We're up-to-date, official, and entirely legal. There was no work on Friday thanks to the company summer party (God, whatever else it's been, this has been the summer of the 4-day work week), so I took Grace to get inspected. This week was the long-awaited final switch-over to Mass. registration and plates. My truck and I are now completely titled, taxed, and registered in Massachusetts. No vestiges of my Georgia residency now remain. Props to the state of GA for allowing me to remotely register a vehicle in their state that has not been there for the past two years. But I figured that was long enough to be riding dirty, so I got everything taken care of this past week. Everything went pretty painless and I was pleasantly surprised to find out that my insurance didn't go up but a few dollars. I was a little worried that this was going to be the point where my insurance noticed that little incident 3 years ago and decided to gouge me, but I am apparently the man of the phantom DUI. All in all, it was a nice weight off my shoulders and it felt good being called Mr. Dunce Cap Marvel by insurance agents and government employees and being all grown-up and responsible and shit.
Yesterday, I took Grace out for the afternoon just like the old days. Haven't done much pleasure driving for a long while with gas and all, but we had an enjoyable few hours out tooling around Essex County. We took the country roads up to Newburyport and took in a very scenic drive through little Massachusetts villages and farms. It's really wild how close you can be to some of the bigger towns and highways and -- relatively speaking -- Boston, and yet be driving through some very rural areas tucked away and looking very much like the countryside from Shawshank.
We made it over to Plum Island and discovered some really nice beaches that I'll have to check out again. Also saw some great farm stands (hot, buttered sweet corn...mmmm) and some nice cemeteries that I made mental notes of. It was just nice and very relaxing to be able to take a scenic drive, listen to folk music on NPR, and not have to worry about anything like money, health problems, or juggling future travel destinations for the next month. It was a far sight from two months ago, when I thought Grace was tot to the extreme.
I had jumped in one afternoon after leaving work to go catch a train to catch a plane to Minnesota and she basically blew up in my face. The engine wouldn't turn over and everything electrical in the vehicle turned into a carnival funhouse from some B-rated horror movie. Auto locks going up and down, radio turning on to blare for a couple of seconds before shutting off again, dome light on, and chime ringing incessantly in my panicked brain. The ignition tried to eat my key and it took me valuable minutes to finally wrench it loose. I left Grace there in agony, unable to do anything for her, and still almost missing my train. It turned out to be a very expensive battery replacement, but I got her back from the dead. And now her we are: papers all in order and finally legal residents of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It's good to be home.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Monday, August 11, 2008
I have a bad feeling about this...
THE REDS
Hey -- let's trade our longest tenured player and face of the franchise for next to nothing and then turn around 12 days later and give away our most productive hitter and baseball's current home run leader for damaged goods and a couple of scrubs to be named later. I really thought that after all of the posturing and positioning by the owner and GM that there would still be no way that they'd let Adam Dunn go after the season. They couldn't even wait that long. Two years ago this was a team that was in playoff contention until the last weekend of the season and now they look like the same bunch of idiots in the front office without much of a plan. Here's hoping BP, EE, Votto, and Bruce step up big time soon. Here's hoping the Reds make a play at Texeira. I don't know; kind of tough to follow the team right now when it looks like they still are a few years of everything going right before they contend.
THE DARK KNIGHT CAST
What's next? The movie's still raking and it's still unbelievably awesome, but I'm starting to think there is some sort of pall or curse over it all. Heath Ledger winds up dead in suspicious circumstances, Christian Bale is arrested for who knows what exactly, and now Morgan Freeman gets royally banged up in a car wreck with questions swirling around his "friend." And hey, Ledger's death back in the news with half of the Olsen twins being subpoenaed over it. What new drama/scandal can we expect next? I have legitimate concern for Chris Nolan's safety.
RUSSIA V. GEORGIA FOR ALL THE MEDALS
Seriously, all this nonsense over South Ossetia really bothers me. I think everybody needs to forget all about the Olympics and concentrate on this one. This has way too many possibilities of going really wrong and getting much much worse than it currently is. How far is Russia willing to take it? What response can the West really make and what kind of dangerous dangerous precedents will be set if we do nothing or the wrong resolution is made? As a social scientist and historian this is such an intriguing situation to me, but it could go real bad real fast I feel. Historical eras have ended and powers destroyed over much smaller world events (see World War I). Recently reading Watchmen doesn't help ease any old Cold War fears either.
Hey -- let's trade our longest tenured player and face of the franchise for next to nothing and then turn around 12 days later and give away our most productive hitter and baseball's current home run leader for damaged goods and a couple of scrubs to be named later. I really thought that after all of the posturing and positioning by the owner and GM that there would still be no way that they'd let Adam Dunn go after the season. They couldn't even wait that long. Two years ago this was a team that was in playoff contention until the last weekend of the season and now they look like the same bunch of idiots in the front office without much of a plan. Here's hoping BP, EE, Votto, and Bruce step up big time soon. Here's hoping the Reds make a play at Texeira. I don't know; kind of tough to follow the team right now when it looks like they still are a few years of everything going right before they contend.
THE DARK KNIGHT CAST
What's next? The movie's still raking and it's still unbelievably awesome, but I'm starting to think there is some sort of pall or curse over it all. Heath Ledger winds up dead in suspicious circumstances, Christian Bale is arrested for who knows what exactly, and now Morgan Freeman gets royally banged up in a car wreck with questions swirling around his "friend." And hey, Ledger's death back in the news with half of the Olsen twins being subpoenaed over it. What new drama/scandal can we expect next? I have legitimate concern for Chris Nolan's safety.
RUSSIA V. GEORGIA FOR ALL THE MEDALS
Seriously, all this nonsense over South Ossetia really bothers me. I think everybody needs to forget all about the Olympics and concentrate on this one. This has way too many possibilities of going really wrong and getting much much worse than it currently is. How far is Russia willing to take it? What response can the West really make and what kind of dangerous dangerous precedents will be set if we do nothing or the wrong resolution is made? As a social scientist and historian this is such an intriguing situation to me, but it could go real bad real fast I feel. Historical eras have ended and powers destroyed over much smaller world events (see World War I). Recently reading Watchmen doesn't help ease any old Cold War fears either.
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