Lightsabers and Lollipops

short steve likes my stories. so nyeh.

friday. last.

it was one of those days where i didn't have to get out of bed.
so really, i shouldn't have.

my 3 year old son had scarlet fever (yes, i didn't know that was still around either)so i had been staying at home watching him and a lot of Thomas the tank engine all week long.
so i was surprised when wifey told me that she was taking both kids with her to skool/daycare. the night before i went to sleep thinking the next day would hold more adventures about trains with creepy faces.

like i said. i should have gone back to bed.

instead, i made a plan. which is the best way to make God laugh.

now i did goof around a bit. probably watched an episode or two of the show called Reaper. a show about a guy who turns 21 and finds out his parents sold his soul to the devil to be his bounty hunter.
happens all the time, i guess.

around 11:00am i managed to get out of the house.
the plan:
go to bookstore. pick up check. go to bank. cash check. go to target. buy volume 5 or 6 of Family Guy cuz it's on sale for $14.99. go back to bookstore. buy a book while using my $5.00 in credit. walk away smiling. go to fast food restaurant of my choice. take food home. watch more Reaper while eating and drinking Dew.

good plan?
sure.
it's the little things. it really is.

so i get to the bookstore and i'm informed that the checks haven't arrived because of the previous holiday. so everything is a day off. they will be in any time between now and 6pm.
sigh.

the plan deteriorates.

so now i'm a guy out and about, 9 dollars in cash in my pocket. $8.11 in my bank account that i use to earn on Ebay. i surmise that i can still buy a volume of Family Guy if i can convince the clerk at the register to ring up 9 dollars in cash and the remainder on the bank card.
...anyone who has done this knows that it can be easier said than done.

and did you guess right?
the girl at the register, even though she honestly did try, rang it so that it all went on the bank card.
now here's the rub.
i can have her fix it and recharge it the correct way. but this can turn into something ugly on my bank account with charges and recharges that would take weeks and like 70 dollars to fix at least. live and learn, Spacey. live and learn.

so i say no big deal. i will fix this with my bank and leave the store.

so now i'm driving as fast as i can to my bank so that i can deposit my lousy 9 dollars into the account and hope it clears before the target charge so i don't end up spending 45 dollars or more on a dvd set that i meant to get on a great sale.

aftermath on the finances: it was all good. i averted the overcharge. huzzah!

but!
on the way home from the bank i must have made a weird turn to close to the curb because, well...

when i got home, i got out of my truck i heard a sizzling or hissing sound from the back. at first i thought one of my gallons of muriatic acid had spilled and that was the sound of it dripping and causing a reaction. but the chemicals were fine.
the hissing sound was coming from the passenger rear tire.

usually, when a tire springs a leak, it's hard to see the cause of air escaping.
there was absolutely no guessing game this time.
the problem was plain as day.
there was a small wrench embedded into the sidewall of the tire.





now the angle of this is just about impossible.
john says that only i could have done this. i'm pretty sure he's right.
in fact i think wifey said the words, "only you..."

my other theory is that a ninja threw it directly into my tire while i was driving home.
but i haven't done anything to piss off the ninjas lately. so i'm thinking... no.

luckily, i discovered this at my house, because the tire was flat in about 10 minutes.
now comes the changing of the tire.
which i have never done by myself.
but luckily, both times that it had to be done to this truck before, i helped.
so i knew where the tools and jack were. and how to remove the full sized spare from the bottom of the silverado. if i hadn't seen someone else do it before, the tire would probably still be flat and unchanged. it was tricky to remove it once i lowered it. a lot of "how in the...?" was muttered. google was consulted and finally the manual itself.
the jacking of the vehicle was what wasted so much of my precious time. i was super careful. the last thing i needed was for wifey to come home to find the love of her life trapped under something heavy like say... a truck.
i just didn't want another "only you..." story.
so three attempts two different jacks and one hour later (the jack that came with my buick worked so much better) and the tire was changed.

as soon as i finished, wifey pulls up with the kids. she is done with work early.
this kind of killed my day off alone. i wasn't too disappointed. i was kind of scared of what could happen next.

the rest of the night was uneventful. went to bookstore. collected check. went to bank. cashed check. picked up Applebee's for me and wifey. i had a cowboy burger. that's about as "Cowboy Up" as i get.

and now, i get to explain this to my boss.

did i mention it was a work truck?