2020-10-31 — Quite Timely

Happy Halloween 😊

My body is a little cold from chomping don a gazillion pieces of frozen fruit–that just barely, just slightly uncomfortably cold feeling. That feeling where you’ve only just noticed that you’re a tad chilly, but you’re not shivering, and you know you’re going to get a little colder before you warm up. That’s me right now–my tongue slightly burned from so many frozen chunks.

Love me my frozen fruit–especially the poison mangoes! That’s my Halloweed candy, I guess. 😉

Slept in again today. I’ve been terrible about my morning routine for a couple two or three days in a row now, but I’m prioritizing sleep right now, having made poor judgment calls in the number of cars scheduled, and prioritizing sleep over having the perfect mornings. I might do that again tomorrow. It’s 10:47 right now, so I’m already almost two hours late.

Let’s see… much better night’s sleep last night on the new bed. No sore back this morning at all, I don’t think (🥳). I started working again early today, and I did another six cars today, 7.xx billable hours. I’ve been rocking it lately–totally rocking in (work wise). I think yesterday and today have been better, money wise, for the business than any other two-day period in the history of the business. So that’s super good.

Today, for me, was a Chevy Cruze (cooling system issues… like every Cruze that ever existed. Don’t buy one. Junk. They be junk.), then front pads and rotors. Of course the pads wore down faster on the side that didn’t have the wear sensor, so they were grinding as the first evidence of a problem.

Oops.

So I actually put wear sensors on all four pads for him, so next time, he won’t have that issue.

What else… Uh… diagnosis. They had just bought a brand new battery, and the car wouldn’t start. Would run fine, but then the battery would be dead basically right away, even though it was brand new–a day old.

I ran a bunch of tests, and the battery tested bad. No parasitic draw. Alternator fine. Just… a bad battery, bad off the shelf.

Except…

When I took the battery out of the car for him, so it was easier to replace it, the battery sticker was for April of 2016!!! So… either they sold him a used batter by accident, or they had a battery sitting on a shelf for 4 1/2 years.

Craziness.

So… yeah… figured that problem out. Then it was… what was it. Oh yeah! Guy who’s been wanting me to fix his suspension for a while–nearly a four-hour job that would have broken multiple records tonight–I went to his car and figured out that the shop had completely tried to rip him off. He’d taken his car there because he hit a curb hard enough to bend the wheel, and they told him he bent his front end and needed two new control arms, wheel bearings, inner and outer tie rods, ball joints, I think, etc–like $3k in repairs.

Uh… no. Wheel bearings were fine. Ball joints were old, but fine. Control arms… no bend that was visible by the human eye. Not a chance they could have found any bend. Tie rods–one that probably could have been replaced but nothing screaming at me.

So… instead of the huge job to end the day, I just did the last two quickies, and went home. He saved $750, and I relieved the schedule significantly, although it would have been cool to break my single-day money earning record, as well as my single-day billable hours record (set just yesterday).

The next job was a brake issue diagnosis–leaking break fluid. I found it was leaking from some rusted lines underneath the plastic protective cover along the bottom of the car. He’s lucky he didn’t have something major happen. That brake line could have burst, leaving him completely without brakes, other than the e-brake, and how may people in a panic when you have no brakes are going to remember you have an e-brake you can pull and a tranny to force into gear (quite possibly ruining the tranny in the process but saving life, perhaps, as well).

The last car was a super quickie. A lady just wanted her MAF (mass airflow sensor) replaced, but she’d looked at some YouTube videos and thought it was a lot harder than what it was. It was a super-quick replacement.

That meant I ended the day earlier than expected–in time actually to have a dress rehearsal for the haunted hay ride we put on tonight for the high school cheer team? Or whoever it was (mostly girls and a few guys).

It was fun. The property here is huge, so we had teams of people throughout the property in strategic places, jumping out of places in masks and whatnot, scaring the screaming girls pretty good.

I had two jobs–scare #2 and the finale. Scare number two involved three of us stalking the hayride from one side of the road (in the forest trees) with only glowing eyes to be seen through the brush, making noise and whatnot, drawing their attention away from the other side of the road, where my nephew Stevie, dressed in a guillie suit, managed to get all the onto the hay trailer before they knew he was there, freaking them to death.

Then we high tailed it to the barn (I losing my cell phone in the woods [set on vibrate 🙃] in the process). But there was no time to look for it. Had to get back to the barn before the tractor and hay trailer got there. The finale was in the big barn… lights low and flickering… four of us hidden in a little room off to the side. Everyone inside… instructions in the middle of the barn… They must chant to banish the evil spirits away. On the third chant, the lights go black… ad four of us file out of our hiding spots in the blackness… with weapons (real ones, actually… I had a sharpened machete, believe it or not 🙃), and scary music started to play, and stomping from upstairs, and some pretty good scares in the dark.

That was it. Fun stuff. 😊

Then for me, it was back to the woods to try to find my cell phone that was on vibrate. I looked for a little while, but with no luck. My nephew in law helping. Then… but what did I hear?!?! One of my reminder alarms going off. Even on vibrate, I’ve set my reminder alarms to go off audibly. Yay! And do you know what as funny?

The alarm simply read: “Prayer”

Perfect timing. 😁

Funny.

Anyway, good day…

#1. I’m grateful the week is over, and that I have tomorrow to relax a bit. Take a load off from a crazy busy week. From famine to feast, all at once.

#2. I’m grateful my mama’s coming home. She’ll be here tomorrow. 😊

#3. I’m grateful to have had two really really good money days in a row. That’s a big blessing.

#4. I’m grateful that I was able to find my cell phone without massive effort.

#5. I’m grateful for the many good and instructive YouTube videos that are out there. I’ve been learning a lot lately about LDS church history, from multiple perspectives.

Well, that’s all for tonight, folks. I hope y’all had a happy Halloween. Enjoy the extra hour of sleep tonight! 😁 I know I will!

Bring it on.

Lift the World.

~ stephen