When Hatred Drives You To Start Small
No, I’m?not talking about hatred for the street sweeping. Nuh-uh. I’m talking about hatred for the *#!%$!%$ FIFTY dollar ticket we got last week because, randomly, the truck decided not to start which, therefore, kept me from moving it out of the street sweeping zone. The truck. Truck discussion counts as house blog stuff right? It IS the truck that hauls all the stuff for the house projects. Right? Right. P.S. do you know how frustrating it is to know you’re going to get a $50 ticket and not be able to do anything about it? Pisses you right off.
I was pretty sure the battery had just given up any desire to hold a charge. It was pretty old and I did leave the lights on all day a couple of weeks ago. Turns out 1980 trucks don’t ding at you when you try to exit the car with lights a-blazin’. (Ok yeah, here comes the “start small” portion of our story.) So I thought, we’ve done a helluva lot of stuff to this house successfully. Changing a battery can’t possibly be harder than, say, installing a toilet, drilling post-holes with a gas powered auger, moving electrical outlets, or putting in an insinkerator. If we could do that, we could swap the old truck’s ticker. Turns out yes, that is a task that is well within the ole skill-set. And that small step has effectively determined what the post-house project will be: restoring the truck. Bring it.
Note: Because I’m now used to the random weird stuff you find when working on an old house, I was not suprised AT ALL to find similar weirdness in the old truck. Turns out the battery hold-down bracket which should keep the battery snugly in place was missing. The battery had been bouncing around the inside of the truck like a big electrified, acid-filled lego block. Nice.
SD said,
January 25, 2008 @ 11:18 pm
That was my first thought – I wonder if the battery came loose? I had an ole truck too. I had to get rid of either the kids, the house, or the truck, so she had to go. I called the first number listed under towing and told them to come by the house for the title where to find it the last time it broke down on me.
surly girl said,
January 28, 2008 @ 6:14 pm
hello!
*waves*
x
Lisa said,
January 28, 2008 @ 11:18 pm
Once Dan tried to fix the car. It was only a dead battery, but it was the Audi. It was $50 to have the dealer change. It all went well until he was putting the new battery in and dropped it and it scraped the front quarter panel. We were both mad. He was silent mad and I was crazy mad. Every time either of us looked at it we got mad so we had to have the panel repainted. It was much more than $50 and the money didn’t go to support your good government workers. We thank you for not moving your car; We depend on it.
Mindee said,
February 12, 2008 @ 3:46 pm
I would just like to point out, politely, that January 15th was a very long time ago. Especially in winter time which is three times longer than non-winter time. Factor in the Mindee-is-bored element and it’s been, like, half a year since you posted last.
Now, I know it’s taken me almost two years and I still haven’t finished stripping the wallpaper in my bedroom so I can’t really point fingers at others who may not be in the mood to work on their homes. So if it’s that you haven’t done anything since January 15th, that’s okay. You can post about any little old thing as far as I’m concerned. If it includes a picture of Dixie or The Boy even better.
Please.
Thank you.