Home
Oil Change
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2117
I've never in my life gotten an oil change, but it's not my car and so it will be done. One is better to other people's possessions than one is to one's own.
It's an 8:00 AM appointment at the VW dealership, 8:00 AM because I was taken off guard and couldn't be bothered to argue. 8:00 AM.
I should get up at 8:00 AM more often, think of all the things I could get done!
So at 8:00 AM, or shortly thereafter I check the car into the shop. It's an oil change, but it's a regular - every 10,000 KM servicing as well, and as he's telling me what needs doing I'm noticing the shop hours posted - $150.00, $175.00, One Million Dollars an hour, + depending on the make of your car. And he's checking the service record, telling me they'll need to purge the fuel injectors and this and that and I'm getting a bit dizzy, I wave my hand..."Just how much will it be, all told?".
"Around $500.00"
"Is there anything wrong with it?" I ask.
"No, no, well, we hope not. This is just regular maintenance".
Now me, I always thought people bought new cars so they wouldn't be confronted with bills like this, not have them scheduled in as a "matter of fact", but then, what do I know. It'll take them a couple of hours, I wander over to the mall, not open except for the Tim Hortons, pick up a coffee and sit down to wait. I'll need to get a job. Soon. Fortunately, wandering around the mall I can see lots of the shops are hiring. There's no end to opportunity here.
Eventually it's after 10:00 and I return to pick up the car. Everything is fine, $508.00 later, and they've booked me in in another 6 months. He tells me they've added some fuel additive to the gas, I should fill the car to get my "Maximum Value" out of it, and I'm thinking that they've changed the oil, dumped some fuel additive into the gas tank and just billed me over $500.00. I'd want to see me soon as well. Who in life chooses to become a doctor? Why would you when you could become a Volkswagen Mechanic and earn probably double, on better hours and with far, far less work?
Love in Excess - Eliza Haywood
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 1557
Now it is of the period - 1719 - 1720, and adheres to almost all of the ridiculous conventions of the time - disguises, secret rendezvous, the replacing of one party with another in bed, coincidences and mistaken identities, in terms of plot it is not even slightly plausible - not even for the period.
But such is the time.
On the other hand Eliza Haywood was the first novelist to endow her female characters with the same motives and desires as the male ones. Which makes it exceptional. And, add to that her way of putting the most eloquent speeches in their mouths and you have some curious speeches indeed:
"And are you that dull, cold Platonist, which can prefer the visionary pleasures of an absent mistress, to the warm transports of the substantial present?" The Count was pretty much surprized at these words, coming from the mouth of a woman of honour, and began now to perceive what her aim was...
Curious. File next to Chesterfield, Laclos and Casanova...
Jewelry Stash in Hollowed Out Book
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Found
- Hits: 1843
Like many of the stories in this section, the surprise isn't in the finding of the treasure, it's in the bookseller "Doing the right thing" and returning the jewelry to it's "rightful" owner.
Think, then, of how often this occurs (and everyone knows the hollowed out book trick); and yet how seldom we hear about it. This is probably up there with the "reported" treasures found by builders when doing renovations on homes (practically nonexistent, yet rest assured there's a large underground traffic in antiquities and art recovered from properties where the owner is never made aware of it's existence).
Link: http://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/143459/jewellery-stash-first-secondhand-book-seller
Motorways and Pyramids
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Dreams
- Hits: 1716
(3 dreams in one night, and a heap of illegible notes on the nightstand in the morning)
I'm trying to get out a big city - ish, driving, but the roads circle and loop about mountains and I'm forever coming back to where I started from. I'm at the top of a mountain, it's night time, or close enough, the sun is setting in the mountains behind me and in front of me are the Great Pyramids. They're huge, like mountains themselves, ruined, were it not for the obviously opened tombs on the tops of them, and the obvious "Pyramidal" shape of them you might not recognize them. They're lit in that orange glow of sunset, pink, almost as if they're on fire. My mountain, the one I'm on, it's cast into shadow and in the shadows there glows the phosphorescence of rattlesnakes, Gila monsters, coyotes, and there are vendors trying to lure you forward with the promise of tacky souvenirs but I know better and go back to the car ...
Page 752 of 889