Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"friends do not let friends get their nipple piercings anywhere near the spirals on a notebook." -- fire2furniture, 2005-08-23

Last night I dreamt the middle of a story but not the beginning or end. Later I got a couple of possible directions it could go, but they felt more like "just after you've finished the book" musings on what happens nextthan "part of the story/dream". Oddly enough, I dreamt the middle bit as though I were writing it down, not experiencing it.

"So my choice then, is to deal with you and become a slave or to deal with them and become a slave?"

"No, your choice is to deal with them, become a slave yourself, and have the rest of your species destroyed, or to deal with us and have your species be in indentured servitude for a generation."

"One generation?"

"Your race lives about long enough to profit us in one generation enough to repay us. If you lived longer, the arrangement would be more complicated; if you were shorter-lived we would want two generations."

"I'm going to want to read the fine print on that contract very carefully."

In at least one replay (I woke and immediately fell back asleep several times, usually looping this same dream when I did so) we discussed whether I could make agreements to which the rest of humanity could be morally bound, as individuals instead of as governments. And in one version there was a clause about a small number of humans being modified to become living weapons, who would then be too dangerous/too valuable to ever grant freedom to, who would be asked to sacrifice their own liberty for the sake of the rest of the species (i.e. even more constrained than the rest of their generation).

Then I woke up long enough to break out of that dream, and fell back asleep into one where I was making a very odd sandwich in somebody else's house, and she and her butler came in to talk to me while I was doing so, and I got a tiny cut right at the bow of my upper lip which would not stop bleeding. It wasn't bleeding very fast, a minute or two to make a big enough drop to be distracting, but I couldn't get it to stop, so sandwich-making (and later eating) was frequently interrupted to reach for a tissue. It was somebody else's house, but my own toaster-oven; there were very impressively darkly red chunks of tomato involved (mouth-watering just to look at); and at some point Vaseline got on the sandwich (I think I'd tried using it to stop my lip from bleeding) and for some reason this made somebody want to kiss me.

Hmm. I cannot tell what sex I was in the second dream.

I learn more things about my car every day, this week. Today I learned that it is equipped with a spare flat!

Okay, to recap, on Monday I left my lights on and ran the battery down. Monday night, john_tangent came to give me a jump start, but the car quit again shortly thereafter (while it was idling to recharge itself) and would not start again. Having had a problem once before where the car should have still had gas (the owner's manual says the "low fuel" light comes on with 2.mumble gallons of gas left; I get more than 25 mpg; less than twelve miles later I should still have some gas) but wouldn't start in front of my house, and did start once I coasted around the corner so it was on a different slope, Tuesday I coasted around the corner ... and didn't have enough battery power to crank it (*sigh* automatic transmission, or I would've roll-started it). But from then until today I had trouble coordinating with other folks' schedules and/or reaching local folks I tried to ping for help.

Today, Ty and Anna came by to help ... And we discovered that my slow leak had gotten ahead of me and my right rear tire was completely flat. Okay, Ty figured out how to get the car up with the dinky scissors jack that came with the car, despite the car being too close to a square curb. We put the "toy spare" (less than full size, temporary ("donut") spare) on. It was a little low, but functional. Well, as functional as those things ever get. Applied jumper cables, car started up just fine, drove to a filling station and bought a few gallons of gas, followed Anna and Ty to their shop to borrow a battery charger. Potholes feel really strange with the toy spare on there.

Okay, so it's time to count up my loose change and see about buying the long-postponed new tire. Being tired, I thought maybe that could wait for tomorrow, but I did need bread and milk and eggs, so I stopped at a grocery ... and when I came back out to the car, the spare was (you guessed, didn't you?) completely flat. Now the car was maybe eighty feet from another gas station, so I dropped a couplle quarters in the air machine and stuck the nozzle to the valve stem, and ... got a "whoosh" with an echo. Air rushing out as quickly as it rushed in. I ran my hand around it but could not feel where that much air was coming out. Now frustrated as well as tired, I filled the flat in the trunk, drove home (about a mile, I think) on the flat donut (yeah, probably trashing it), and parked far enough from the curb that I'll be able to use the despised scissors jack to take off the spare flat and put the slow-leak full-size tire back on for the drive to a tire place. ARGH. And I guess I'd better see whether I've got enough pennies to buy a second tire and a new rim so I can have a full-size spare that doesn't leak. (Ugh. Hope a rim isn't as expensive as I think it is.) 'Cause as much as I disliked donut spares before, I'm really annoyed at this one.

The spare tire well is wide enough to hold a real tire. I haven't checked to see whether it's deep enough. It had better be. I'd love to have a really nice jack too, but given the number of times I've completely filled my trunk in the past few months, I'd be nervous about taking up any more space there even if a nice jack were in the budget.

Anyhow, once I've caught my breath I'll put the charger on and see how happy the battery is about holding a full charge. It did start up quite robustly both times I started it after the jump.

Disturbingly, my speedometer is still not working. :-( This could be ... is quite likely to be ... very bad. I need to get a fair idea how to map tachometer readings to road speed in each gear, right quickly. Because in the absence of other traffic to pace myself against, 95-100 MPH feels right leisurely in my car[**], and I can't afford to not know when I'm going that fast -- neither the money nor the points. With the engine running, the speedometer wraps all the way around so it looks like it's reading around 170 MPH, or -20 MPH. With the motor off, it reads around 140 MPH. (The markings only go to 130, so I'm being very approximate with these other readings.)

[*] Hmm. Well, if I'm just too tired or pain-wracked to deal with the tire tomorrow, I can probably get away with using the tire that has a slow leak for another two days if I put air in it every day. The big thing is that I have a gig to get to on Sunday that's also a friend's wedding. Not something to get car-screwed out of.

[**] The difference in feel between 100 MPH and 105 MPH in this car is much more noticeable than the difference in feel between 95 MPH and 100 MPH. Somewhere between 100 and 105, it finally feels as though the suspension and steering systems have noticed that you're going fast -- not wobbly or squirmy or skittish, just finally "fast" and "might want to slow down unless you're Really in a hurry feeling very alert". Below that, well on a good and straightish road in good weather and light traffic, 95 MPH feels remarkably similar to 60 MPH (in this car). But I've got a whole long post to write about driving speed another time.