a pair of Dickies painter pants I bought at Westlake Hardware yesterday. I pulled three labels off of them, and thought I had them all. After I left the Egg, a panhandler pointed out I still had a size label stuck to the leg, then hit me up for money. I gave him five bucks.

About the garage... still a work in progress. Certainly won't be done until mid-October, which will be one year after demolition of the old garage.

There was a flurry of activity in the first week of September. The drywall and paneling is up, the windows cased and the plumbing functional (although the shower doors are still uninstalled).

I thought the issues with OG&E had been resolved last spring, but found out a couple of weeks ago they have not been. I assume we will be able to get electricity to the garage, but I don't know specifically how that will happen. Or when.

Sunday morning

I use my iPhone for almost all my computer needs now. It lacks many of the features of my computers, but it makes up for that in convenience.

Right now, I'm sitting in the Jimmy's Egg on Classen Circle, waiting for breakfast. While I'm waiting, I can write this quick post. But posting photos from the phone is difficult, while embedding YouTube links is, as far as I can tell, impossible.

I'm going to try to produce a flurry of brief posts today and perhaps tomorrow to update the blog.

I promise

I am going to update this blog. Someday.