After the doctor's appointment yesterday, I decided to get out in the real world for a change. Although I have done that the previous week, this time involved multiple errands, with multiple stops.
I started off by heading to my firefighter buddy's house. I almost teared up a little bit. He had seen my Mo for Movember when we went to lunch last week and had decided to grow one in support. Since his Mo is about a week behind, it looks about as pathetic as mine. One thing many of us newly mustachioed men are finding, is that the women in our life, although they fully support the Movember movement, are not really a fan of the Mo. Either that, or they are just using that as an excuse not to touch us. But the real reason I was at my buddy's house was to take his 1947 GMC pick up for a drive. This project has been in the making longer than I have been alive, but it's almost done, except for the missing floor, but I still found somewhere to rest my feet. Of course, the engine is highly modified and the mufflers are...well they just aren't there. Did I mention it is 8:30 am and he lives in a quiet subdivision? Well, we changed all that. We finally get the thing going (many hot rod engines don't like to start in cold weather) and hit the streets very loudly. Since we can't go very fast on residential streets, he stays in first and second gear and gets to the 20 mile an hour speed limit as fast and as loud as possible (OK, we may have creeped over 20 a few times, but the school buses were already off the streets meaning the rugrats were absent from the streets as well). We sped from cul-de-sac to cul-de-sac laughing as neighbors run to the window to see what all of the racket is about just in time to see us speed away again. We were doing great until there was a backfire that caused an air cleaner to fly about ten feet in the air, much to our amusement, and much to the confusion of the other car at the stop sign and the lady out for a quiet walk. Still laughing, I rush out of the truck, being careful not to fall through the floor, and pick it up. We head back to base and back down the hill that is his driveway. As we do this, the cab fills completely with exhaust smoke. My friend is concerned about all of the smoke. I point out several factors for that. First, we lost an air cleaner which means we were sucking in too much air causing the engine to run lean, and thereby smoke more. Also, we were backing into the smoke. And lastly, he had a window down to see as he backed up and there still was no floor in the car, which tends to let in a lot of exhaust when you are backing up for some reason. We both laugh and he is put at ease...or at least he is sleepy from the carbon monoxide poisoning. We hide the truck back in the garage to make the neighbors wonder who was responsible for all of the noise pollution...and regular pollution. After a little chat about all the other wonderful projects we are going to complete, I head out to run more errands.
I hit Home Depot and find that out that if you go on a weekday, you might actually be able to find someone to help you. I also found out that you don't get the "A" team on a weekday. Surprisingly, for the first time in my life, I walk out of Home Depot without spending a penny. This is partly because they couldn't help me, plus I am an unemployed cancer patient, and I am saving every penny for the Paul Reed Smith fund where money is raised to buy American made Paul Reed Smiths with double cutaways and twenty four frets for unemployed testicular cancer patients. So far I have raised, well not much at all really, but at least I am on the way to raising the money, and sometime in 2023 I hope to have enough cash to finally get one!
I then head to a pool supply store, because Home Depot said that is the best place to get stuff to clean your fireplace bricks. I don't understand either, but I didn't have anything else to do, so that's where I went. The nice gentleman inside, who obviously doesn't have a whole lot to do running a pool supply store in Ohio in the middle of November, said yes they do carry stuff that will clean fireplace brick (who knew?) at their location about thirty miles away. Not really wanting to travel that far, because I am not really wanting to clean the fireplace brick, I went to meet my carless wife for lunch.
My wife had to run some errands for her work Thanksgiving dinner. She warned me that I wouldn't enjoy it, and she is right. Watching someone else shop for groceries for another someone else is really boring. So boring, I forgot to buy the things I was going to get while we were out. We grab Subway, which according to their commercials is just like working out, and I drop her back off and don't work out.
Next I head to see another friend and her baby. That was the plan, but no baby, no crying, no nothing. I am very suspect that she still has this baby, I may have just seen a rental baby in the past. This makes me suspicious about her pregnancy as well. I should have tattooed the baby last time I saw it, just to make sure she is showing me the same one each time. I don't know how baby rentals work, and if they give you the exact baby every time you get one, or if they just have a gaggle of similar looking babies. Next time I will buy a tattoo gun and take it with me. We have a great conversation with plenty of gossip (and why do I have more gossip than her when I don't even work with her anymore) and then she kicks me out to "work". I have seen her "work" and that term is used very loosely. OK, she gets her stuff done, so I guess it's technically work, but she enjoys it too much to get paid. She should divert that money to my PRS fund.
I decide to go for the hat trick and see some other people that I used to work with. I was only temporary help for this group of people for about three months last year, but they send me cards about once a week and are constantly calling or e-mailing to check on me. Don't get me wrong, I don't necessarily need all that, but it does make you feel good to be remembered. I just wish my previous employer would do the same, except instead of sending me a card they could send me cash, and instead of calling and e-mailing, they could send me cash. I basically kept them from working for half an hour (I seem to be good at that today) and by then it was time for them to shut down and me to go pick up my wife from work. I tried not to pick her up, but they warned me that eventually she would find her way home and she would be ticked when she did make it.
I wasn't really that tired while doing any of my running around. I felt like I was really making progress, until I sat on the couch once we got home and immediately fell asleep. And today, I feel like I ran a marathon yesterday, or at least what I perceive that it must feel like the day after one runs a marathon sans the bloody stumps for feet. Tomorrow is another errand day. Hopefully it will go just as smoothly and hopefully I will fare better the day after. Until then I will just avoid that nap inducing couch.
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