Happy New Years, everyone

The end of 0h-6 was a bit on the rough side for me... busy, busy, busy, sick, sick, sick

You know how much fun pneumonia is on New Years?

None at all.

I ALMOST have my Volvo, blessed heated seats and all, ready to sell off... but not quite.

Wanna know how my luck ran with this process?

Well, I busted my hump to get my Volvo's brakes replaced. That was fun, considering one of the calipers decided that it REALLY liked being in the "I am braking for dear life" position. The other thing that needed fixing was the front suspension - the struts, to be exact. So I went out and spent all this money (and 2 weekends of my life, which I will never get back) to replace the strut cartridges in the front. Yes, 2 weekends.

So how is my luck, you're asking?

Well, it would have been 1 weekend but for ONE, SINGLE, SOLITARY FREAKING NUT AND WASHER that decided to pop off and fall into the mysterious dark confines of the engine bay as I was bolting up the last bits of the second strut.... so I had to go get replacements the next weekend to get them installed.

Wanna hear more fun luck stuff?

So I get the struts all done up and ready to go. I clean up the work area, gas up the car, start her up and decide it's time for a little test drive.

And away we went.

I took her down the road and swerved and swayed about, stomping on the brakes here and there to get a good feel on my workmanship. The ride was a bit mushy for my tastes - considering the fact that my normal daily rides are either a Del Sol or Camaro, well, just about ANY ride will feel a bit mushy in comparison, particularly in the queen of all soccer mom rides, right? But it handled all the bumps and potholes with aplomb and it didn't make that very discomforting "thunking" noise it had been making whenever it went over any difficult terrain - a good sign.

All seemed well, right?

Well, I got back home, and having even taken her out on the highway for some smooth, high-speed test-riding, having done some hard braking and swerving to check out the suspension and brakes in full, as I pulled into my driveway, I felt pretty satisfied that I could now get her inspected, clean her up all nice and spiffy, and sell her in short order...

And THAT's when I saw the driver's side front turn signal lens was gone.

GONE.

It was there not 15 minutes before, as in right before I took her for a test drive. I know it was there before, because I took a few seconds doing that good old-fashioned, "swizzle the car with a dust rag" thing that all mechanics did in all the old tv shows, ya know?

So can you believe that the damned thing, that freaking little clear plastic lens cover, just FELL OFF as I took her for a 15 minute test drive?

Yeah, let's talk about my luck.

So is this a sign that I should just keep the car or what? It does seem to have enough space to hold all my PA equipment, guitars, and possibly even my previously-blog-mentioned SUMO 300 amp...

Who knows? But I know it was DANG frustrating.

My next trip to CAP's, the local take-your-own-parts-off-the junk car lot was the topper to this tale, of course.... but I'll tell you about that next time.

Until then, let me just say that last night we restarted my Open Mic Live show for the new year and things went very nicely. Good crowd. Good set of jammers. And Kirk came out and we played together for the first time since... wow... October, maybe?... and we still found that groove between us in no time flat. That makes for good signs on the approaching gigs listed in the band's profile page. You should definitely come out, if you have the chance, especially since we'll have a really great keyboard player jammin' with us.

Peace on ya