Wow…It’s Busy
I sure haven’t posted anything in a while. Truth be told, these days I’m often too busy to say much of anything coherent. Since I mostly write for this site during my lunch hours at the office, and since my workload has been so heavy lately, not much has gotten posted. I just today wrapped up a huge project I was grappling with at the office, but of course there are three others to take its place. Hopefully none of them will be as involved, and I can actually take part in some mail writing, site posting and other stuff.
Today in particular seems to have given me an actual lunch break (rather than just a period of scarfing down food followed by more working), so I thought I’d use it to comment on yet another priceless gem of imperial wit featured in the daily newspaper’s Letters to the Editor section. I won’t go so far as to cut-and-paste segments of the letter this time, but here’s the gist of it:
An old retired dude, one of our town’s many thousands of seasonal residents, writes in about the awful traffic volumes that always blossom at this time of year. Complaining that this makes it hard for seasonal residents to go out to breakfast, make a tee time or go shopping, he offers the following idea: All employers not contributing to the above breakfasting, golfing or shopping should force their employees to work a 5 a.m. – 2 p.m. schedule, so that the natives of this area would not be out on the road when the snowbirds want to go out to eat or do their other activities. Problem solved!
I’ll be honest, I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry when I read this printed mouthful of bile. For a while I considered that it might be a joke, but who knows—I’ve read stupider things on the letters page. That night I told my wife about it, chuckling the whole way, and the look on her face was priceless. And as we discussed it, it was obvious that we were both thinking the same thing—why doesn’t the retired crowd shift their own schedules so as to not be jacking around during rush hour traffic? IS THAT ROCKET SCIENCE?
Who better to make the schedule change? Snowbirds are guests in our town. We live and work here. We’re tied to this town by more than simple ownership of property. We’re tied to our schedules by the very providers of our well-being: our employers. Snowbirds, meanwhile, are retired folks with nothing better to do with their lives. Since they have nothing to do anyway, how about they alter their schedules to help improve traffic flow? Get up and eat an early breakfast? Or, enjoy a late one? Hit the golf course early. Go for lunch at 11:00 or 1:00 unlike of all the poor sobs who have to take a lunch break at noon. This solution is so blindingly obvious, it makes my head spin that anyone would dare to suggest the exact opposite.
Perhaps I’m bitter, but you probably would be too if you lived here. Those of us who occupy this town year-round and make our living here are told to take a backseat whenever winter comes. Just as the weather is its nicest, we’re not allowed to even enjoy our own city. Some local restaurants actually start disallowing take-out orders to fulltime residents, or cease take-out service altogether until late hours. You can’t go eat in a restaurant without waiting forever, because by the time you get off of work, it’s packed everywhere. It takes 20 minutes to travel 1.5 miles down certain sections of the county’s dozens of tiny, two-lane thoroughfares. And if we ever complain, people tell us to shut up because if it wasn’t for the seasonal visitors and their “rich money,” this town would be nothing. Oh, is that so! Tell that to all the local people who staff every goddamn restaurant, bank, retail store and service center in town. I feel especially sorry for the people who were born and raised here. In their own hometown, they become outcasts for six months out of every year. In a way, it’s like a microcosm of the United States today. Natural-born citizens are told to shove it and kiss up to people who waltz in from other countries, catering to their every whim instead of expecting them to adapt even minimally to the cultures of the nation they just moved to.
Anyway—jeeze! This has turned into a full-blown rant, so I think I’d better table this discussion.
In happy news, my wife is no longer working long hours at a local restaurant. It’s almost uncanny that in so many of the places she goes to work, there’s so much bigheaded political bullshit, it becomes a terrible strain on her just to do her job. I’d much rather see her hanging around the house than putting up with the scorn of some backstabbing bitch, so I’m glad she made the decision to resign. I’m very much enjoying having her at home again! We had a great time talking and chatting about politics, pop culture, current events and all kinds of stuff last night. It’s been months since we had that kind of time together. I’m so happy. 
KITT updates: I received my new exhaust system, but haven’t even had time to unpack it. Since I’ve decided to replace the car’s dual catalytic converters and it will take me some time to order them, I’m probably going to have to wait to install the system for a little while. That’s okay, no big hurry. Unfortunately, I have a more immediate problem: The torque converter clutch is not locking up anymore. This is difficult to notice on regular surface streets, but when I got on the freeway last weekend, I could really tell. The engine was racing at 2300 RPMs just doing the speed limit down the freeway. I verified that the car is shifting into overdrive, so all four gears are there and the shift points feel fine, but the TCC is AWOL. It could really be a bitch to replace that one. Fortunately, it could simply be a lose connection or a bad solenoid. Seems I’d better make sure that gets fixed—even if it means blowing they money I had saved for the exhaust install. One thing I’m deathly afraid of is transmission failure, and a TCC that won’t lock-up—as I understand it—promotes greater heat and friction within the gearbox when you’re in overdrive. The end result of all this is that I’ve garaged KITT for a while.
Last weekend I went to visit a guy in Fort Myers who owns a third-gen Camaro. We exchanged messages once on the ThirdGen.org boards, and decided to get together. I worked on wetsanding his Camaro with him for a while, and learned some good stuff along the way. We were both new at it, and unfortunately it didn’t come out too well—the car was all scratched in the end. (Ironically, the side of the car I worked on came out better—but I assure you that’s due to luck, not skill!) But trial-and-error is a factor, and finer grit paper was going to be tried next. (I decided not to stick around for the midnight re-sanding that was going to take place.) I also borrowed his fuel pressure gauge, and got some diagnostic tips about the EGR valve which might be causing my long-standing drivability problem. Knowing people with the same hobby is good, especially when that hobby involves a lot of expensive tools.
Well, time to get back to work—signing off for now!
Categorized as Life