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Julie is Not Chill
Jul. 12th, 2024 03:27 pmJulie the Bank-Breaking-Benz was back to Destination Autoworks this morning. The problem: the AC not blowing cold air. Again. Which is definitely a problem on this warm, humid island. I'm actually puzzling over whether each new repair is worth the cost at this point because Julie has not been super-reliable since we got her. This will be the third time she's in for her AC and we also had a spate of wheel-sensor failures about a year and a half ago now. But with a genuine sunk cost for tires & a battery last year, it seemed worth one more repair. (I'd also managed to convince myself that the AC failure was due to a freon leak, and thus it'd be cheap to repair, haha. That's foreshadowing.)
On the way in, ABC suddenly chimed in with a breaking news report. "Wow," I thought, "Biden actually dropped out." They then proceeded to give a "breaking" report on the NATO press conference last night. Yup. Not my definition of breaking news though.
I dropped Julie off at just after 8.30 and when I queried at how long it was likely to be (because that determines how far I'm going to ramble), they let me know they wouldn't have anyone in to look at it for at least an hour. (Wait. So why did I need to drop off at 8.30? No, never mind.)
I decided to ramble. As I made my way through Kukui Grove, an open-air mall, a white-haired guy with his white beard down to his chest started honking at me as I crossed in the parking lot in front of him. I pointed at the crosswalk I was in, and after I crossed stopped to take a few pictures of his truck (and no I didn't step out in front of him, we had our encounter halfway across the street, I think he just assumed that I would stop in the middle of the road and of course let him pass in the far lane because he was an over-privileged old white man in a big truck). I filed him away as a Trumpist because the Venn Diagram of Trumpists and overprivileged asses who are happy to take advantage of society's benefits (e.g., the parking lot we were both using) but think they don't have any responsibilities is close to a circle.
I listened to him continue to scream at me as he drove away. I don't think he liked having pictures taken. (None of them came out, so it's just as well that I didn't need his license plate or anything.) Sometimes interactions like that upset me, but I just laughed about this afterward because he was obviously a very unhappy idiot, which also seems to be almost a perfect circle when Venn-Diagramed with Trumpists. And pretty out of tune with the island. I can probably count the times I've heard a horn on-island on one hand.
There's a lovely sandwich place called the Aloha Craft Cafe about a mile and a half from Destination Autoworks. I walked there and it was really pleasant. An early morning deluge (I could barely see the highway part of the way into Lihue) had kept things very cool and balmy. Beautiful Hawaiian weather. And I picked up one of their always terrific bacon-and-turkey club sandwiches.
As I made my way back to Kukui Grove, it was already heating up. The walk back was thus more work. They have plenty of shaded tables at Kukui Grove, and so that's one of my preferred places to hang out. (The other is the Lihue library, but I have to know I'm in there for the long haul to go there, as they're another half mile further on, and they don't even open until 11am.) I ate my sandwich at Kukui Grove and then did a few hours of work.
(Not a great work day, unfortunately, but not totally wasted.)
I finished reviewing the edits for Designers & Dragons Origins I, which I sent off to Evil Hat a few months ago. The editor, Karen Twelves, is teaching me things like: "thus" is never needed; and not to use the "'d" contractions because they're ambiguous. I'm trying to apply it all to my current work. I need to make one more pass through the book on Monday to make sure I didn't miss anything, but then that's back off my desk. I also did my own first edit on chapter five of Designers & Dragons Origins V, which will be first batch of a second set of product histories, some time down the road. We're in AD&D 2e land there, with that chapter covering the Living City, one of TSR's most interesting innovations of the era.
And then the inevitable call came from Destination Autoworks. Which was good because it was getting increasingly hot as I hadn't chosen the air-conditioned library.
Yes, I was right that the AC was out because I was losing freon (down to .3 lbs out of 2.1). But that wasn't something simple: it was because the "evaporator core" had a slow leak in it. Mercedes Benz parts are always expensive, but this wasn't bad at $200 for the core (plus a bit more for something else). But it was expected to be an 8-hour job because they have to pull out the whole dashboard to get to the core. And labor on Hawaii is at least as expensive as parts for a Mercedes.
Sigh.
So I put down my deposit for the parts this afternoon, and they'll order them. Then in a week or more I'm going to probably need to drop off and pick up Julie the Benz on different days because of the extent of the work.
Well, I have AC again for the moment as they finally had to refill the freon to find the leak.
On the way home, ABC suddenly chimed in with a breaking news report. "Wow," I thought, "Biden actually dropped out." They then proceeded to give a "breaking" report on the Alec Baldwin trial for Rust being thrown out with prejudice due to prosecutorial misconduct. Whoops. Not my definition of breaking news though.
NOTE: Calling Julie Bank-Breaking is somewhat of an alliterative misnomer. I think this is the first time she's been in since January 2023, which was also for the AC (and also required an expensive replacement, that time of the compressor). But she's been in 1-2 times a year for work since we got her, and that's more than I'd like to see for a car that's picking up less than 5,000 miles a year, even if she is 10 years old. Whoop, 15 years old now.
On the way in, ABC suddenly chimed in with a breaking news report. "Wow," I thought, "Biden actually dropped out." They then proceeded to give a "breaking" report on the NATO press conference last night. Yup. Not my definition of breaking news though.
I dropped Julie off at just after 8.30 and when I queried at how long it was likely to be (because that determines how far I'm going to ramble), they let me know they wouldn't have anyone in to look at it for at least an hour. (Wait. So why did I need to drop off at 8.30? No, never mind.)
I decided to ramble. As I made my way through Kukui Grove, an open-air mall, a white-haired guy with his white beard down to his chest started honking at me as I crossed in the parking lot in front of him. I pointed at the crosswalk I was in, and after I crossed stopped to take a few pictures of his truck (and no I didn't step out in front of him, we had our encounter halfway across the street, I think he just assumed that I would stop in the middle of the road and of course let him pass in the far lane because he was an over-privileged old white man in a big truck). I filed him away as a Trumpist because the Venn Diagram of Trumpists and overprivileged asses who are happy to take advantage of society's benefits (e.g., the parking lot we were both using) but think they don't have any responsibilities is close to a circle.
I listened to him continue to scream at me as he drove away. I don't think he liked having pictures taken. (None of them came out, so it's just as well that I didn't need his license plate or anything.) Sometimes interactions like that upset me, but I just laughed about this afterward because he was obviously a very unhappy idiot, which also seems to be almost a perfect circle when Venn-Diagramed with Trumpists. And pretty out of tune with the island. I can probably count the times I've heard a horn on-island on one hand.
There's a lovely sandwich place called the Aloha Craft Cafe about a mile and a half from Destination Autoworks. I walked there and it was really pleasant. An early morning deluge (I could barely see the highway part of the way into Lihue) had kept things very cool and balmy. Beautiful Hawaiian weather. And I picked up one of their always terrific bacon-and-turkey club sandwiches.
As I made my way back to Kukui Grove, it was already heating up. The walk back was thus more work. They have plenty of shaded tables at Kukui Grove, and so that's one of my preferred places to hang out. (The other is the Lihue library, but I have to know I'm in there for the long haul to go there, as they're another half mile further on, and they don't even open until 11am.) I ate my sandwich at Kukui Grove and then did a few hours of work.
(Not a great work day, unfortunately, but not totally wasted.)
I finished reviewing the edits for Designers & Dragons Origins I, which I sent off to Evil Hat a few months ago. The editor, Karen Twelves, is teaching me things like: "thus" is never needed; and not to use the "'d" contractions because they're ambiguous. I'm trying to apply it all to my current work. I need to make one more pass through the book on Monday to make sure I didn't miss anything, but then that's back off my desk. I also did my own first edit on chapter five of Designers & Dragons Origins V, which will be first batch of a second set of product histories, some time down the road. We're in AD&D 2e land there, with that chapter covering the Living City, one of TSR's most interesting innovations of the era.
And then the inevitable call came from Destination Autoworks. Which was good because it was getting increasingly hot as I hadn't chosen the air-conditioned library.
Yes, I was right that the AC was out because I was losing freon (down to .3 lbs out of 2.1). But that wasn't something simple: it was because the "evaporator core" had a slow leak in it. Mercedes Benz parts are always expensive, but this wasn't bad at $200 for the core (plus a bit more for something else). But it was expected to be an 8-hour job because they have to pull out the whole dashboard to get to the core. And labor on Hawaii is at least as expensive as parts for a Mercedes.
Sigh.
So I put down my deposit for the parts this afternoon, and they'll order them. Then in a week or more I'm going to probably need to drop off and pick up Julie the Benz on different days because of the extent of the work.
Well, I have AC again for the moment as they finally had to refill the freon to find the leak.
On the way home, ABC suddenly chimed in with a breaking news report. "Wow," I thought, "Biden actually dropped out." They then proceeded to give a "breaking" report on the Alec Baldwin trial for Rust being thrown out with prejudice due to prosecutorial misconduct. Whoops. Not my definition of breaking news though.
NOTE: Calling Julie Bank-Breaking is somewhat of an alliterative misnomer. I think this is the first time she's been in since January 2023, which was also for the AC (and also required an expensive replacement, that time of the compressor). But she's been in 1-2 times a year for work since we got her, and that's more than I'd like to see for a car that's picking up less than 5,000 miles a year, even if she is 10 years old. Whoop, 15 years old now.