Today's entry about yesterday

Facebook is the end of the world, sure, but why not be in on all that destruction? I asked myself that very question not a week ago. Not being able to come up with a suitable answer, I'm now on it.

Wow, it's fun on Facebook. You can put up a picture of a hamster, which I did. You can fill out your profile with stupid information, which I know you know I did. You can write sophisms on other people's virtual walls, which of course I did. And then you can log out and never think of it again, which I'm currently working on.

So did you hear that archaeologists finally unearthed Talia Shire's given name in the Turkish portion of the region formerly known as Mesopotamia? Yeah, it's Jennifer.


It took me the better part of all of last night to change the oil in that car I call home. I swear, if it's not 17 things it's 19 others with that rattletrap. I went to the basement to get the oil filter that I distinctly remember moving from our last house. Found only the empty box from the last oil filter I used. (When you use the 15,000 mile synthetic oil you do tend to forget things like buying another filter. And when you're throwing things on the moving van as it's pulling out of the drive you do tend to end up with useless things like empty car part boxes.)

Last time I checked, these were superspecial filters that were stocked only at Volvo dealerships. You know Volvo dealerships, right? Yeah, they're the ones that are closed on Sundays. So I called AutoZone since I like it when they laugh at me over calling a national chain for Swedish parts. But they actually had it.

They didn't, however, stock the crush washer for the oil drain plug, which effectively renders the stocking of oil filters valueless. Kinda like how CVS carries medical marijuana but no Dead albums. Fortunately, however, the empty Volvo oil filter box wasn't completely devoid of everything I needed...it contained one of those magickal crush washers.

Went and got the filter only to arrive back at the house and find that I had tossed both of my oil drain pans prior to the aforementioned move. So I went to Advance this time to get a new pan and to see if maybe they had crush washers. Unexpectedly, they laughed. Wow, it's really quite disturbing to me now how quickly I became acclimated to not being laughed at.

Again arrived back at the house to find that I should've bought the ramps I was nervously fondling at Advance while being mocked and prodded by the help. You see, the jack would no longer fit under the car. Darned supercool low profile 17s. Well, either that or one of 19 other darned things. However, I finally managed to shove the new oil drain pan underneath the engine oil pan without needing to raise the car at all. And I mean I was making hay for the 48 seconds just before I attempted to remove the oil filter housing. Yes, it's one of those strange cartridge types you thought existed only in the abstract or on MGs:


I could not, for the life of me, remember how I got the filter housing out of the tiny access opening whose raison d'etre seems to be only to taunt. I eventually ripped the fresh air intake off and found that doing so worked extremely well. So well, in fact, that I was able to coax it out using every bit of my strength, which is considerable now that I'm high T.

You're likely thinking that I should be able to have this procedure readily available next time since I've now blogged about it, but I probably blogged about it last time, too. Since it's easier and quicker to figure stuff out using thermodynamics equations and the interpretation of ancient runes than to attempt to logon to Xanga, I didn't even bother looking for a post from 15,000 miles ago.

Logon from work, I mean. Not that I was working on a Sunday.