Back again on Sunday.

October 26, 2003

The car’s OK, at least for now. I got it back on Friday afternoon, and it turned out that it was leaking both oil and power steering fluid, so it’s a good thing I got it in when I did. I thought that the three quarts of oil in two days would have tipped me off, but that thing is known to go in spurts of chugging liquids, and besides, there wasn’t a rapdily-enough growing dark spot beneath the car. I remember that last time I had a power steering fluid leak, though. It was more of a gush than a leak, though. I was in the parking lot of the Beaverton Mall where Cedar Hills Brewpub is located (although I wasn’t there for it since I was under 21), and I turned into a parking spot and all of a sudden I heard this tremendous grinding and the car suddenly switched from an extremely loose streering system to driving a truck…or a VW, either way. It took all my stength to turn the wheel and find a spot to sit and wait for the tow truck, but luckily it wasn’t quite like that this time. The car began vibrating when I would make tight turns such is into parking spots in crowded lots or garages, and that’s when I would see the spray of liquid behind the car. Makes sense, but then again, I don’t know jack about cars in the first place. Kind of a shame, if I don’t say so myself.

Thursday was spent bumming around the house as I plainly wrote about last time. I was car-less on Thursday so I was stuck here, but there’s enough on TV that I was able to keep myself occupied. I was espescially interested to discover that “ER” is on not once, but twice daily on TNT, though it’s in the morning and I dislike watching TV in the morning just because it makes me feel too lazy for the rest of the day since I have a tendency to watch TV at night if I’m around. But since I had nothing to do and literally nowhere to go, I watched anyway. Good times.

Friday I was at the house again, but I had a car to drive this time, so I took the opportunity to run to the bank and get lunch at the store this time, instead of rustling up food at home like I did on Thursday. I also decided to exercise a bit, which may or may not have been a mistake. Lifting weights was no problem, and I discovered that my arms are getting big again. After I stopped playing tennis a few years ago, my arm muscles that had been so big for years began atrophying and I lost a lot of my upper body muscle weight. Well, hold on just one minute. I really never had any upper-body muscle to begin with–with the exception of my arms from tennis. When I was in elementary and middle school, I could never climb the rope or do pull-ups, and I could never do more than a handful of push-ups. But my bisceps and a few other arms muscles got big from playing tennis, so while my shoulders and chest looked pretty weak, my arms were pretty muscular.

It’s not quite as bad now since I’ve been trying to work more muscle groups than just my arms, but let’s be honest: how many of you really know more than about five or six ways to lift free weights and exercise your body? PROPERLY? I should dig up an exercise guide somewhere so that I can start getting my back, other arm muscles, etc. My arms are still a little sore from one of the types I did Friday afternoon, so at least I knew I was getting something I normally wouldn’t. A gym would be perfect, but I just don’t have the money for it, and until I do I’m doing my stuff at home.

Friday night I drove downtown, something I haven’t done in SOOOOO long. I never drive downtown; I always take MAX in. I had never been to Kell’s Irish Pub before, so I went and met a friend and we tried to have a conversation, but it was a but too loud for that. Aside from about a hundred or more people in there all talking over each other at once, the band that was playing Irish music was playing over them, so needless to say it was a lost cause. It’s a great place, and it was definitely worth the $3 cover charge to get in to hear the great music, but I’m not sure it was worth $6 to park downtown. I circled for 10 minutes trying to find a decent spot, but I finally said screw it and just parked in a lot for a good chunk of change. Casualties of war, I suppose.

Saturday was a more…well, I was going to say “laid back” day, but really, most of my days sadly are. My Dad and I drove down to Woodburn to go to the factory outlet stores that are down there so he could grab a few things, and then we stopped and had some lunch and a couple of beers at the McMenamin’s along I-5 in Tualatin. We also took a couple of beers to go for the World Series game on Saturday–the last one as it turned out. Last time I mention baseball for awhile, I promise: go Marlins! Yankees suck!

OK, that’s off my chest.

This weekend I also dug back into my old emails looking for the answer to something I’ve been wondering about for a bit now. Yes, I’m being deliberately vague, and yes, I intend to keep it that way. Anyhow, I went back to 1998 in my emails and began looking through my sent emails, and I had the most bizarre epiphany: I was a total flake and brain-case in 1998. I mean, really. I was looking back on things with 20/20 vision, naturally, but I had vague recollections of what I was thinking when I wrote certain emails, and others I just had to slap my head in marvelling my own stupidity. I said some pretty dumb things to people in 1998, and I have no idea what kinds of things were going through my pathetic little brain at the time.

Apparently I thought…well, I don’t know what I thought, honestly. I was 18 years old for most of 1998 (at least the parts I read through) and so maybe I thought I was being mature by taking various paths, but I really wasn’t. Well hell, I don’t think I’m mature now, but that’s another story. And yes, I did sort of find the answer to the question I was looking for, but at the expense of marvelling over my own boneheaded ideas. I was such a maroon, to use an old Looney Tunes word.

But now I’m 24. I must know what I’m doing, right? Wrong. I mean come on, I’m still unemployed and living at home. I haven’t heard back from my interviewer from last week yet, though I hope to hear something by this next week. I’m going to call about my other application that I sent in, too, and make some sort of personal contact. I have one more application to fill out and send in assuming the job position hasn’t closed yet, but I didn’t have time to do it this last week before I took off and I just wasn’t in the mood to do it the day I printed it out. After that one, I get to start over again. Yes, I know I whine about this a lot, but I’m hoping it’ll stop soon.

Anyone out there want to sponsor me living in an apartment of my own until I find a job so that I can pay for it myself? I promise I’ll eat Ramen and cereal until I can afford more….

It’s worth a shot.

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