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My Bullet Called Life T-shirt arrived today! It looks like this. I was going to get these, but I didn’t like where that gun was pointing.

The 04/28/06 episode of The Chair and Automan is out. Download the MP3 directly here. Or better yet, get a podcatching client and subscribe to this podcast here. Or check out my Odeo channel.

In this episode:

I talk about being determined to make Garageband work for me. I discuss my busy, busy schedule and a recent hectic trip to Atlanta and it being just like the rest of my life. I giggle about silly stuff. And I play some songs.

The links:

Ray Lane
Orenda Fink
Ruby Redd
Garageband
Pappadeux
Atlanta Braves
Cheesecake Factory

Audio feedback, comments, suggestions can be sent to me at jaslusher (at) gmail (dot) com

I remodeled my kitchen about 2 years ago (I think, time is slipping by me). Prior to the remodel I had my refrigerator’s ice maker hooked up and running. When I did the remodel I just never hooked it back up because I didn’t have the right part to connect it into the cold water line.

Well I got a bit of a bug up my hind quarters today and decided to get it done. The parts for it cost about 2 bucks. The whole deal, from bug to completion, took me about an hour. So 2 dollars and an hour of my time held me up for 2 years. Pitiful.

But I’ve got ice now baby.

Aaron Hosek of Bullet Called Life informs me that BCL will be entering the studio soon to make an album.

I can’t wait. Is there a way to pre-order?

I’m so slack I haven’t gone and got my schwag yet. I will fix that right now.

I saved myself roughly $792 dollars today.

Our washing machine had been leaking. Pretty bad, too. Now this is not entirely a shocker, since I believe this washing machine moved from Kansas with the family in 1984. I’m not 100% sure of that, but I think it did. I’m not sure how far it goes back prior to that, but suffice it to say that the machine is old.

Marilyn and I had begun talking about getting a new washer/dryer set. We had set our upper limit at $800 for the pair, with hopes of shooting significantly under that. So with that in mind, I decided to take the washer and dryer out and go shopping for new ones.

I get the washer on the back porch and realize that I have all the pieces for hooking it up and testing it sitting right there. So I decide to do that and in a few minutes I have the machine running on the back porch. Sure enough, it starts leaking and I realize that it is the drain hose. It’s made of corrugated plastic and a few of the ribs had split. I start taking the skin off the machine to see if that could be replaced.

It sure can and not with a whole lot of difficulty. So after a trip to Lowe’s and $8, I have a new drain hose and workable washing machine that doesn’t leak.

Here’s hoping I can get another decade or two out of the old gal.

Hybrid

Originally uploaded by jaslusher.

Here is a picture of my new (to me) Civic Hybrid.

The Land Rover is no longer a part of the Slusher family of cars. I am now the proud owner of a 2004 Honda Civic Hybrid. You couldn’t have gotten farther away from the Land Rover than that and still had four doors.

I’m already thrilled to death with it. It is a neat little car with everything you expect from a Civic, but it gets 40+ miles per gallon. That’s roughly 3 times the mileage one could expect from the Rover. I did some quick and dirty calculations and figured out that at current gas prices, I can expect to save roughly $1200 a year in just gas. I’m not a heavy driver either. I would say that work and back is at least 60 percent of all my mileage.

Put it this way: I bought the car in Atlanta. I spent almost $55 in gas getting the Rover up there. I bought the car, drove around Atlanta and drove home for roughly $18 in gas. More miles on the Honda and roughly 1/3 the cost in gas. Part of that comes from the fact that the Land Rover is 93 octane fuel only and the Honda takes 87 octane.

So I’ve got a spiffy new (to me) car, I’ve put myself on track to save a bunch of money and I’ve lowered my ecological footprint in one stroke.

Not a bad day’s work if I do say so myself.

I need to pare down my To Do list. I know, I know. The easiest way to pare down a To Do list is to actually do some of the things on it. That’s not working out for me.

I’ve got so many things on my to do list that I’m not getting any of them done. I need a way to focus. Maybe I should get some of that phentermine crud that the spammers are always trying to put in the comments section here. I wonder if that would help.

Or maybe I should just go to the doctor and see if they have a procedure for removing all the lead from one’s derriere. That’s what I ought to do. I will add that to the list.

My podcasting and blogging schedule has downright pitiful. I’m fully aware of it. the trouble is that I can barely make myself say anything at all in these arenas.

It’s not that I don’t have anything to say. That’s definitely not it. I’ve got tons of things to talk about. I’ve just been in such a funk lately that I keep convincing myself that my thoughts and opinions are worthless. So I just don’t say anything at all. Either that or the subject itself is just so depressing that I can’t speak on it. Things like this. I mean, what more is there to say? Nothing I can say could make this woman look any worse than she already does. Nothing I can say can possibly bring back my faith that people are inherently good. It’s just damn depressing.

I don’t have anything witty or insightful to add to that. And wishing it weren’t so doesn’t help.

From a Yahoo! article:

In September 2003, Bush said he was distressed by the CIA leak case. “If somebody did leak classified information, I’d like to know it, and we’ll take the appropriate action,” he said.

and, of course:

Causing the furor is a court filing that revealed that I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President
Dick Cheney’s former top aide, told a federal grand jury that Bush authorized him to leak classified information on Iraq to reporters in mid-2003.

So he needed to have an investigation to find himself?

I’ve long suspected that he couldn’t find his own behind. I guess this just proves it.