Well, I'm getting the new car tomorrow. Barring another last minute hold-up. The whole disaster has been so aggravating that I'm not much excited, but I suppose actually having the Honda will engender that. When I'm not worrying about the payments. Which I can make. Did I mention we're getting a raise sometime this month?

But I just got back from cleaning out the Truck Amuck for the last time. Took out every last trace of 11 years of occupation. Armor-All'ed it all over inside. Washed it and even got a good bit of the gunk on the hood off. Vacuumed it. It looks like a hell of a lot more than $500 worth, in my own biased opinion. Came home and took pictures of it.

I'm told this kind of sentimentality is normal. My mother last year felt much the same when she traded in her 1993 Sentra. Which she bought brand new. 200,000+ miles ago.

I've become so used to manual transmission now that most of the time I don't remember that I didn't always know how to drive with it. Yet when I bought this truck, I couldn't drive it. I didn't know how. But frustration is the mother of invention, and once my fury at Aaron got me in the driver's seat and down the hill in North Chattanooga, I've never looked back. It's like I always knew how.

For 11 years I've been able to change stations on the radio without looking.

For 11 years I've put up with the windshield wipers coming on whenever they want, and the squirters whenever they want, and the door dinger dinging merrily away from here to Huntsville and back.

For 11 years I've had a truck that demanded little in the way of maintenance or repair, yet consistently got 25 miles to the gallon.

It hasn't seemed that long.

In a month I'll be singing the praises of the Honda, but tonight I feel like shit because I'm turning my back on an old friend. God, what am I doing?

Update:

1. The therapist thing has worked out quite satisfactorily and outlook is looking up. The therapist in question seems to be conversant with Jungian things, so I am hopeful. And the money concern has been worked out. So.

2. After a bizarre few days of watching functionality gradually erode away on Xandros, culminating in my Firefox browser loading up in a 3 inche square window that could not be resized or maximized, I got fed up. I downloaded and installed Ubuntu, another Linux distro that so far has worked beautifully in that it is nearly ghost-like in it's unobtrusiveness and ease of use. Also I was able to get a very interesting program to do one's own wiki, which has simply loads of narcissistic possibilities.

3. Car news: Monday I went to go LOOK at what Honda has to offer these days and two hours later walked out with signed paperwork to buy a Honda Fit. It has everything I wanted on the Yaris and the salesman said he could have it in for me by Wednesday night. Sold! says a wait-weary I. I spent Tuesday rushing around getting ducks in a row (took down payment money to the credit union and applied for the loan, went to see my insurance guy, etc). They had to bring the car I was supposed to get from another dealership here in the area. I get out of work today expecting to have a voice mail saying my car was in. Instead, I get a call saying call the sales guy. I did, to be told that the person who was supposed to bring my car from the other dealership wrecked the car. In the parking lot of the other dealership. Some idjit wrecked my car before I even got to drive it. So the sales guy said he had a regular light-silver Fit on the lot right then if I wanted it, or I could get the dark-silver like I'd ordered and wait two weeks. I said I'd wait the two weeks because damn it, that's what I ordered! But once more I'm waiting. After telling everybody including my mother that I would have a new car today. I went with Honda because I was tired of waiting to get my new car. If I wanted to wait until the middle of June, I'd have stayed with Toyota. So now I have to explain to the credit union ladies what's going on, and my insurance guy... sheesh. All patience does is get you screwed over.

4. As reported on BoingBoing today, some group of nutcases intent on "cleaning up the Internet" is targeting slash writers on LiveJournal. For some idiotic reason these goombas are equating slash with child molestation, pedophilia, and incest. Apparently what these screwballs don't realize that what we write is fiction. While there are a considerable number of stories depicting non-consensual sex and even rape in slash fiction, it is fiction. And at least in Stargate fic usually involves some alien influence, the Goa'uld, the Wraith, the Genii (usually Kolya) or some other alien presence. It's almost always in the context of one of the main characters getting attacked and the recovery afterward with the help of the other main characters. Considering the great majority of slash is written by women, I'd say it reflects a reality that a lot of women have to face. It probably has helped the writers to deal with things happening in their own life. Fiction can do that. You can put your characters in similar situations to what you have to face yourself, and let them find a way out of it. It can put it all at a once-removed distance.

And aside from all that, good slash is just plain hot.

Y'know, it's usually the people who scream the loudest about "obscenity" who have the biggest porn collections.

And, uh... tortured naked man in agony, nailed to a tree. Sadism and bondage much? Next question, noobs.

In pagan circles at least they're honest about all the sexual symbolism.

Hmmm... well, as of today I am a real career employee at the Post Awful. It took 12 years and three go-rounds with the Union, and as when they made us PTFs they are not happy about it. I only found out this was going to happen a few days ago, and here it is. Me and 19 other PTFs are now FTRs. The next time they post job listings I'll be able to bid on them. The Christmas season won't be any better (they've now got me on a 1:30 pm -- 10 PM schedule, meaning I'll get home after midnight with the 2 hrs. extra every night) but I will probably get Christmas itself off. First time barring lucky break that has happened in 12 years.

In view of the probable near future wherein I will continue to get regular pay raises, I started a savings account and transfered $1k into it for purposes of a down payment on a new car to be bought in the spring. It will be the Toyota Yaris hatchback, a brand new type of Teeny Car. ("Teeny Cars" are what I call cars that you put on rather than get in. Other Teeny Cars include the MiniCooper, the Honda Fit, many of the old Honda Civics from way back, and my teenage dream car the VW Rabbit.) I went to go test drive one this past week.

Yes, in 1987 when others of my class were mooning over Datsun 280ZXs, Trans-Ams, Camaros and Corvettes, I got an airbrush t-shirt with a 1980 VW Rabbit, neon green, with a sunroof. My actual first car? A 1980 Ford Pinto.

Well, I guess I'm off to work. I'm off tomorrow, oddly enough. One of the perks of being an FTR is a weekend day off. Oy.