Wheels within Wheels

The last time I had my oil changed, the mechanic told me I should get new tires, but that I could make it through the winter before it was really necessary.

After driving home Tuesday through the winter storm, and driving to work Wednesday morning, my response to that is, “Uhhh … no.” So I now have a brand-new set of tires, and have blown my budget for the month.

It’s a good thing I’ve already bought all my Christmas presents.

I used to smoke when I was younger (cigars and pipes, mostly). I started so I could hang out with those of my classmates who’d get together for a cigar after dinner. I shouldn’t have; I remember being trapped as a child on long drives while my father smoked cigars and my mother smoked cigarettes, and it made me ill, sometimes.

I continued during my time on a submarine, which was really stupid, considering it was an enclosed and recycled atmosphere. As electrical division officer, I got to see the grease and ash on the electrostatic precipitators when we tore them apart once for maintenance. It was a stressful environment, though, and having a pipe to manipulate allowed me to avoid picking at my fingernails until they bled.

I gave up smoking after I got off submarines, because I got to where I hated how my mouth felt and tasted in the mornings. My parents never gave it up, although they did slow down. My father gave up pipes, but still smoked an occasional cigar up to his death. My mother – I can remember her, a few days before I got married, asking my prospective father-in-law not to offer her any cigarettes at the reception, because her mother would be there, and Mom had never let her know that she smoked.

A few years later, I smoked a cigar that I was given when a co-worker and his wife had a child, and I couldn’t come close to finishing it. The only time I hang out with smokers now is at a Blogger Bash.

All that said, I’m opposed to legislated smoking bans and other government measures (such as the taxes that are so high it becomes attractive to smuggle cigarettes into New York City). Individual entities that want to ban it on their premises have my blessing. That doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t prefer that people quit smoking due to peer pressure, though.

I mention all this because it’s the Great American Smoke-Out today, and I’d appreciate it if you’d quit. It’s healthier for you. I’m all done nagging, now.

If so, then I’m caught up for the moment. I have two independent heating systems in my house: a regular gas furnace and a solar system. I’m home from work at the moment while a repairman works on the solar system. I was home for an afternoon last Thursday while a repairman fixed my furnace. Not what I was hoping to discover when we had our first overnight freezes about a week or so ago.

I wasn’t the only one to have such problems, of course. That’s why I had to wait this long to get appointments for the repairs. But, I’ll have working heat, which will be a load off my mind.

The third thing? I got sick of seeing the “This USB 2.0 peripheral can run faster” message, and put a USB 2.0 card into my desktop over the weekend. Normally, I leave the system on, because it’s occasionally been cranky about booting. It was particularly cranky after I put the card in, and this time it told me why. I have a hardware problem, and it told me I should consider replacing one of the following: the power supply, the RAM, the CPU, or the motherboard.

Maybe now is the time to consider getting a Mac.

Tom Lehrer once introduced a song by saying that it was a sobering thought to realize that, when Mozart was his age, he had been dead for two years. Given that I turn 53 today, I think it’s obvious that I’m too old to die young.

Actually, it surprises me how little I feel like the old man I once expected to be by this age (I can remember when I thought mid-twenties was old). Bad eyes, knees, and hip, certainly, but I have surprisingly few general aches and pains to worry about.

And there are benefits to getting older. For one thing, I find that there are more women whom I find attractive these days. That’s partly because there are more women who are younger than me now, and partly because I’m no longer quite as shallow as I used to be.

My ambition for the rest of my life? To acquire sufficient money that I can have a large mansion with swimming pool, so that I can be the fat old guy with the garish trunks and terrycloth robe lounging poolside with a tall drink, with several attractive bikini-clad young women kissing my bald spot as they go by.

Update: The day could have started out better – as I opened the back gate to get to my car, I was stung on the web between my right thumb and forefinger. It seems that paper wasps have taken up residence in the gatepost. At least the rest of the day has been going better.