I’ve had my Scout for about five years, and in that time it’s gone from a strong-running, reasonably clean rig to a strong-running, rusty and dirty rig. In the time I’ve had it in the city, I’ve done curbside work on it twice, eventually giving up due to severe anxiety. The normal leisurely wrench-turning process became a mad dash to and from the house to grab [tool I didn’t bring outside] while being paranoid that some jerk would come walking down the street, casually pick up my socket set, and walk off with them all. Plus, I’m sure my neighbors weren’t so pleased with me working on my truck outside their houses; I’ve had enough “Abandoned” stickers left by the city to let me know just how some of them feel. So I’m looking forward to getting in the new house and being able to tear the engine down, pull off the fenders, hell, re-tub the whole body before it falls off around me. In the privacy of my own driveway.

I’m typing this in the basement of my house, on the futon, where it’s dry and cool. The top floor of my house is an uncomfortable 85 degrees or so. This is the first week of really hot weather that we’ve had in the city this year, and it’s nice to be able to come downstairs and enjoy the temperature. I’ve also been reading about the outages up north, and I’m thinking that being in New York City right now would be a hateful experience.

I wish that NPR encoded their feeds in a format other than RealPlayer. I love being able to listen to Morning Edition at 2-3PM in the afternoon while I work, but I refuse to install that shit software on this Mac.