The Mandelbear's Musings

River: Farewell to Rosie

Sat, 23 Nov 2019 05:56:07 GMT

So... on January 1st, 2017, N and I went out car shopping and came with a sliver Honda Odyssey, which we named Rosie after the character in my song "The Rambling Silver Rose" (which was, in turn, inspired by and titled after our (mine and C's, that is) first minivan, a silver Mercury Villager).

One day in June of 2018 she simply refused to start, after N had pulled off the road to read directions. The AAA driver determined that the problem wasn't the battery; possibly the starter. Since then, she's been sitting in N's driveway waiting for somebody to decide whether to fix her up, fix her up and sell her, or sell her as-is. Well, you know how good I am at putting off decisions.

Once something's been procrastinated long enough, one's mind just automatically shies away from thinking about it. It's like an invisibility spell. Anyway, a couple of days ago one of N's neighbors asked if we wanted to sell her, and today I drove down and N and I filled out the paperwork. She's gone. She's going to a good home; the guy who bought her is going to keep her name.

I was singing her song when I pulled onto I5 North.

By morning you might sell your soul To keep her past the dawn, But the wandering star is calling, And the Rambling Rose is gone.

NaBloPoMo stats:
  11541 words in 22 posts this month (average 524/post)
    266 words in 1 post today

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Done yesterday (20110826 Fr)

Sat, 27 Aug 2011 19:03:39 GMT

( raw notes )

Not the greatest of days. Work on the van came to $100 over their original estimate. While I can forgive them for the wiring harness that didn't get factored in, I am *not* going to forgive them for the fact that replacing the wiper blades cost double their original, computer-generated estimate. And of course nobody called me for authorization on either of them. The latest estimate I got and authorized was for $614.

10:03 ETA: Ford cheerfully refunded the difference. I am satisfied.

In other news, Irene is ripping up the East Coast -- be safe out there, ok? Welcome to global warming. NYC.gov Goes Down When We Need It Most: Here Are Some Alternative Info Sources | TechCrunch

Work was mixed: I got a fair amount of coding done, and some nice conversations, but one not-so-nice conversation about whether a design requirement with unexpected bad consequences constituted a bug. Sorry, "We just implemented the spec we were given" doesn't get you out of having to think about whether the spec might have been wrong to begin with, or whether customers are going to run into the same problem I did.

I did a fair amount of puttering, in addition to the usual dishes and three loads of laundry (two loads is more usual).

Some links in the notes; the most important has already been mentioned above.

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Done yesterday (20110824 We)

Thu, 25 Aug 2011 15:58:51 GMT

( raw notes )

An interesting day. I took the van back to the Ford dealer to have the dead headlight (which they'd missed last week at the 60K-mile service) replaced, and showed how the assembly (they called it a "headlight bucket") appeared to be loose, as Callie noticed over the weekend.

It came right out. Not attached at all. The bulb wasn't burned out -- the leads were broken off at the connector.

When they called back, they said a new bucket would be a little under $500 with the 15% discount for my trouble. And that there had been some body damage in that area. WTF? We never had any body damage on the right front... Of course, the dealer we bought the van from (used) is no longer in business, and that was over 5 years ago in any case.

So... grump.

I spent much of my lunch hour (and some time in the morning) continuing to work on the values and goal-setting section of The Relaxation and Stress Reduction Workbook; I definitely want to do more writing of that sort.

While waiting for my "Avoid Avoiding" group to start, a woman I didn't know sat down across from me in the waiting room and asked if she could tell me her problem. "I don't like myself much," she said. "Can you tell me how to like myself more?" WTF? Does my Middle-Sized Bear aspect really show that much? Weird.

After the usual disclaimer, I told her she should be a friend to herself. Treat herself like a friend, talk to herself the way a friend would. Encourage herself and praise herself for her accomplishments. Told her about How to Be Your Own Best Friend, which I read years ago. I hope it helped. I think it did.

So... interesting. Not all in the Chinese sense, but...

Only one link, to NYTimes.com on decision fatigue. So will-power is proportional to your brain's glucose level, and making decisions uses energy and lowers it. Helps explain why dieting is so hard, doesn't it?

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Done yesterday and the day before (20110822 Mo - 23 Tu)

Thu, 25 Aug 2011 03:59:24 GMT

( raw notes )

A rather relaxed couple of days, though not without unwanted excitement due to the East Coast earthquake. Monday was vacation, but since we'd come back from Worldcon a day early to deal with a Situation, it ended up being a lot more relaxed than if we'd had to come back on Monday in time to get C&N to their flight. Basically hanging out.

Tuesday at work was pretty relaxed, too; mostly just catching up with everything I'd missed during the previous week, and thinking a little about a new feature that I will probably write up for someone else to implement a couple of weeks or a month from now.

Tuesday evening I finally got sufficiently disgusted with them to dump the two OXO Good Grips serving spoons -- the "good grip" handles are so heavy that they overbalance the bowl ends and flip the spoons onto the floor at every opportunity. After I finished cleaning the baked beans off the floor, I gave the stupid spoons the heave-ho.

I also spent some time working on the section on values and goal-setting in The Relaxation and Stress Reduction Workbook -- that will almost certainly show up as a River post fairly soon -- I really need to get back to posting articles/essays, as opposed daily updates, on a regular basis. I'm going to aim for weekly. We'll see.

As for links, I'm going to leave you with moonvoice's fabulous totem / animal guide dictionary, and the utterly surreal PONPONPON. More, as usual, up in the notes.

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