What a draining day.

Yesterday was great. Um, yeah, freaking great. Today was great, too, but draining. Like I said before - good things are happening to me. But at the same time, there's a certain level of confusion that always swirls around me. I think it's because I tend to overanalyze situations when I shouldn't. I should just go with the flow.

Oh well, still was a good day. I didn't have to use my A.K.

A little something about my family....

So the wedding isn't for another 90 minutes or so, but it would seem there's a bunch of drama going on with the family here. Plenty of crap happening and I wish I could make it better for the one full day I'm here. But I can't, and they're so far removed from my life that what happens here doesn't really affect me. It seems like it's just a collection of stories that serve to give me more reason not to relocate out here. Ugh...

But out of this comes a very interesting article from the Litchfield County Times monthly magazine about the town where most of my dad's side of the family lives and some great words about my late grandfather, Ed Case:

Warm Welcome in Colebrook

ORD

This weekend is a cousin's wedding in Connecticut so I'm on my way back. Looks like my flight to Hartford is a bit delayed so here I am sitting at Chicago O'Hare airport waiting. Only another 3 hours or so. Gonn have to find a power outlet soon.

Plenty of interesting things are happening in my life right now, but I won't divulge as I really don't wish to jinx my recent good fortune. I'm getting happier, socializing more, and getting past the crap of the breakup. Soon I'll start looking for a new place to live as it looks like I won't be getting a roommate at my current house.

All in all, it would seem some good news might be coming my way soon.

Disintegration

Disintegrating an iTunes music library that has 13,000+ items can be a chore. It can also be a little emotionally draining as I deleted around 5500 items that were hers leaving me with around 7600 of my own.

And I deleted her account off of the main computer tonight. That's also a biggie. I can't say I'm not a little down right now, but I'll get over it.

She'll be moving most of her stuff out this Friday.

Vacation wrap-up

So the MAF sensor was replaced in the car yesterday and we didn't have any problems whatsoever on the trip back to Seattle. We got here about 11:30am. The hardest part about the trip back was just how damn tired I was. Maureen and I ended up splitting the driving duties almost evenly.

After getting a nap and a shower, the laundry has been started. Much laundry to do, and there's a bunch of other household stuff that needs to be done.

It would've been nice if I hadn't had so many troubles on this trip, but it was certainly better than sticking around in Seattle being bored for a week :-)

MAF failure

So the dealer says that the mass airflow sensor failed in the car. Luckily it's covered under warranty. What I told them was that I am using a K&N air filter, and I was worried that the oil from it might've contaminated the MAF. I'm going to get a new air filter for the car when I pick it up later. No more K&N filters, I'm afraid. I just replaced the MAF sensor on my older (1995) gasoline Jetta. Same problem - they said the oil from the K&N filter had fouled the MAF.

They said they didn't have the MAF in stock, but there's one on its way coming from San Jose. We should hopefully be leaving here tonight. And if there are no further problems, we'll be back in Seattle early early tomorrow.

This vacation has had its ups and plenty of downs. Right now it's not feeling like a vacation, though, so I'm ready for it to be over. If I can get back to Seattle by tomorrow then that'll mean I won't have to go back to work until Monday. I could use a few days to recover.

We made it to San Francisco?

The turbocharger issue with the car apparently was pretty serious. We left Vegas around noon today and about 500 miles into the trip, the check engine light came on. This is after noticing that the turbo had, once again, stopped working.

So I was faced with a tough choice - limp the car to San Francisco, and then immediately take it to a dealer the next morning; or, get it towed to the dealer to try to keep the car from really getting fucked up. I chose the second option. I have AAA Plus, which gives you 100 miles of towing per incident. Good thing - the dealer was 99.3 miles from where we stopped the car. So now the car sits at the dealer in San Francisco, and I will need to go over there at 7am to get them to fix it.

Please please please let it be an easy fix that can be done in one day. I wouldn't mind staying longer in San Francisco, but that means I would have to buy a plane ticket for my friend Maureen to get back to Seattle by Wednesday afternoon. And then I'd have to drive back alone. Does not sound fun.

Fucking cars! ARGH!

The good news about this trip is that I've made several new friends through Maureen, the tow truck driver was fucking hilarious, and hey, we really are in San Francisco now.