Blogzilla Update. No whale sightngs except for the ones in line at Country Buffet.

Well first of all I did a lot sweating, which I will probably do again today. Yesterday, Sunday was actually a beautiful day. It was warm but dry. Today on the other hand, we will return to the hot and sweaty. This is a great time for an air conditioner to fail. Yup it's d.o.a. Not only that but the one in my car, though still working has a problem as well. One that I thought I had fixed several weeks and several hundred dollars ago. I have owned the car since 2011 and mechanically it has been perfect. It's comfortable, quiet, accelerates and handles well. The first problem was of my own creation when I scraped a wheel, those very expensive wheels, causing a slow leak as the tire was not sealing against the rim properly. That has been "fixed" 3 times this year. Now I don't know if I still have a leak because they all look fine but I am getting that little annoying icon on the dash telling me I have low air pressure in one of my tires. It could be an electronic problem. The second problem that I have had "fixed" is water leaking into the cabin into the passenger side foot well. Though the air conditioner works somewhere along the line water is condensing under the dashboard and when you make a left hand turn it pours onto the mat. Fortunately I still have my  large winter mats on the floor. This is what I get for dealing with the dealership. Years ago, 1982, when I bought my first and only new car, I dealt with the dealership and as usual, they never did the job right the first time or even the second time, but I was still under warranty. As soon as the warranty was up I found a local mechanic and I have been with him ever since, up until I bought this car which had a 3 year warranty as well. I still went to me regular guy for oil changes, but when these particular problems happened I went to the dealership. My warranty was up in May as I was about to go on my vacation. We ended up Taking Arlene's car to Martha's Vineyard and when I returned I brought the car back and had the problems "fixed" again, this time to the tune of $600.00. Well as of two days ago they emerged once again. I will go back one more time to see if they can rectify the situation and whether they do or don't it's adios to the dealership and back to Andy. A guy who has treated me well and done the job. He's not any cheaper but he's a one man repair shop and his reputation means everything to him. I have been going to him since 1983. His shop isn't as close, in fact it's about 20 miles away but I have followed him from the town next to mine all the way up Rt. 28, 20 miles away. If he has to keep the car there's an Enterprise Car Rental store a minute walk from Andy's shop. If my car wasn't drivable I would just have it towed up there because I have Triple A. As far as I am concerned they are the best bargain on the face of the Earth. You pay the yearly fee which most of the time is cheaper than the cost of getting your car towed once, and your covered for the whole year. Call them up and they tow your car where ever you want. I have not had to use them in about ten years, but I used then quite a bit when I owned a 1991 Ford Taurus SHO. This was a high performance version of the regular Taurus. When it work this car was a blast to drive. Unfortunately it had a myriad of problems and was notoriously unreliable. Triple A was a blessing.

 I don't mean to knock the Ford Taurus because  my next car was also a Ford Taurus. A regular one. This car gave me 11 years of reliable service and I was sad to see it go when I got my present car. It was still in good shape save for a crumpled right fender. This happened on the way to work when this woman in front of me, right turn signal blinking, decided, at the last second that she was not going to take a right but a left. She had already begun to go right  then suddenly looped left right into my path. Fortunately nobody was coming in the other direction. I cut left into the oncoming lane trying to avoid a collision but I didn't. The car was in good shape up until that point. A paint job would have made it look almost new. I drove it for another couple of years  then decided it was time for another car before the Taurus began to really show it's age. It was a 1998 and I bought this present car in 2011. The 1998 Taurus and my first car, a 1964 Plymouth Belvedere, were the best cars I have ever owned. The Plymouth in particular was nearly indestructible. It wasn't the fanciest car but it never gave me any mechanical problems aside from a muffler and new tires.

Without trying to sound snobby, what I own now is a 2008 Lincoln MKZ (whatever that means). In reality it is a gussied up Ford Fusion. This is not to say that the fusion is a bad car. In fact it's a very good car. Arlene has a 2012 Fusion and it has a few more doodads than my car has. The MKZ is just Fords attempt to make the fading Lincoln brand viable again. My car cost me less than it would have cost me to buy a brand new Fusion in 2011. It was the right time as I had finally cleared up my bills and could afford to buy another car. I had done my research on the car and found it reviewed well by Consumer Reports and other entities who review and report problems with cars. It pretty much was the same all the way around. They all found it a comfortable, smooth riding, good handling car. All reliability reports were good. The one area where there had and have been reported problems is in the electronics. As I said earlier this little icon telling me my left rear tire is low on air, could be an electronic problem. The tire looks fine though I'll keep an eye on it. Just like you did in the old days. 

Another problem that has cropped up is the sun/moon roof. One day a couple of months ago I went to open the roof and it began opening and closing on it's own. It wouldn't stop. I pulled over and timed the closed position with shutting the ignition. Fortunately it remained closed. The other recent problem, the cd player. It won't eject the discs and it's full, including one the belongs to my friend. These two problems will have to wait.   

It's a very nice looking car. It has a stately, reserved, formal looking front end. It has an attractive wedge shaped profile and almost every car has that now, and though it looks good my car is difficult to back up because of it's big ass butt. You can't see the corners of the car. You have to keep shifting your gaze from the rear window to the side windows to the rear window. Car designers are now styling out safety and replacing it with electronic alarms telling you you're close to something, but you really don't know how close because you may not be able to see that something. Plus the beeping sound is annoying and creates more stress, than simply eyeballing the situation. It's like, having someone in the car saying, "You're getting close....getting closer...closer...CLOSER...CLO...AGHHH WE'RE GOING TO DIE!!!" Who needs it.

Ok I've written another book length novel instead of a blog entry. This was not initially what I was going to write here but in mentioning what's been going on lately, mainly that I have continued to go through old stuff and getting rid of some of the things that accumulate over the years that you I really don't need. I supposed I could have said clutter and eliminated half a paragraph.

I am also doing this digitally going through old cd's. Saving what I want and eliminating what I don't. Why did I save a picture of Hillary Clinton in a sombrero? It's not that funny, in fact now it's not funny at all. I also found recordings I made back in the 80's and 90's. Playing the guitar and bass. I had a small keyboard with some hokey sounding drums pre-programmed. It was just an excuse to play. It's crude and not very well recorded. I had bought a 4 track cassette recorder. I could record at least four different instruments. Drums, bass, rhythm guitar and lead guitar. There's no singing. It's just a basic blues rock beat. This is just a snippet of it. The guitar solo. On the whole it's crude, boring and sloppy in parts. It was also the first recording I did. If it wasn't for the solo I would have erased this. I surprised myself. I wish I could play like that today. It's around 1985.

So that's it for today's entry. Time to get on my horse and ride.
I'm outta here