Don’t worry, I am talking about myself.  It has been very cold here lately.  In fact, today is the first day in over a week that is has been above freezing.  Unfortunately Honda of Princeton decided they would save their $1.50 and filled my windshield washer tank up with water rather than the proper fluid last time I had the oil changed.  Needless to say, I haven’t been able to rid my windshield of the terrible NJ salt and it has been getting pretty crusty. Well, while Sara and I were grocery shopping on Monday, I saw some windshield washer fluid on sale and decided to pick some up to cure this horrible problem.  In fact, I was so motivated that while Sara was loading the food in the trunk, I would fill up the tank under the hood.  Popped open the top and proceeded to fill up the bottle all the way to the top.  Then I looked to my right and saw another tank, this one with a giant blue picture of some windshield wipers.  Yup, I am a moron. I filled the coolant overflow tank to the brim with window washer fluid.  After calling my Dad, AAA (clueless), and Honda (also clueless) I decided to drive my car to my parents house and flush out my coolant system and replace it with fresh water and antifreeze.  We got to my parents and I borrowed a bucket, tools, some bottles of water, and a gallon of antifreeze my Dad had lying around. Well, since there is only about 3 inches of room between the radiator and the engine, I was pretty limited in what I could do in there.  It was only 20 degrees Monday and with the wind blowing constantly, my hands were numb almost instantly, especially when wet with antifreeze.  I did manage to figure out where the coolant piping ran and which hose to disconnect to drain the expansion tank (only after I pulled the wrong hose off first and drained the coolant from the radiator first, did I mention it was tight and hard to see?).  After I drained the tank, I proceeded to pour in a bottle of water and a bottle of antifreeze (50% mix). Started it up, everything seemed fine. Then my Dad called and I told him what I did.  He then informed me that the bottle of antifreeze he had lying around was in fact antifreeze already drained from a previous car.  Fantastic. So my theoretical 50% mix was now only 25% and it was old, dirty fluid.  Needless to say, my car was going to get an oil change this weekend anyway, but will now also receive a full coolant flush.  Yippee!! To make matters worse, when I was pulling the bucket full of drained coolant out from underneath my car, it split in half from the cold spilling antifreeze all over my parent’s driveway.  Oh, and my windshield washers still don’t work because the pump is still surrounded by ice.
Archive for February, 2007
Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!
Karmic Retribution
So after a pretty insane weekend, I called out sick from work today.
First, the weekend. A couple weeks ago I called my friend Scott if he and some of his friends wanted to come over to our house this Sunday to play some board/card/video games. We have done this in the past, usually three or four people come over with their Shadowfist & Magic decks, we play Carcassonne and Puerto Rico, or some DDR, etc. This history behind the gaming get-togethers was Scott used to own a comic book store in Princeton called Knight Dreams where a bunch of gamers used to hang out and play various games in the store. It was quite the cult. Unfortunately, due to the skyrocketing rent and no increase in sales, Scott had to close the doors. OK, so back to last week. About a week ago Scott said he couldn’t get in touch with very many people and there would probably only be two or three people coming. Sara called her brother Matt and he said he would come over and play so that brought us up to 3-4 people coming plus Sara and myself made for a decent gaming gathering. Then, Scott called on Friday (two days before the event) and said a lot of people got back to him and would be coming. A lot. Of people. A lot. He said 15-17 people coming. Yup. With Sara, Matt & I – that would be 20 people. Now there are two problems with this. First it was Superbowl Sunday and I wanted to watch the game. With that many people I was sure the TV would be consumed by DDR, Guitar Hero, or Andrew Battle’s XBOX 360. The second problem was 20 people!! My living/dining room is probably on the shy side 300sq.ft. It was going to be crowded! So we put the leaves in the dining room table and figured two games of 4 could go on there. Since we only have six chairs we went out to Target and picked up four folding chairs. The couch, love seat, and coffee table could handle a third game. We pushed the living room furniture around so we could sit in front of the TV on the floor to play video games. All day Saturday, Sara & I were running errands, buying snacks, picking up stuff from my grandfather’s house, cleaning, and then passing out.
So Sunday rolls around and we wanted people here by 11 so we could wrap things up by the Superbowl, plus we had work the next day. So most people were here at 11 which was good. All in all, 16 people showed up. Everybody had fun playing games, eating pizza, and had a good time seeing old friends who don’t usually have the opportunity now that Knight Dreams has closed. The only catastrophe was Scott doing a spin move playing DDR and crashing into our coffee table. Both survived with only very minor injuries. I turned the Superbowl on 6:45 (a little late) but was able to watch the game and most people cleared out by halftime. Overall it was a great success. I also met two guys who play in a band (Rusty on drums and Steve on guitar [playing guitar with another Steve?]). They were looking for a bassist so I gave them my number. They are into Prog & Metal (Dream Theatre & some crazy German band). I’ve never listened to Prog and I’m not a huge Metal fan – but I want to go listen to them and see about playing with them and keep an open mind. I’ll keep y’all posted on how that turns out.
Which leads to today. With running around all day Saturday, all I had a chance to eat was a hotdog and some chocolate chip cookies for lunch and no dinner. Sunday I had a few slices of pizza for lunch, some chips & salsa, and Burger King for dinner. Needless to say I woke up this morning feeling like I swallowed knives in my sleep and took the day off. By lunch I felt better (it’s now closing on 5:30 PM and I still feel bad) but still not good, but probably good enough that I could have gone into work. So what do I get for taking the day off? No hot water in the house. None. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Not even cold water. Turn on the hot, and nothing comes out of any of the faucets or showers. Frozen pipe? Could be, it was 8 degree last night and the high only got to 19 today, but it hasn’t dropped below 65 all day in the house. Sara read online it could be an air lock in the pipes which sounds like it could be the problem. But how did it occur in the first place? The solution is to undo the washer leads from the wall. Connect the cold lead to the hot faucet and crank the cold water. Since the cold water pressure is much greater than the hot pressure, hopefully it will push the air bubble back in the hot water tank. We’ll give it a shot. My Dad might also come over if that doesn’t work. He’s a lot cheaper than the $50/hr. plumber.
Good news though, I got the new Beware of Safety CD and have gone through the first four tracks as I have been writing this. All I have to say is I encourage as strongly as I can for everyone that reads this to go to their MySpace page and buy the CD. It’s the best thing I have heard in years.
New Beware of Safety CD
The new Beware Of Safety CD came out on the 30th of January. Ordered my copy, can’t wait to listen to it when it arrives. I suggest you all head on over here and pick it up. it’s only like $8 or something like that. I think their music kicks!
