It appears that I will be driving a rental this weekend; the truck did not make the worklist at the mechanic today, and our houseguest can’t even guess what has his car out of commission. It is to be hoped that the truck will be back Monday evening, but it is not by any means known.

I did get to the dentist, but his opinion was that I needed to get to a specialist. That’s about all I really accomplished today, due in part to the fact that the houseguest with the car trouble needed transportation, which knocked more than an hour out of my afternoon.

Mercifully, we happen to have cash on hand at the moment; regretably, there are bills which need that cash which aren’t going to get it while we struggle through the transportation problems.

At least I can still get here.

–M. J. Young

Today seems mostly to have been about cars. I had to borrow one from one of our houseguests, who got an alternate ride to work and left me his keys. I used this to make arrangements to move the truck to our mechanic, who says he can probably fix it tomorrow afternoon–which would be a very good thing. Then I finally got up there, paid him the towing charge I owed and cleaned out my beloved Caravan, including retrieving all my cassettes, and taking the spare tire–the car I still hope to get happens to be a Voyager, so it probably uses the same rims and tires, and this was a perfectly new unused full tire, not one of those stupid donuts.

There were other errands, and Kyler was fretting about his girlfriend, who was fretting that he was unable to come see her (two hours away), so the houseguest whose car we were using agreed to drive him there. (Agreed with him–I had no input in the matter.) He, the houseguest, in turn decided to pick up his girlfriend for the ride–and that was as far as he got, as his car quit when he got there. On of our other houseguests had to rescue them. Kyler was only slightly daunted–he found a friend who would run him up there for a bit more than gas and toll money. Since the only car still on the road belongs to the houseguest who has to go to the hospital tomorrow, and I have a dental appointment in the morning (has it been that long?), we will probably have to rent a car to get through the day, and hope sincerely that the truck will be back on the road before the shop closes so we don’t have to rent the car through the weekend.

In good news, my mother has tracked down an unused car in the family; actually, it’s unused because it broke down, but she is going to get it fixed and pass it to us, because we need it. It’s not exactly what I want or need, but my wife thinks it will suit her work transportation needs admirably, so we are grateful. It’s out on Long Island, though, so I’m not certain how I’m going to get it, or whether I’ll have it, or anything else for that matter, before Ubercon.

So let me ride–er, walk–out of here.

–M. J. Young