Did you think I forgot?
No, no I didn’t forget: It’s just that I just barely finished work, and I’m heading home.
It’s 1:30 a.m. 😬
Should I bother writing that I am tired? No, I won’t write that I’m tired. What good would it do to tell you that I’m tired. It’s a given that I’m tired. So… yeah… I’ll refrain from telling you that I’m tired. Don’t want to waste your time explaining that I’m tired. Sooooo…
Did I mention that I’m tired?
No… probably shouldn’t.
Anyway, please forgive anything that needs forgiving in my entry today. I am once again dictating my journal on my phone as I’m making the long drive home from southeast Fayetteville back to the hilly woodlands of Haven Hill, and home. (though I usually go back over it before posting).
It’s been quite the day today. Another good awful day, I suppose you could say. As tired as I was, and again because of y’all, I still got up early and did my servicise. I think today was 15 minutes? Progress there, and things are taking shape with the walking trails I’m making in the woods. By the time I’m done, we’ll have walking trails all through our side of Haven Hill. That’ll be nice for relaxing walks through the trees, enjoying the forest and the underbrush without having to bushwhack or fight off the tick invasion. I’m kind of excited about it. Little by little the servicise is making a difference. Hopefully, it’ll be a benefit to the rest of the Hill People.
You know, it’s been a pretty crazy day today. I was able to finally get the radiator support sent back via FedEx today.
Seems like a good chunk of my “income” lately has come from refunds. 🙂
I also got the n95 face masks shipped off to my friend Kimmi in DC. They’ve had a shortage, and she’s needed some for her personal use, I think. She’s got some pretty bad asthma, so she’s higher risk, and she’s a nurse. So… yea…
Anyway, I’ve had both of those on my to-do list this week and haven’t gotten to them with everything being the way it’s been going, but now it’s done, and those things are off my list.🙂
Before I even got to my first job of the day, I ended up doing a freebie in the Rogers AutoZone parking lot. The gentleman was having some issues with weird vibratio/shaking. He’d taken the truck to the dealer and other mechanics as well, I think, but no one had been able to figure out what was wrong with it. The AutoZone peeps pointed him to me, so I had a look, and I realized that the weird shake directly coincided with the engaging and disengaging of the clutch on the AC compressor. My guess is that the motor mounts are shot, and when the AC compressor kicks on and off it changes the way the engine shakes, causing the vibration that he is experiencing. The customer was happy, as that was the first real lead that he’d gotten from any mechanic anywhere, and it was again a little nice to be reinforced in my abilities.
After that, I went to what was supposed to be a quick battery and oil change job, but you know how those quick jobs can be…
Four hours later, it was done.
It was crazy. I won’t even go into it. Ugh.
And it was funny that my second job only took me probably an hour or less and I made about as much money in that one as I did in the four hours with the other one. 🙃
With that second job, all I needed to do was drain 20 gallons of gas out of the tank. So I jumped the fuel pump relay after disconnecting the fuel line at the fuel filter, and I just pumped all the fuel into four different five gallon gas cans.
Then I was off to help a lady whose car had not been starting after driving it, having to have it jumped each time it was turned off in order to get it to start again. I found that the last mechanic who worked on it didn’t tighten the battery properly and apparently also broke the purge valve, so I tighten down the battery, replaced the purge valve, and the lady was so happy that I figured out what was wrong and that my price was so cheap that she gave me nearly a $100 tip. 🙂
That was super nice of her, and it was really nice after spending four hours on a battery / oil change job. I’ve got to stop doing oil changes. They are soooooooo not worth it. I stopped doing them as a main service a while back and decided to only do them when a customer wanted it as part of a bigger package of work they needed done, but I’m starting to think that I might just stop doing them altogether. They always take a lot longer than they should (this one was a pain, obviously), and then there is extra clean up, the disposal of the oil, and it’s almost always a mess waiting to happen that usually does happens.
Not to mention drain plug gasket issues. I had to go to the dealer to get a new drain bolt because you can’t get the gasket separately, and the bolt looked like it had a leak.
After that, there were just a couple of quickies, Jeep Wrangler that had a busted bushing on the shift cable. I taught him how to replace it himself so he can save a few hundred bucks. The next one was a girl in a Whole Foods parking lot who had had one of her door pins fall out. So I hammered the pin back and explained how to fix it permanently.
The last job of the day was an absolute doozy it was like 7 or 6:30 or something, and I was thinking that maybe I could just go home a little earlier than usual. However, it’s going to rain tomorrow, and though I had told the gentleman that I was going to hopefully get him taken care of tomorrow, I thought about trying to remove a fuel tank and replace a fuel pump in the middle of a rainstorm, and so I decided to do it all tonight.
That was all well and good, except that it looks like there are more issues than just the pump. Without going into lots of boring details, I spent quite a while replacing the pump and cleaning out a very very nasty fuel tank and fuel pump, only to find out that the vehicle still wasn’t starting, which we thought was a possibility from the beginning given all the gunk that was coming through the lines, but I’m thinking there might be something else going on as well, so I suggested he get a second opinion before we go cleaning the injectors and fuel rail, which is a very big job on this particular truck.
Something just doesn’t feel right to me.
It was good to clean the tank, as the crap inside the tank was going through the lines, and the gas inside was this weird nasty yellowish orange color (super weird for fresh gas). But something seems fishy… I can’t put my finger on it.
Fortunately the customer was cool about everything, although rightly disappointed that the truck isn’t working yet, but he knew it was a possibility when we saw the crap in the lines that potentially the injectors were clogged.
Additionally, I spent probably three hours (free of charge) after I finished putting the tank in trying to figure out what was going on in addition to the nasty tank and pump.
So here I am, and it’s after 3 a.m. now, and I’ve got more than 30 gallons of bad fuel sitting in this Durango (between the two fuel jobs). Well, I’ve removed it from the Durango. I’ve used two gallons to burn weeds tonight, but I still have 30+ gallons left.
Despite my awful first job and my long, unhappy last job, that together totaled just about 10 hours, I think I might have broken a record or come close to breaking a record for the most money I’ve personally brought in in a day when I’ve been working alone without an employee helping me make more money. So that’s nice. More records. 🙂
Sorry this is another boring post about boring work things. It was about an 18-hour work day, so… that was my day. Boring.
On the bright side, I did exercise this morning. And I’ve got one more day in all of the things I’ve been keeping track of. I am going to admit that the sex addiction part of things was a little triggered today, crossing paths with a super attractive woman.
But… I’m still going strong.
#1. I am grateful that I am able to provide for myself and that my business is successful. There are so many people right now who, through no fault of their own, do not enjoy what I enjoy right now, with financial stability and whatnot. For example, it truly is a luxury to be able to buy a car that I never should have bought and to not really feel any sting whatsoever.
#2. I am grateful for the lady who gave me such a great tip today. It’s nice to be recognized for doing honest good work. It’s also a little sad that she feels like such a thing is so rare that she wants to tip for it. If only it were the norm. It should be.
3. I’m grateful that I was able to get quite a bit done today. I haven’t looked at the schedule for tomorrow, but I don’t think there are more than like three or four cars on it right now, so it’ll be a busy day, but it’s not crazy at the moment. Given it is 3:16 a.m., I might even try and sleep in, although I think we all know how that’s going to turn out. 🙃
4. I’m grateful for you wonderful supporting people and the comments that you leave. Thank you, for your love and encouragement. I should have done this whole online public thing a long time ago, but I just didn’t do it. I thought about it for years. Now I seem to be proving the benefits that I always thought might come by blogging the details of my life online but wasn’t quite ready to do yet.
5. I am grateful that it was dry today and also a bit warmer. It was actually even hot for a bit today, but I was able to be in a garage for the hardest part of it. That was nice.
Thank you, all my wonderful peeps. Loves and hugs to each of you! Until tomorrow…
Lift the World.
~ stephen
Lift the World 