Drove over the mountains yesterday, with the intention of coming back by last night. Weather intervened, leaving me watching too much TV in a Wenatchee motel. Came back today.
Not a scintillating travel report, but the travel itself wasn’t very scintillating. That wasn’t the point. The point was to push the reset button on my soul.
I can understand first night jitters and stuff, but dude has gone to the bathroom about a dozen times since 4am, each time pulling shut the two doors en route without turning the handle first, so the latch pops and reverberates through the hallway, my room, and my skull which used to be asleep, but is no longer.
When I say ‘about a dozen,’ I’m not being figurative.
The honest-to-God very first conversation I had with this guy yesterday was while I was making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He asked me if there was a fan in the bathroom. “Yeah, it’s on a timer switch. Turn the knob.” This isn’t what he was asking. He was telling me that it stank in there. “No, I mean, pshew! I like to sit around in there like the next guy, but when that stuff hits the water…” I looked up at him blankly from my strawberry jam. “Yeah, it hits that water and you just… Man.”
This has been another exciting episode of: Homer Gripes About Stuff. Let’s see how much better it gets.
I was sitting here reading Clark Humphrey’s ‘blog, MISCmedia.com, and I came to realize that I hadn’t mentioned it lately. And that, of course, led to the thought that I could put a ‘blogroll here, and you fine folks could peruse at your leisure things I read most days.
Metafilter gets at least a little bit of a peruse.
Bruce Sterling, the man who delivered this speech, which you really should listen to all the way through:
(MP3 link)
WorldChanging and TreeHugger go together. WC is heady, TH is marketing.
BLDGBLOG. Brilliant, fun, and just darn good. He also writes for WorldChanging sometimes. Among other projects.
BobHarris.com. Famous for losing big on the TV game show ‘Jeopardy.’ Wrote a book about it. Writes for TV. All Positive Mental Attitude, without preaching about Positive Mental Attitude. Pudus.
BoingBoing.net. I remember going to the FringeWare store in Austin and buying a copy of a BoingBoing ‘zine (which I think I still have). That makes me cyberpunk, d00d!! Now they’ve all got careers doing pretty much what they were doing back then, which is amazing.
TalkingPointsMemo. Joshua Mica Marshall had a ‘blog, and it got popular, and then he branched out. Now he’s a brand name, and a darn good one.
Eschaton. Atrios just puts it all out there in a very smart way.
Glenn Greenwald is getting book deals and his ‘blog to a paid gig at Salon.com.
Red State Son. Dennis Perrin. He’s funny and bitter and punk rock. He does politics, but also discourses on the way comedy works (or doesn’t).
This Modern World. Tom Tomorrow has been an element of my political reality since the mid-’90s. He doesn’t actually ‘blog as much lately, and has some good folks filling the slack, including Bob Harris.
The Poor Man Cafe. ‘The Editors’ might be an editor for Salon. Or maybe not. Sometimes really funny, sometimes just kinda tedious, but still worth checking.
Orcinus. David Neiwert is an honest-to-goodness journalist, and also writes books generally on the theme of institutionalized intolerance. His ‘blog isn’t always the happiest one, but usually interesting. He shares his ‘blog with a futurist from BC.
Horsesass.org. Goldy is the king of local political theater, and he’s another example of someone who turned his ‘blog into a career. In this case, hosting talk radio.
There’s more, of course. 
Maybe I’ll do a follow-up later.
Via gadling: Taken On The Road: American Mile Markers. A road trip from NYC to San Fransisco, with a picture taken every mile.
It’s pancake week.
The housemate that moved out a little while ago had the best pancake recipie. I need to get it from him.
Atrios calls it ‘Imperial Stormtrooper Chic,’ which is pretty funny. But you know what’s most creepy about Sen. McCain’s campaign web site? When you move your mouse pointer over the areas at the bottom of the screen, a video of McCain starts playing, telling you what a click there will do. I want a President who will lead the free world, not usher me around a web site in miniature video form.
And what’s worse, from a campaign perspective, but much better from a comedy perspective… He’s against a white background. “Hi, I’m a Mac.” “And I’m a PC.” “Mac for President.” “No, PC for President!” “Hello, traveler. My name is Atrus. Can you help me catch my two sons?”
Today I did a van thing I’ve been meaning to do for a really long time. I think I put it off because it’s messy and involves being under the van a lot.
But today I climbed down under there and made a big mess in order to change the gear oil. Here’s how you do it, if anyone’s curious. I bought a 17mm transaxle key socket ($3), which worked out OK. There’s not a lot of room down there. For the drain plug, I ended up using the socket as an allen key, with a 17mm wrench on that. If that didn’t make any sense, then go look at that link, if you care to. For the fill plug, I just put the socket on a u-joint extender.
The main thing here, however, is that you have to clean off the transaxle around the fill plug, because you can’t let any dirt get in there while you’re filling it up. So I scoured 20 years’-worth of grime off a four-inch square section of the transaxle with a toothbrush. SimpleGreen and elbow grease. Squirt some, scrub some, wipe with paper towel, inspect, repeat. A lot.
Then the second interesting part from a storytelling standpoint is that you need a length of hose to thread through the undercarriage and out through the wheel well. Because there’s just no other way to fill the thing than to remove the transaxle, which is not an option.
The hose worked out great. I used a clear blue plastic hose I found at the store, designed for hooking a garden hose to your kitchen sink ($6). I cut off the connectors and jammed a funnel ($2) into one end. The other end fit right in the fill hole with enough space to leak when it was full. Just perfect.
The old oil looked cooked. (Say that three times fast.) Like old deep-fry oil. The magnet in the drain plug had a little hairdo of metal filings. And thankfully there were no bigger chunks. The metal filings were tough, though, because no matter how you’d wipe them off, they’d end up stuck back to the drain plug, since it’s magnetized. I eventually had to rinse it off in running water, and then immediately dried it and dunked it in the new gear oil. Otherwise the plug wouldn’t have gone back in, because of the chunks of metal stuck to the threads.
I refilled it with synthetic MT90. Down the funnel, through the tube, into the tranny case. I only needed 4 quarts. Filled it to overflowing and then when it was done overflowing I put the plug back in.
Took the van for a spin. Shifting is a little smoother, and maybe more consistent. But there’s definately greater peace of mind.
Content for search engines to find: vanagon volkswagen 2.1l manual transmission 091 091/11
This morning I woke up from a dream where I was walking away from a house in a suburban area. I had a .45 revolver in my hand, and I knew they’d come after me. They were going to kill me anyway, so I escaped. Somehow, in my mind, walking was better than running, because they’d notice someone running. I’d never been to this town before, so all I could do was move towards the main drag a few blocks away, where traffic was flowing by, where the lights from a Dairy Queen pushed away the night, and where…. Was that a cop? Could it be?
I kept looking at the revolver, seeing the bullets in their little chambers, obsessively making sure the gun was loaded. They each had their own glint, various facets, reassuring metal, stamped lettering, chrome revolver….
I was looking to the sides, contemplating side streets, alleyways, other houses… Would someone dial 911 for me? I realized I had a phone in my pocket. Why had I not dialed 911 earlier? Still I walked, in that dream-state molasses quicksand walk. Confused, overwhelmed. Like I was drugged.
“Hey!” Someone had noticed that I was gone, and was now pointing at me out the window. It didn’t take long before I was surrounded by a half-dozen of these… men. There was one, the leader, inferiority complex, straight black hair, ponytail crop, goatee, sports jersey. “Where do you think you’re going?”
I waved the gun around. I was surrounded. They just stood there. Goatee approached. I fired. Safety. The safety was on. Click click click. He grabbed me by the hair, dragged me to my knees, and shot me in the head.
And then it was wakey-wakey morning. Time to get up. Have some coffee. Yay.
I have too many dreams about being shot in the head. It’s a theme. I don’t understand it. If there’s a gun in a dream I have, I end up getting shot in the head. The first time, it was a record store. I was in a record store just looking at records, and then someone I couldn’t even see shot me in the head. And every time, it’s accompanied by a cool hollow feeling in my skull, which might or might not be an accurate representation of such an experience.
Dreaming isn’t easy.
(Updated to bring it back to the top of the list.)
I make a lot of travel plans in public, and then never actually go.
But this time…
Southern Washington coast, known as the Cranberry Coast. Aberdeen, Westport, Longbeach and some time poking around Willapa Bay, cuz tidal marshes are kewl.
Then it’s south on the 101, stopping at waysides and state parks, and any place that looks like it might be run by hippies. Tillamook for the air museum and for the cheese. Hug the coast away from 101 for Capes Meares and Lookout, because isolation is kewl, too.
Cape Kiawanda gives me a chance to figure out how much further south to go, with the opportunity to bail back over the Coastal Range to Salem and I-5. Or maybe as far south as… Port Orford? After all, who wouldn’t want to stay in the westernmost motel in the lower 48? But probably only Newport.
Regardless, it’s a question of bailing back over the Coastal range to the Willamette valley and north on I-5 back home. But in an ideal world where there’s no such thing as too much travel, I head for Crater Lake and then north on US 97, hitting a few hot springs I know about along the way.
Oregon has so many coastal-area state parks it’s dizzying. Then there are national parks and recreation areas and wildlife refuges. And just a lot of amazing cool stuff. For instance. And also.
Hmmm.. Turns out there’s a rally car race up the Olympic peninsula starting on the 24th. The DooWop Rally.
More Hmm: Fisher Poets Gathering in Astoria, OR. A venue for fishing-industry poets, writers and songwriters. Sort of a coastal version of cowboy poetry.
Note also that Astoria is the location for the film ‘The Goonies.’ GoogleEarth pointed out to me some sites that were used in the film, which led me to this web site featuring a home movie of four guys visiting various locations from the film. I had forgotten that Sean Astin was a goonie.
More: Courtesy of the Oregon State Archives, it’s a 1940 tour of the Oregon coast. Rawk! Not posed in the slightest.
Apparently someone was trying to drum up tourism for Oregon in 1940, because here’s another tour across Oregon that same year. Or go up a level to the index of web exhibits.
