Have you ever wanted a stuffed black plague? What about a cuddly cold virus to put with your teddy bears? Well you’re in luck! Introducing Giant Microbes! Now you can have all your favorite ailments, diseases and more as furry friends with the rest of your stuffed animals. I gotta get me a few of these….um, to be ready….to teach our baby about what makes you sick!

So, on Saturday, it came time to change my oil. Actually I really needed to check all my fluids since I hadn’t done so since I bought my car. So, while I was at it, Dave (my brother-in-law) suggested flushing the radiator. Turns out my coolant reservoir was pretty much empty so it was a good thing we decided to do the flush. We detached the upper hose from the engine to let it drain from there as well but we noticed a lot of gunk caked on the nozzle (like leaked coolant…might explain the empty reservoir) so we cleaned that off as well. Once we got the hose re-attached, coolant leaked slightly out of the hose where all the gunk had been. The hose must have stretched. So, Dave suggested replacing the hose.

The next day, I got up bright and early (around 10:00) and headed over to Checker for the new hose. While removing the old hose from the radiator, not only did I lose the old clamp somewhere in the bottom of the engine bay but part of the nozzle broke off with it (we never removed it from the radiator, just the engine). So I probably spent an hour just looking for the clamp but gave up (since I was trying to do this quickly in the apartment parking lot). I went back to checker for new clamps and a funnel. There was still enough nozzle left on the radiator to attach the hose to so I clamped it on, re-added the coolant and test started the engine. Everything seemed fine.

We headed over to Sarah’s parents house for lunch and when we got there I wanted to check everything just in case. Sure enough, the upper hose was leaking where I had re-attached it to the radiator and when I tried to remove it, the rest of the nozzle came with it. Needless to say, I need a new radiator. I called around and to my surprise Checker has one for $100 (praise God for Checker haha). So I borrowed Sarah’s mom’s car, picked up the radiator as well as a new lower hose and more coolant. I stopped by my parents house to pick up my jack and my dad’s tools. Finally, I set out to replace my radiator on the dirt road outside the house. When it started to get dark, I thought I was pretty much finished. I had all the hoses back in place, the new radiator installed, and the splash shield put back on. I fired it up to check for leaks and everything seemed ok but I needed to let it heat up for a thorough test. Once it heated, up brown liquid (not coolant haha) started spewing everywhere…and I started swearing. I thought that one of the smaller hoses for the automatic transmission fluid (ATF) cooling system (which also happens to be part of the radiator) was loose or broken…which wouldn’t be good because now I’d need another hose that could only be bought at a store that was probably already closed. So I shut it off and took the splash shield back off and found out that the nut on one of the nozzles for the ATF cooling system had been loose. This was mostly a good thing because now the only thing I needed was transmission fluid…which can be found at your average WalMart. So I called Sarah’s parents (who were on the way home from church) and asked if they could pick up a quart. They got home thirty or so minutes later and I set to work tightening the loose nut. This took some time because when it started to tighten, the nozzle would turn with it and pinch the hose. When I finally got around to re-adding the transmission fluid, it guzzled up the whole quart without filling up to the fill line. Apparently I had flushed out all the fluid and my car takes 2.6 quarts. I borrowed their car again and set off for WalMart. I spent some time there trying to find the kind they had found without any luck so I just went with the cheap WalMart brand. I finally got back to the house, filled the transmission up with fluid and started the car back up to test again for leaks, this time praying. Well, it heated up and everything seemed good so I put everything back together, tested it a few more times without issue and breathed a sigh of relief. By the time I got everything cleaned up and put away it was 11:30. At least the car runs like a dream now and should be good and ready for another hot summer.

Wow…okay. I’ve decided that passing out has to be one of the worse feelings ever. Now you’re probably wondering why the heck I would randomly post something about this on here. I’ll tell you why. It has become painfully obvious to me that I simply can not handle anything relating to surgery or the like (whether visual or otherwise) when I am running on an empty stomach. Such was the case here at work today. I was reading about something on wikipedia and I guess it just did not mix well with the fact that I was rather hungry. So, naturally I stopped reading it but it was already too late. It’s really not fun when you get to that point when you realize you’re going to pass out lol (Especially at work! Thankfully nobody was back here at the time). But the worse part is when you actually come back. It’s like your mind got reset or something and it has to “boot up” so in the initial stages you’re just like what? why? where? who? how? And ever so slowly you start to realize where you are, why you are there and what just happened. But before that it’s really kinda scary because there are tons of simple questions flowing through your mind that you are simply unable to answer, all the while feeling like you just had the living crap knocked out of you. Anyway, needless to say, I promptly proceeded to take my lunch.

This is why I love woot.com: http://www.woot.com/Blog/BlogEntry.aspx?BlogEntryId=1276. I mean, where else can you find an online store that sells “Random Crap” for a dollar? Lol.

I find it interesting how somebody seems to get a tour of this place at least once a week. “And this is our production area,” somebody will say when the “tour group” comes back into my area. Occasionally, if I’m lucky, I’ll be introduced to the esteemed guests. Other times, they’ll skip the production area altogether. (In case you were wondering, the place in question is my work.) I’m sure it has something to do with the fact that it is literally a brand new facility. Like, they had barely finished moving in the day I started and, as far as I can tell, things still aren’t completely squared away. But overall, the facility is very nice and infinitely better than that of my last job. In fact, there’s actually very little I can complain about working here. Isn’t it cool how things work out sometimes? Things that you know probably wouldn’t have worked out if it had been completely in your hands?
Anyway, remember back in the day when I first started this thing? Back when I was working at “good” ol’ Fry’s? Back when I did product of the day (or post)? Unfortunately, those posts that origninate from the wee years of my blogging career were lost in a fit of some exotic emotion that temporarily put this blog out of service BUT I have recently found something that is almost as good…maybe even better. I actually check this site almost every morning when I get to work (mainly for the entertainment value) though I haven’t actually bought anything off of it yet. I have, however, been very tempted a few times. But I’ll spare you the suspense. Allow me to introduce woot!…the one and only site (that I know of) that’s dedicated to a “product of the day” system. And what’s best is their stuff is almost always priced lower than the lowest price you’d find anywhere else online…sometimes a lot lower.
I have a disposable camera full of pictures that I need to get developed (what I really need — would like is a digital camera). I was able to get quite a few good shots of some stuff up on Mt. Graham (about 3-4 hours drive northeast of Tucson) during a camping trip the weekend after San Diego. Hopefully I’ll be able to post them on here and/or make some good backgrounds out of them.