rob was here.

wow, what a lousy week. I have witnessed, firsthand, the inherent disorder present in the machine that surrounds us all.

Phase One: Pwn Thy Car

Earlier this week, I spent a day on the road driving from home to marystown (and back again) to do some field work. Just as I arrived to my destination, I heard the spine chilling 'KA-THUMP-KA-THUMP-KA-THUMP" sound, audible evidence that the car is fux0red. I quickly stopped and got out to check the car's four black circles or "car-legs" as I call them. Yup, one of em was flat. So I put on the spare and did a few hours of field work. As it began getting late, I decided that it probably wasn't a great idea to drive 300km back home on a spare tire, and I decided to make an effort to get the tire repaired.. So I began driving around marystown, looking for a garage. I found a tire shop, where the guy tried filling up the wounded tire with air, only to find that a long strip on the side of my tire was blown out, and that air only stayed in the tire for around 0.4 seconds. Repair wasn't an option apparently. I was on a new quest to find a new tire alltogether. He didn't have any 15 inch low-profile tires at his shop, so he recommended Canadian Tire down the road.

Lets stop here for a minute. Yes, marystown has a Canadian Tire. They have quite a large selection of stores and resteraunts, to my astonishment..

Back to the story, I went to Canadian Tire and asked for a replacement tire.. for ONE all-season tire, it was $120. I didn't buy it. Luckily, Canadian Tire doesn't have a tire monopoly in marystown, as someone in the lineup suggested a used tire shop just a few minutes drive from there.

Fast forward a few minutes and I'm inside the basement of someones house looking through stacks of tires. Apparently some old fellow runs this used tire shop but he was in St. Johns for the day and his wife was kind enough to let us in.. We found a rather used 15-inch tire quite similar to my blown-out one, and it was marked down to $20 from $25 dollars. What a steal! I purchased said tire from the lady. Now we were burdened with the task of getting the new el-cheap-o tire onto my tire rim. Unfortunately, the basement tire shop had all the equipment to do that there, but the lady didn't know how to use it. Fortunately, she happened to be the mother-in-law of a manager at the KIA dealership in marystown.

Fast forward a few minutes and I'm inside the KIA dealership. I meet up with the manager with our new rather-used tire in hand.

"Your mother-in-law sent us."

"Grumble." *installs tire onto rim*

Fast forward a few minites and I'm leaving with a decent tire installed where the blown out one was, and had it professionally installed and balanced at KIA. Ah, marystown, where people treat people right.

Phase Two: Pwn Thy Puter

So I was vacuuming yesterday, and I accidently got my computer-microphone cord caught in the power-nozzle of the vacuum.. It sucked up the microphone, ripping the cord and some of the innards right out of the microphone casing. I did a bit of swearing and grobbling but I didn't really use it that much anyways, and I wasn't really happy with the sound quality of some guitar recordings I've done in the past... Take that, microphone.

Also, I'm really battling with my computers harddrives lately. I have 80 gigs internal, and they are always borderline full (a few hundred megs free).. I really need some bigger drives.

Phase Two and a Half: Pwn Thy Self

Over the last, say, eight months, I've gone through cycles of quasi-healthyness and extreme self-neglect. For example, about 2 months ago I seemed to exercise every night and eat only healthy things (like salad for lunch with vegetable juice)... I'm in a bad phase now. I had pizza hut for breakfast/lunch/supper today, and wendy's for the last few days for lunch.

In all honesty and to nobodys surprise, I feel 100x better in the healthy sections of the cycle. I currently don't feel as phsically and mentally focused as I do when I'm in health-mode. Perhaps it's time for a change-over soon.