Cars

Well, I think the Nissan has about had it. I tried replacing the alternator, but I'd need to get underneath the car to take off the exhaust manifold (I think that's what it's called), and looking at the front of the engine, it's got a pretty bad oil leak, too. It's probably inexpensive to fix myself -- it looks like all I need to do is replace the seals on the top of the engine. I think the parts cost for that would be around $50, and then I'd spend maybe 2 hours fixing it. But even if I do that, the mechanic had said that I'd need a valve job done on the car. I don't know what that is, but he quoted me $1200. And I know that after I do that, I'll need to redo the suspension on the car, as well as fix up the body damage. If I had a garage, I'd be working on it now. The problem is that I have neither a garage, nor the right tools to do half of the work that it needs. With all this in mind, I'm going to go look at some new-to-me cars today. Hopefully, I can get something not too expensive ($10K or less -- preferably $5K). Needless to say, I think that this puts a motorcycle on hold, unless I can get a replacement car for less than $5K.

In any case, that's all that's been going on for me. Thanks to Alex and Ashley S., I've been able to get into the office a three times this week, and I worked from home Thursday and Friday. I'm getting used to that. It's actually far less distracting, as long as I have music on. It's good to be in the office for social reasons, but on days when I need to focus and get a lot done, I can sometimes actually work better at home. I just set up everything to keep me motivated and the music changes as I'm working. I tend to make a lot of progress when I've got choral or classical playing, but on my tired days, that will knock me right out, so I'll throw on something a little more upbeat. And thanks to the XM radio I got for Christmas, if my CDs no longer cut it, I've got about 70 stations of "ad free" radio from which to choose.

"Ad free", huh? It's roughly $10/month, and by "ad free" they mean no non-XM-sponsored commercials. There are still commercials on a few channels. Eric W. and I were both working from home one day, and he pointed out how many commercials there were on one channel. I forget which station it was, but as I listened to it, I began to notice them. It was the same ten commercials over and over again. We made fun of one of them. It was a commercial for a guy telling parents that with his simple tactics, you can get your children to respect you again. We both chimed in about the benefits of spanking or other forms of discipline. :)

Anywho, on that note, I'm out. Bryan S. is coming by today to take a look at a car with me today. It's a 1993 Ford Mustang, and since this is a series of car with which he is very familiar, he was very gracious in agreeing to drive an hour out to my place to help me out. There is another Mustang that I'm considering, but I prefer the 1993, as there is less computer operation and therefore more work that I can do on it myself. Whether I actually get either car is still up in the air, but there's another guy out at Leesburg Toyota who is looking through his inventory to see if he can find anything in my price range, too. In any case, we'll see what happens. There are a couple others that I'm considering, but these are newer-to-new cars -- and I really don't think want to spend that much (about $15K)...