In a couple of weeks it will be a year since I was brought back to life by the actions of my wife, the EMTs she called for, and the ER staff at Palomar Hospital. I think I should plan some sort of Second Birthday celebration - perhaps something with fatty spicy foods and margaritas, eventually leading to chocolate treats.
Espola's newest neighborhood
- Thread starter espola
- Start date
Hüsker Dü
DA
Such the rebel.
Driving home from the bus stop yesterday, I got a Low Fuel warning on my car information display. I knew that San Diego area gas prices are generally coming down (according to gasbuddy.com), so I stopped and got $5 worth at the Arco on the corner I had to pass anyway, even though the price there has gone up to $3.459/gallon.
Today's adventure - Escondido part.
As I was finishing filling up ma petite char at the US Gas at 5th Avenue and Center City Pkwy (3.219/gallon cash or debit, and no surcharge on debit cards - for the moment my favorite gas station) a man and a woman pulled up in a big (BIG!) white new Ford pickup, and he had longer and whiter hair and beard than me. I asked as he got out "Does your wife ever tell you to get a haircut?" "No - my wife's blind. Don't tell her I have long hair." The lady in the passenger seat laughed.
As I proceeded to the Sprinter station, I was passed slowly on the left by a 1950-ish Willys squarebody, lowered, with a bigger engine dropped in and all that mechanical muscle showing because it had no hood. I gave them a thumbs up. The lady in the passenger seat laughed.
As I was finishing filling up ma petite char at the US Gas at 5th Avenue and Center City Pkwy (3.219/gallon cash or debit, and no surcharge on debit cards - for the moment my favorite gas station) a man and a woman pulled up in a big (BIG!) white new Ford pickup, and he had longer and whiter hair and beard than me. I asked as he got out "Does your wife ever tell you to get a haircut?" "No - my wife's blind. Don't tell her I have long hair." The lady in the passenger seat laughed.
As I proceeded to the Sprinter station, I was passed slowly on the left by a 1950-ish Willys squarebody, lowered, with a bigger engine dropped in and all that mechanical muscle showing because it had no hood. I gave them a thumbs up. The lady in the passenger seat laughed.
Today's adventure - Oceanside part.
My objective today was the pre-moving inventory clearance sale at Hellhound Military Surplus, just west of the Mission/76 scissor crossing, and a short walk from a Breeze Route 303 bus stop. They had advertised $4 MREs, which is almost half off what I have paid for them at other locations before. My budget, I figured going in, was $40 just so I wouldn't try to buy up the store. I brought along one of the Asian shopping bags my wife had bought in one of her trips (woven plastic, zipper top, and two cloth handles, and they can hold as much as I want to lift with one hand, although the graphics tend toward the Hello Kitty style, she got them for less than a penny apiece so she bought a bundle as business giveaways) and I kept stuffing in MREs, trying to find ones that I might actually want to eat and avoiding duplicates. As it turns out, 9 MREs is just about a full load, and is all the weight I want to carry with one arm, and came out to $38.88 with tax included. I was tempted but avoided buying any of the $10 and $20 sleeping bags, or $7 foam sleeping pads, or $15 parachute bags. A lot of the surplus was not military in any way (a plastic-wrapped stack of bar coasters, for example).
Now for the fun part - I waited a few minutes for the 303 bus going the other way back to the Oceanside Sprinter stop. At the next stop a young couple got on, man and woman, 30ish, looking like people who are carrying everything they own in a couple of backpacks and zipped up in a sleeping bag. They had to dig around in their packs to find one more dollar so they could pay the full fare they owed, and the driver waited at the stop until they did. After paying, they settled down in the back over the rear-wheel hump seats. The woman looked as attractive as many of the blondes I have seen on the Oceanside Pier beach areas, even with the unlit Marlboro hanging from her lips, long hair, good teeth, trim legs and body. After a few minutes, the woman started screaming at her man and at a woman seated on the other side of the bus. I'm not sure what the trigger was, but the discussion involved a lot of "get off me you fucking asshole" type of remarks. The driver stopped the bus right away (not at a regular stop) and told them they had to get off. The lady complained that she didn't have enough money to buy another fare, so we all compromised with her sitting up front across from me and the boyfriend(?) staying in the back, and everybody being quiet. (Somewhere a dog was barking in the middle of all this, but I'm not sure how that fits into the story.) The couple got off, still together and talking loudly to each other, at the first stop after crossing I-5.
At the end of the line, I asked the driver if this was a typical day for him "Sometimes it's much worse." "You were kind to them." He laughed from the driver's seat.
Somewhere along the line, I'm not sure where exactly, but somewhere on Mission Ave in Oceanside, traffic was backed up in one of the stripmall lots because there was a low-rider car-jumping contest going on in Mission Ave. exit from the lot.
My objective today was the pre-moving inventory clearance sale at Hellhound Military Surplus, just west of the Mission/76 scissor crossing, and a short walk from a Breeze Route 303 bus stop. They had advertised $4 MREs, which is almost half off what I have paid for them at other locations before. My budget, I figured going in, was $40 just so I wouldn't try to buy up the store. I brought along one of the Asian shopping bags my wife had bought in one of her trips (woven plastic, zipper top, and two cloth handles, and they can hold as much as I want to lift with one hand, although the graphics tend toward the Hello Kitty style, she got them for less than a penny apiece so she bought a bundle as business giveaways) and I kept stuffing in MREs, trying to find ones that I might actually want to eat and avoiding duplicates. As it turns out, 9 MREs is just about a full load, and is all the weight I want to carry with one arm, and came out to $38.88 with tax included. I was tempted but avoided buying any of the $10 and $20 sleeping bags, or $7 foam sleeping pads, or $15 parachute bags. A lot of the surplus was not military in any way (a plastic-wrapped stack of bar coasters, for example).
Now for the fun part - I waited a few minutes for the 303 bus going the other way back to the Oceanside Sprinter stop. At the next stop a young couple got on, man and woman, 30ish, looking like people who are carrying everything they own in a couple of backpacks and zipped up in a sleeping bag. They had to dig around in their packs to find one more dollar so they could pay the full fare they owed, and the driver waited at the stop until they did. After paying, they settled down in the back over the rear-wheel hump seats. The woman looked as attractive as many of the blondes I have seen on the Oceanside Pier beach areas, even with the unlit Marlboro hanging from her lips, long hair, good teeth, trim legs and body. After a few minutes, the woman started screaming at her man and at a woman seated on the other side of the bus. I'm not sure what the trigger was, but the discussion involved a lot of "get off me you fucking asshole" type of remarks. The driver stopped the bus right away (not at a regular stop) and told them they had to get off. The lady complained that she didn't have enough money to buy another fare, so we all compromised with her sitting up front across from me and the boyfriend(?) staying in the back, and everybody being quiet. (Somewhere a dog was barking in the middle of all this, but I'm not sure how that fits into the story.) The couple got off, still together and talking loudly to each other, at the first stop after crossing I-5.
At the end of the line, I asked the driver if this was a typical day for him "Sometimes it's much worse." "You were kind to them." He laughed from the driver's seat.
Somewhere along the line, I'm not sure where exactly, but somewhere on Mission Ave in Oceanside, traffic was backed up in one of the stripmall lots because there was a low-rider car-jumping contest going on in Mission Ave. exit from the lot.
I posted this already elsewhere, but I repost it here for the benefit of a narrower audience.
This shows a fig tree growing up within one of the landscape bushes outside our apartment. Every few months the gardeners come by and trim the bush (and thus the tree) back into the desired shape. The fig is destined to show its true fig nature, and it survives by accepting for a time the pretty shape ordained by forces it does not understand.
I feel a poem bursting to get out. If I just rearrange the punctuation, is that close enough to free verse already?
Apartment.....?
Hüsker Dü
DA
How long did it take to accumulate that? All personal or are you dumpster diving?
Last recycling trip was Jan 2. This trip was to clean out the CRV barrels in the back of my pickup in preparation for its repair and/or sale. It turns out that with the back seats down in my new little car everything fit (2 30-gallon trash cans and a few trash bags) I could have got a lot more in if I had been better organized.
Most of it is ours, but I pick up CRV aluminum that is right in my path (I respect the priority rights of the urban aluminum miners and leave the trash cans alone) and pick CRV containers our of the condo common bins if I see then (but I don't go looking for them).
Police say vandalism, but this isn't something that you can do with a pocket multi-tool --
https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/10/americas/gondola-canada-crash-trnd/index.html
https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/10/americas/gondola-canada-crash-trnd/index.html
I couldn't believe my eyes when I drove by the Arco on the corner yesterday - 87 octane is down to $3.379/gallon. I had to confirm the price at gasbuddy.com.
Interesting to hear you use the lower grade gasoline E. I've always been curious is the higher octane gases higher cost is made up in better mpg and less wear on the engine...
I did a months-long experiment to figure this out several years ago. My unscientific result is that you get a little better mileage with 91 over 87, but not enough to make up the difference in price. My wife's cars over the years (three MBs and now an Acura) require 91 (the Acura has a turbo booster) and will complain if the engine computer thinks you are cheating with the cheap stuff.
Before cars had engine computers, using lower-quality fuel risked damage to the moving parts because of pre-ignition (the fuel/air mixture started burning while the piston was still compressing it). The original meaning of "octane" was how well the fuel mix worked in pre-ignition tests compared to pure iso-octane (8 carbon atoms in a line with two hydrogen atoms attached to each carbon, plus a hydrogen atom at each end). But that was in the days when fuel was mixed by aspiration in a carburetor and spark timing was set by rotating the distributor until the engine ran just right and them clamping it in position with a screwdriver. Pure octane didn't burn as quickly as the cheaper stuff used in the mix called "gasoline" (originally a waste product that refineries had to find a use for after making kerosene, paraffin, and road tar - any that could not be consumed in the refinery making heat for internal processes was just dumped in lakes or streams, or burned in open pits) so 100 Octane was seen as some unattainable perfection - until the oil companies found out what a difference a pinch of lead would make. In modern cars, the engine computer is required by law to meet emission and efficiency standards, and those little chips figure out how to run the engine correctly by adjusting fuel injection quantity and ignition timing and reading sensors embedded in critical points.
Anyone traveling north or south on I-5 to or from NorCal the next few weeks should bear in mind that the intersection with SR46 at Lost Hills and most of the road between the half-dozen gas stations there (who all compete to have the best prices posted 100 feet in the air, except for one that is mysteriously about $1 more a gallon) is torn up and blocked off into detours to streets I didn't even know existed. And it doesn't show anything about that on the Caltrans road conditions report.
Missed the Fair again this year --
https://www.vpr.org/post/cow-udders...6QkLRpzEln2_ltc01zt11-S8rtssQQD6Su78#stream/0
https://www.vpr.org/post/cow-udders...6QkLRpzEln2_ltc01zt11-S8rtssQQD6Su78#stream/0
Hüsker Dü
DA
That's America!
We used to go every year. About the time I joined the Navy the family moved to a house within walking distance of the fairgrounds, so my little brother worked there every year.
Fun with neurologists --
Today during my exam (DMV requires a Doctor's statement at least one more time to keep my driving license) the Doc said "repeat these three words back to me -- blue apple dog". I got them all. After he checked me all over and asked about my left foot disability (they lied about there being no needles, but it was just pokes with a safety pin screening for numbness) he asked me to repeat the words again. I said "red pear cat", and then, after he gave me The Look, "blue apple dog".
Today during my exam (DMV requires a Doctor's statement at least one more time to keep my driving license) the Doc said "repeat these three words back to me -- blue apple dog". I got them all. After he checked me all over and asked about my left foot disability (they lied about there being no needles, but it was just pokes with a safety pin screening for numbness) he asked me to repeat the words again. I said "red pear cat", and then, after he gave me The Look, "blue apple dog".