I got my car back on Saturday--I was pretty surprised when the mechanic called to tell me it was ready. I figured they'd use some heli-coils on the bolt holes, which meant they'd have to order in the parts, 'cause that's not something a parts store around here would keep in stock. But luckily for me, the mechanic knows a thing or two about Subarus (he owns one himself), and he simply cut off the exhaust flanges, turned them 90 degrees, and bolted them into the other existing bolt holes around each exhaust port. Then he just welded the exhaust pipes back onto the flanges. I don't know why Subaru left two unused bolt holes on each exhaust port, but I assume they knew the threads would strip out eventually. I had considered getting this done instead of heli-coils, but I thought it would be much more expensive, considering that I'd have to take it to a muffler shop instead of doing it myself.

What's funny, though, is that I ended up paying for this myself anyway--$50, not too bad for the amount of work that went into it. When my father-in-law made the deal with the repair shop to exchange his car parts for credit, he told the owner of the shop that the credit would be used towards rebuilding the transmission in my white Subaru. The problem is that he didn't even ask me if that was ok, seeing as how I had no intention of rebuilding the automatic transmisison in that car--I had planned on swapping it out for a used manual transmission myself and saving a shitload of money. When I picked up my car on Saturday, the mechanic told me that the only reason the owner had agreed to the swap was because he would still make money on the transmission rebuild. But with doing such a small job on my other Subaru, he would actually end up losing money. So now my father-in-law has to figure out what to do about it. He gave away $100 worth of parts and didn't get anything in return. But that's how my wife's family works--they base their entire lives upon assumptions, and when things don't turn out as expected, they end up quibbling with each other in a never ending cycle.

I got turned down for that auto loan that I applied for on Wednesday. The woman at the credit union must have mailed the denial letter out as soon as I walked out the door, because it arrived in the mail yesterday morning. So now, I'll either have to find somebody else who'll finance me, or start saving my pennies.

This morning, I took the Subaru in to a repair shop to get fixed. I was going to fix it myself, but my father-in-law had some body parts for an old Firebird that this guy at the repair shop wanted, so he traded them for $100 worth of parts and labor towards fixing my car, which should more than cover fixing the exhaust bolt holes. The repair shop looked like a scummy little place, and they probably won't do any better of a job than I would, but at least (well, hopefully) if something goes wrong, their warranty will cover it.

Finally. After almost three long years, the situation caused by The Great Flood of '00 is over and done with. It seemed like every time I posted to my website about the situation being almost resolved, something else happened and delayed the whole thing, so I stopped all mention of it more than a year ago.

For those of you who haven't been reading my site for that long, here's the low-down: In October of 2000, the Price City sewer backed up and flooded our basement, ruining all the carpet, walls, and a lot of our belongings. For the first few days afterwards, various people from Price City told us that their insurance would cover it, and that we should get a contractor to look at the house, give us an estimate, and begin work to restore the basement. Well, we followed their instructions, but after we submitted the formal claim, things got ugly. After months of delay, they denied our claim for damages, after which I nearly killed a city employee. After several more months of trying to figure out what the hell to do, we finally filed a lawsuit against the city. Of course, the lawyers for their insurance company were great at stalling, and they were able to hold out against us until we ran out of money to keep the lawsuit going (after more than a year). We actually settled out of court with them for $2,500, which is a little more than a tenth of what we were suing for.

Very shortly after that, we began the process of filing for bankruptcy, just a few months ago. We filed Chapter 7, which basically means that we don't have to pay anything back. Our debts--almost $30,000--were finally discharged a few days ago, but we didn't get the notice of discharge until today. The only debts we discharged were from three credit cards and the contractor who performed the work to our house. In a way, I feel pretty lousy about the whole situation, even though the contractor was a crook himself and tried to cheat the city out of more than $1,000 on our claim for damages. I guess I shouldn't feel too bad though, since it was all out of my control. The only thing I could have done differently was to get the city's word in writing before hiring a contractor to fix the damage.

So now, we've got some work to do in order to get our credit straightened out and our lives back in order. For being a couple in our early-mid twenties, Traci and I had excellent credit before this happened. We still have one credit card, and I finalized an application for an auto loan through our credit union today. If all goes well, we should soon be in better shape than before all this shit went down.

CEU Webcam--about a block north of my house. Too bad it's not pointing south.

If you were ever a fan of The State on MTV (the best sketch comedy show EVAR), you should watch Reno 911 Wednesday on Comedy Central. It's got three of the original cast members of The State--unfortunately, not Michael Ian Black--but it's gotta be damned good nonetheless. ...and I'm outta heeeeere.

I've been on a diet of sorts for a little more than a week, and now that it looks like I'll be able to stick to it, I might as well mention it here. I stopped drinking soda completely, and I've started eating only three meals a day, with no snacks inbetween. Before, I was drinking at least 64 ounces of soda per day--sometimes twice that--and skipping some meals, eating nothing but snacks for meals, etc. I don't know what brought all this on--I just decided last Sunday to stop drinking soda, and I decided later that day to start eating regularly. I haven't really changed what I eat, just how often.

It might have something to do with the extra inch in diameter that I gained in my waistline two weeks ago--none of my pants fit as well anymore. My weight has been hovering between 210 and 215 pounds for the past couple of years, which at 5'11" isn't huge, but I have quite a nice gut. I didn't weigh myself before, and I don't really plan on weighing myself anytime soon, but at least I feel a little healthier.

I've also gotten quite a bit of exercise lately, doing yardwork, helping my sister move, helping my brother-in-law install a swamp cooler on his roof...stuff like that. I could never do actual exercise--if I'm not accomplishing something tangible, with immediate results, it's not worth it to me.

Three children who watched their parents die after being struck by lightning are described as "very fortunate."

Here's a very interesting article entitled "How Government Protects Potential Workplace Killers." It's a compelling reason to pack at work, regardless of company policy.

Orrin Hatch isn't completely retarded--he introduced legislation this week that would allow Washington D.C. residents to possess firearms in their homes and businesses.

All this complaining about the heat, and I just spent several hours leveling the forest of weeds in my back yard. I've got a few loads of tree branches and other junk to haul off to the landfill now, so that means yet another afternoon spent laboring in the heat. At least it's for a worthwhile cause--I've been pretty much cooped up in the house since we had the baby, and I really needed to get out and accomplish something...

Here's some fuzzy math for you: "Carbon’s jobless rate registered at 8 percent in June 2003. The local measure jumped six percentage points from the 7.2 jobless rate reported in May."

Whoever picked the middle of July--and a low-elevation campground--to have an outdoor gathering must be retarded. It was so miserably hot at Traci's family reunion, that Michael and I ended up coming home on Saturday. The heat was so bad that I didn't get to do any of the hiking, biking, or anything else that I had planned on doing while I was up there. The water temperature in my truck ran 220 degrees the entire way home, and I half-expected the engine to seize up. Next year, if they pick one of the same shitty spots at the bottom of Huntington Canyon to have their reunion, they can count me out.

I've been getting so little sleep throughout the past couple of weeks, and it's really wearing me out. I got up really early yet again this morning so I could take my trailer up to Huntington Canyon and drop it off at the campground that we're staying at this weekend. Now that I'm done packing the trailer, I may actually get to bed early enough tonight to get more than five hours of sleep.

I decided that hauling the trailer up this morning would be the best thing to do, since my truck would likely overheat if I took it up this evening in this shitty 95 degree weather we've been having lately. Of course, I'm going back up on Thursday after work to spend the weekend, so it'll probably overheat then anyway, but at least I won't be pulling a couple thousand pounds behind me.

I'm getting much better at backing a trailer with all the practice I've had lately. The other morning when I backed it into the driveway, I only had to pull forward once to straighten out, then it was straight backwards the rest of the length of the driveway. And the spot that I backed into at the campground this morning was curved, so I had to back around a corner to avoid backing over some trees. It was a little trickier than I'm used to, but I managed to do it without much hassle.

My CFP arrived in the mail today, a mere 33 days after I mailed my application. I was actually hoping it would arrive sooner, but I really can't complain. So now I can legally carry nearly anywhere in the state, and those areas where I cannot carry are heavily guarded and quite secure, so it doesn't matter anyway. I can also carry in 18 other states, subject to the laws of each individual state (I'll have to do some careful study whenever I travel out of state). Ok, time to finally shut up about this and keep it concealed.

Hmm...I wish my P-11 could fire underwater, like this one.

I woke up at the ass-crack of dawn this morning in order to back my trailer into my driveway while traffic was almost non-existent, and I haven't been able to get back to sleep. I only got five hours of sleep last night, so if I don't manage to take a nap sometime today, I'm going to be dead-tired at the barbecue my family is having at my mom's house tonight.

Man, I've got such a poor diet--I'm having beef jerky and soda for breakfast. Smith's has rump roast on sale for $1.99/lb. this week, so we bought 13 pounds of it and threw it in the dehydrator overnight, so I just got it all out about an hour ago. We had them cut it at the meat department before leaving the store, but they cut it a little too thick for my liking, and they trimmed too much of the fat off, so I think I'm going to go back and buy a few more pounds to slice myself. Between us eating it and giving a lot away to our families, the jerky usually goes really fast, so I figure 10 more pounds won't be too much. At least we should have plenty left for camping next weekend.

Oh joy, my wife's family reunion is coming up in another week, and I can't believe how disorganized they are. My wife's aunt, who's organizing it this year, reserved a campground in Huntington Canyon that is going to be way too small to fit the entire family. Traci and I drove up there last weekend to check it out, basically to see if it was a nice enough campground for me to take some vacation time from work to stay there. When we saw how tiny it was, Traci called her mom to tell her that there's no way everybody is going to fit, so Traci's mom called her sister, who in turn called her sister-in-law (the "chain of command," apparently), who basically said, "It'll be a tight squeeze, but we'll all fit." Yeah, right.

So anyway, since I was apparently the only one who was worried about how small the campground is, I was planning on taking the trailer up a day early in order to get the best spot possible. Then I found out this morning that everybody else in Traci's family heard about how I'd gone up and that I didn't think everybody was going to fit, so now everybody else is going up a day or two early (fucking vultures).

The site was supposed to be reserved Thursday through Sunday, so after I heard about everybody going up early, I decided to check online to see if I could reserve it for Tuesday and Wednesday, that way I could just kick out whoever was in the spot that I wanted. It turns out that Traci's aunt only reserved half of the site for the weekend, and the other half is still available. I'm sure everbody would get pissed off if I reserved that half for myself (not that my relations with that side of the family are great anyway), so I'm not sure what I'm going to do yet (though I'm sure no matter what I do, I'll end up pissing somebody off).

That fix to my exhaust ended up not working, and even though I didn't expect it to work, I'm still kinda bummed about it. Both of the bolt holes are now stripped on one side, so the car isn't really drivable anymore. I'll have to pull the truck and trailer out of my driveway tomorrow and find somewhere to drop the trailer so I'll have something to drive until I figure out what I'm going to do about the car. I'd like to back the trailer into my driveway, but between having a narrow driveway entrance, living on a busy street, and being horrible at backing a trailer, I don't know if that's such a good idea. Maybe if I try it in the middle of the night, I can manage to do it without causing a traffic jam.