Art & Life of SwarDrawS

RAW wanted to fix my timing belt tensioner himself. I put my foot down and pissed him off. I finally said, "great, I buy you a truck and I get an unreliable car, thanks!"

Tuesday RAW attempts to drive it to Subaru to have them fix it but it started to run rough while still in the driveway, a bad sign. He turns off the car and calls Subaru. Meanwhile at work I am wondering why he hasn't called me with an update. When I pull around the corner to my driveway I see a flat bed truck leaving with my car.

It is a good thing RAW didn't try to fix my car. I guess the timing belt was put in 180 degrees wrong. Sure why not another screw up from Tom. Then RAW goes against what we agreed about, if it ain't broke, don't fix it and had them replace the other non critical belts. Another thing they discovered was there didn't appear to have any transmission fluid in it. Awww, that must be my "spit on my burger" present from Tom after RAW pissed him off before letting him put my car back together.

The $125 for towing will be covered by insurance if that is any consolidation.

Tomorrow me and Hollace head out to Appleton to see the family. RAW went off to Fort Wayne. His mom had a plaque made for his dad in honor of Memorial Day.

Today was Hollace's kindergarten graduation. As usual, Hollace looked horribly uncomfortable standing up there while everyone else sang. There was a picnic following the ceremony. The weather was perfect. I worked at home today but I am not sure if I got any work done. I did but it didn't seem like it.

I am trying to get something done around here before we leave tomorrow morning, but I have a Flickr addiction that I can't seem to control. I am constantly going over there to check for new comments, upload photos, organize my pool, look at everyone elses stuff. Today I joined the Square circle pool (sometimes known as "squircles")and now I am going around the house shooting square circles (example of a squircle photo below).

I never knew looking at photography could be dangerous to my health but I just found out that it can be. About 10 minutes ago I seen the scariest most disgusting photo ever. This guy posted a macro photo of a decomposing dragonfly being eaten by ants. He had a couple shots as time went by as the dragonfly got scarier. I am having a strong reaction to this image. I hope I don't have nightmares about that photo. Maybe I will go browse the kitty pool to undo seeing that image.

Posted by swardraws at 11:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

at work that is. Today they announced the re-org at work. The multimedia group is going back to Vic (my previous manager). While Doreen my old managment was apparently anti Mac, Vic is Mister Mac. When the Mac Mini came out I went to Vic to talk my manager into getting me a Mac. He just about did. Now he is my manager. The first thing he says to me today is, you got your Mac.

Before the all employee meeting today, Doreen scheduled a meeting with me and "Bob" my co-multimedia guy (and one who discovered my blog on Christmas eve, gulp). Both of us are like, uh oh, why are we being singled out on re-org announcement day. Doreen just wanted to tell us that multimedia is being emphasized in CN and the change will be good. She couldn't tell us much but she mentioned my desire for a Mac and that with the new org it will probably be possible. Of course she knew Vic was going to be my new manager.

Another cool thing is that Corey, the beaten down IT guy is going to be part of the multimedia group doing what he would rather do (help us program) and in control of our software as oppose to Chris who hides the stuff and fails to order what we need. I couldn't of asked for a better outcome. We often talked about how if we could get Corey in MM, that we would be a cool team.

Now they have yet to figure out where everyone is going to be location wise, at the Park where I am now or back at the other building 3 miles down. I was planning to join the health club exactly 90 steps aways from my chair tomorrow.

Posted by swardraws at 10:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This entry can be called one of 4 thing

#1 "If Susie would of just stayed home sick"

#2 "If only I would of went to work that day in February"

#3 "Bad car karma explained"

#4 "The death of relationships"

This is all about my darn car...still

Monday RAW takes my car with the newly installed leaking water pump. He holds his cool. Must of been a defective water pump Tom the owner says. He fixes it. RAW goes back at 3:00 to check up on them. He sees metal shaving under the hood. He is not thrilled. They say they had trouble with a bolt. One of RAW's gripes was loose bolts but whatever. Then they mention that the tensioner for the newly installed timing belt is defective now. What? Huh? You guys were just in there 3 weeks ago, didn't notice it then? I think they messed it up when putting in the new new water pump or they made this problem up to try and get us to pay labor for their problem.

Alright the gloves are now off and RAW goes off on the worker. He tells him about his issues with the ill fitting radiator as well. So there, three for three. All three things we went in for is junk. For $550 (timing belt and water pump, radiator was covered by insurance) we got the opposite of peace of mind. Where I didn't really worry about those things before we took them in, I do now. A sub title of this segment is "If it ain't broke don't fix it!" If we would of just dealt with the radiator we wouldn't be having these problems and my pocketbook would be heavier. (title #3)

When we went to pick up the car an hour later, Tom was waiting outside where all he said very somberly was, be sure to look at the receipt on the dash. There was no charge of course but they had their disclaimer that they aren't responsible for any problems related to the fact we declined on them fixing the tensioner.

We now are without a mechanic, relationship #1 dead (part 1 of title #4)

Yesterday RAW tells me that we just lost the friendship of our neighbor. Jim and Barb next door are the nicest neighbor you can find. Jim owns a body shop. Right after RAW messed up my car in February (title #1 and #2) he took it to Jim for a quick estimate. Then we drove it and the hood popped up. We called insurance right away to arrange to get this now undrivable car to get fixed. They sent us to Platinum and we took it there without thinking twice.

Yesterday Jim asked if we got our car fixed. He thought RAW took it to Indiana to a friend. He would of be ok about that but when RAW said Platitum did it, we may as well stabbed him in the heart. This obviously upset Jim. Did Platinum pick up your mail when you were gone, did they watch your cat? Ug, RAW felt horrible and told me that we just lost our neighbor (relationship #2 dead).

RAW then went off to pick up a trailer trip for our upcoming camping trip this weekend. Hollace went to Haley's for a birthday party for her 18 year old aunt. I got to go talk to Jim. I walk by his house once pretending to walk Hollace over to Haley's. I go back home losing my nerve. I had that sick pit in my stomach that we hurt Jim like this. So I go right over there and knock on the door.

I apologize profusely to Jim that we just wasn't thinking and how horrified we are over our mistake. He explains that if was anyone else besides Platinum he wouldn't of been as hurt. He mentions several times how much it means to him that I came over. I told him that we will try to make it up to him even if it won't impact his wallet as it would of if we would of went to him in the first place. He said, he likes chocolate chip cookies. He jokingly says, good now we won't kill your cat (watching Cloudy while we are gone this weekend). I said, no we leave that to the other neighbors (and their dog, poor Eloise)

So now we are on operation shower the neighbor in kindness. I think we are good with Jim again, maybe a little bit scarred. Now I understand where the bad car karma was coming from. I kept telling Jim that this explains why we are having problems with the car. He tells us of a mechanic he likes. So we are healing this relationship and hopefully gaining a new one with a mechanic.

This was a turning point for me as for dealing with people. My shyness gets in the way but I didn't let it in this case and I was surprised that I didn't hesitate (much) in trying to fix things.

Recap, it all comes down to a few bad decisions

1. First is Susie's bad decision to come to Hollace's birthday party in February with the flu
   
2. Staying home sick that one day (still recovering from Susie's flu). While I was still sounding bad (and driving the boss crazy) and had broken out in hives. I still felt well enough to go into work and I didn't. RAW then took my car while I was watching Oprah and crashed it.
   
3. Not going to Jim for the body work
   
4. Fixing things that weren't broke just for the hell of it. We have since found out that Subaru doesn't even recommend changing timing belts until 105K (I am at 99K)
   
5. Buying RAW's truck so now I don't have any money in the budget to replace my now unreliable vehicle

Posted by swardraws at 09:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I didn't realize it was Friday the 13th until lunch time today. My day at work was good. I went to the health club at work, which btw, is 90 steps away from my chair (I just had to count) to sign up. I got to turn this weight thing around. Even my feet are getting fat. I am so disgusted.

Anyway when I was driving home I noticed that my car was starting to run hot. I just had a new radiator, timing belt and water pump installed 3 weeks ago. It never did get to critical mass and was able to get home.

RAW checked it out and not only is my radiator empty but the new water pump is leaking. Boy is he livid. He understands that water pumps are mechanical and sometimes those things happen but he wants an explaination on why I have an ill fitting radiator. They had to shave something in the car to make it fit on both sides.

When we had the car in to get the new radiator they told us they got the wrong radiator in and they had to keep the car an extra day to get the right one. Apparently they didn't get the right one and forced the wrong one in.

Thank God the shop isn't open tomorrow so RAW can cool off before talking to Tom. We liked Tom, we thought we could trust him, we were wrong. I can't see any excuse with him putting inferior products in my car and putting me and my family at risk.

Now onto a minor Friday the 13th incident.

Yesterday I packed up my 4 month old computer and sent off to Apple to fix its sleeping problem. This leaves me with my 4 year old laptop. Last night I downloaded some iTune songs and I really really wanted them on my iPod to listen to them. My iTunes playlist on the old machine is out of date. I was trying to find the setting before I plugged in the iPod to tell it not to update automatically. The option was grayed out so I held my breath and plugged in the iPod and went for the option to set it before any updating went on. No such luck. Before I could stop it, I lost 200 songs on my iPod as it synched up with out of date playlist.

I then copied my complete music library from the backup, added my new songs then synched up the iPod. All is well but what a pain. Then I played around with a few settings and told it to only update from my purchase playlist. Ha, it did but it wiped out everything else on the iPod! So now I have to tell it to go automatic for everything and an hour later I get all 2943 songs back on the beast.

I need to print something but my printer is not well. Everything is printing out striped. With my luck today I should probably skip it.

Posted by swardraws at 09:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last Sunday I flew out to Baltimore to spend a week with my sister.

On Monday we checked out the fine city of Baltimore. Went down to the harbor and generally did a lot of walking. I decided while on vacation, I would collect doors. With my camera that is. Everyone has their doors painted so nicely. I have these film strip frames sitting around here, I think I will use one to display doors. That afternoon I was feeling nauseaous. It could of been from the crabcake I ate at lunch but I am blaming Paula's chair. Sometimes (it has been awhile) when I sit around too long, I get like this. I only sat in that cushy chair for a short while but I felt yucky while there. Then we went out for a drive and that made it worse that she had to pull over a couple times cause I felt like I was going to throw up. I knew I wouldn't since my throw uppy thing has been broke for 22 years but still, yuck

Tuesday, we walk to the train station to go to Washinton DC. We took a cab to Georgetown then meandered our way by walking and subway to the Smithsonian where I pick up the grabber arm toy I bought a while back and gave to my nephew Phil cause he loved it. Somehow on the way to the car the thing got lost. I was unable to find another for Phil until now. Later back in Baltimore, we hit Ikea and I pick up some spoons that I have been desparately wanting as well as this colorful set of 12 nesting gift boxes that the Ikea by me is always out of.

Wednesday we drive out to the National Arboreum to see Azaleas galore. They also had a nice bonsai collection. I took plenty of pictures. After that we went to Ellicote to walk the small tourist town. I picked up some paper dolls for Hollace. That night we rented a few movies, Spanglish and Garden State.

Thursday we drive to Annapolis where I found a couple kaleidoscopes to buy and had softshell crabs for lunch. We then drove to the state park beach over there and walked around. For dinner that night went to a nice restraurant in Paula's neighborhood.

Friday we hung around at home and went to the mall where I hit the Apple store to ask someone at the genius bar what is going on with my narcolepic laptop. He said it is probably a sleep inverter and told me to bring it in. They would have to send it out to get fixed. I plan on taking it to my Apple store tomorrow. This problem is very annoying and getting worse. We ate dinner at home that night. I have tallied it all up but I am sure I went broke eating out. Yummy, good food. Definately not Applebees.

During the times hanging out at Paula's second story apartment was spent chasing her 3 cats around for their portraits. Paula doesn't own a camera so there are no pictures of her furry kids. I set up her Mac mini with all the cat photos so they show as screen savers and each cat gets its own day as a desktop picture. We went through each others music collection and shared music. Every night Whitney would share her iTunes collection. We don't know Whitney but she has a large collection of songs that would show up. Don't know how or why that was.

I slept in Paula's bed while she crashes in front of the TV on the couch. I think this is what she does every night so her not sleeping in her bed is the norm for her so I don't think I was putting her out.

Saturday morning she took me back to the airport and I had an uneventful flight home.

Here are a few pictures from the trip

Today is Mother's day, nothing special. RAW made me breakfast in bed only by the time it was done, I was out of bed. While the weather around here and in Baltimore all last week was in the 50s, low 60s, today was 85. While I was gone, 5 orders from silverjewelry.com came. Two of which I ordered for Hollace and she was thrilled.

I guess I better get to bed. Monday's following a week off are hard enough

Oh I should also mention, I did just about nothing on that list of things I hoped to accomplish last week. Oh well.

Posted by swardraws at 11:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tomorrow afternoon I fly out to Paula's. I am not big on flying so I am feeling a bit unsettled as usual.

I am looking at this trip as a chance to have a heart to heart with Paula, catch up with my reading, work on the redesign of my site and get going with LightWave (finally). I plan to stock up on the imagery for my photoblog and a chance to visit NYC. I hope to get my priorities straight as far as being healthy by eating right and exercising.

Whoo, that is too much to expect from a simple 5 day trip.

Lately I have been sort of addicted to silverjewelryclub.com. I resisted the urge there for awhile but now that I have my first piece, I keep going back for more.

The photo sharing stuff is ever consuming for me. I can't keep my hands off of Flickr. Such a cool site and community.

Lately I have been scanning Hollace's artwork. I have framed a couple pieces to hang at work and will probably upload some to Flickr as soon as I get Creative Commons in place.

I really have nothing much to say so I guess I will close. Hope to see you again after the plane lands in Baltimore.

Posted by swardraws at 12:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)