On the path to greatness!!

Or at least recovery. (Always take the or, she said.) Things I have learned: 1) Some people aren't good at sympathy. 2) Man-colds are psychologically horrible. I'm so used to being able to function at a certain level that as soon as I come down with a cold and can't THINK / it hurts to move / i cough every other minute / i can't breathe because my sinuses are messed up and my chest feels like someone is standing on it... well, i fall apart. seriously. oh, and more importantly 3) i'm SO thankful I can't get pregnant. i couldn't handle being a woman.

Still sick

but doing much better! Better living through Chemistry is what my wife-to-be says. i gotta agree. life is better by a little bit when you take the right drugs. on top of the cold, i was also suffering a massive headache and didn't really figure out why until around noon today. 1) i've hardly eaten anything in the last 3 days. 2) no caffeine! so i made myself some tea and soup and i'm feeling a bit better.

i can't wait to get back to work, though. i'm getting really restless. not to mention the thought of bills, bills, bills, mortage and more bills start to press down on you when you're not working. addie and i are looking into refinancing the house, and we should be able to bring it down an entire percent. the initial 3k or whatever to get it done will be a bit fun to come up with, but it'll save us big in the long run. i also met with a realtor working with moody on student housing and he seemed very excited about renting the house. if that happened, we could have a signed contract for 3 to 5 years, depending on the student & major. even if we just break even, that'll be an awesome thing to have happen.

Sick.

Went to sleep last night with a bit of a cough, woke up this morning with a bit of no-voice and a bit of a cough and a bit of pain. I called Mortimore's to tell them I'd be a little late, since I'd need to pick up some cough suppressant and Angela told me not to bother coming in. I am now drinking very hot green tea in an attempt to burn my throat into numbness. I took some Buckleys but forgot to eat anything first, so its not feeling so great in my stomach. Thankfully Rachel picked up some breakfast when she went out, so I've now had a sandwich. I also now have some Robitussin. Yummy...

anyway, this shouldn't last long. only a temporary setback!

Today: Boze-Angeles to Spokompton.

All these Californian city names! Today i'm leaving Bozeman to head back to Spokane for some work. Start Tuesday, possibly busy until mid-March. This is good news, since it has me up in Spokane working on my house & 4-runner for a good solid month and a bit. My next trip down will probably be pre-wedding and ... permanent! whoah. I have quite a to-do list waiting for me in Spokane, so I'm eager to get to that and finish up as much as I can.

Today is Addie's birthday. You can say hello at www.softersideofcynical.com. I got the domain name for her as a birthday present. What can we say, we're nerds! :)

On a side note: Parenting is interesting. And that's actually a HUGE side-note, but seriously, I'm not sure how to expound upon that quite yet! :)

/rob

Its alive!

The truck, that is. Turns out it was just a spark-plug flooding issue. Which, unfortunately, now makes me wish I'd just taken all the spark plugs out and cleaned them, instead of just the one that I checked for spark. :( I might have actually been able to FIX something vehicle related. I felt pretty good about checking the fuel pressure, spark, fuses and what-not.. but i missed the seemingly elementary clean-the-plugs step.

I am now packing up the hard drives and monitor and DVDs and all my junk that's associated with being a "portable editing studio" and getting ready to put it in a place that I can easily grab it once we pick up my truck. JR's packing for Asia and we're ... uhm... yelling freestyle rap lyrics back and forth to each other. Its entertaining. Neither of us are sure what's exactly wrong with the other.

I can't wait to head to Bozeman and see Addie. It just feels weird to not be around her... and believe me, this is different for me... I've never felt almost "tied" to a place before. I couldn't wait to get outta TN, I liked Chicago, but was glad to leave after 4yrs, Spokane has been awesome for the last 5 or 6, but it's always seemed like a stopping point on the way to somewhere else... anyway, these are the thoughts that have been running through my head the last couple days. I'm still gonna work on convincing Addie we need to end up in New Zealand or something... ;-)

I've had a blast hanging out with Molly and JR at their place. They've been incredibly great hosts. Molly's cooking is off the charts, and JRs basement entertainment setup makes for some good movie watching.

enough for now. we're taking off to the Toyota dealership to get mah'truck!

Stuck!

I'm beginning to get the idea that the Toyota T100 I've been driving for the last month or so doesn't really like me. I spent my birthday trying to figure out what was wrong / what I could do, and trying to get ahold of people to check it out. As it was a Sunday, most people weren't working. I towed it into a local Billings place, Staley's, and they looked at it this AM and diagnosed it as something that'd be more involved than they would get into, but gave me a recommendation. I called up their recommendation and he's at least a week behind and recommended I call Toyota. Did THAT and they quoted $900 to $1000 to fix the timing chain. Ouch. The odd thing is, talking to dad, he says (and I've checked) that there ISN'T a timing CHAIN, its a BELT. I just called the Toyota guy back and told him i was sure it had a belt, and he quoted me an approx $400 fix. Better, but still an ouch.

Alright, so now its a case of waiting for JR to get back and we'll tow it to Toyota! Hopefully they can fix this in a couple hours and i'll be on the road either by tonight or early tomorrow.

As Calvin's dad would say, "Its character building time!"

/rob