zutroy.net

I have an older car. In fact, in two more years, my car will officially be a classic. Maybe then I’ll get to stop have emissions inspections done. Hmmmm, not likely. Any way, I don’t get the best gas mileage. I average about 22 to 23 miles per gallon. The last little while I have done worse and even seen some tanks of gas come in under 20 MPG. So I decided that I need to do some scientific (in a loose sense) experiments to figure out what exactly it is that makes me get better or worse mileage. There are a few logical things to point your finger at; driving in stop-and-go traffic, driving with under inflated tires, taking off quickly from stops, driving like I am historically known for on the freeway (need I say more on that one?) and wind resistance. So I decided to target each of these things each on their own tank of gas and try not to adjust any of the other variables. The results are in. Taking the freeway to and from work, is as fast but uses much less gas than taking State Street. Driving with low air in the tires doesn’t seem to make much of a noticeable difference on gas mileage, it does however make a big difference in handling so I don’t recommend that you go let the air out of your tires to test this one. Taking off quickly, OK really. We already knew this one was bad right? Still to be “scientific” I had to test it. So yes, it will use up your gas more quickly. Cutting down of wind resistance, I didn’t have much to test with this since I don’t have a bike rack or anything like that on my car, so I did the best I could, I kept the windows down and the sunroof open ALWAYS while driving. On the freeway, I also made a solid effort to have my arm sticking out the window catching as much air as possible. Result: no difference. I imagine that if I had been driving with my tent on top of the car, it would have made a difference. I’ll have to test that one later. And the last thing, perhaps the biggest factor, is the freeway speeds. 9 This one is particularly sad to me since I like to drive faster than 95% of the traffic on the freeway. It’s a great way to know there is no one in your blind spot. So yeah. It makes the biggest difference. Then once I’m done. If I do all the things that made a difference, I can actually gain like 8 MPG out of my car. So what does it mean? Will I actually start driving nice all the time? Hmmm, I don’t know what to say. Maybe I’ll just have to buy a motorcycle. They get good mileage.

So I think my wife and I are professional house shoppers by now. I don’t know how many times we have walked through a house or driven past and picked up flyers. Seriously, most people go to movies, or biking, or some other normal hobby, we look at houses. We’ve watched the market slowly climb, stall and then skyrocket. All the while, we have watched the selling price of condos in our complex just sit and do nothing. Last year we joked about putting up a big banner on the balcony that everyone could see from the main road that said $139900. And when the condo association calls to say “Hey your sign is too big” we were going to say “oh, we are not selling, we just had this old banner around and it makes perfect shade for the plants. The thing that was so funny is that 139K sounded so unrealistic that we knew it would never really effect the prices. With people like the Tornows around who are willing to dump condos for below value so they can get out of it in 3 days, it’s a miracle that they ever got up above 110K. But you can only screw the market for so long I guess. This last year while houses and lots in the area have doubled and in some cases tripled, our value has finally reached critical mass. It’s good timing too because we are just out of room. Even with me moving my office to a real office, the kids just need more room and a yard to play in. And some storage room would be nice. And a garage. Ooooo, and how bout a formal living room? I could really go for one of those. And cupboard space, can’t wait to have a place to keep all the dishes and still have room to put some food storage. So we have had our signs up for 7 days now and received 3 offers already. I suspect that we will have closed and moved before I realize that I have to find a new place to live. Anyway, I just wanted to get a link up here so everyone could see my awesome photo editing skilz and there I go, just rambling and half ranting. Buy a house.

There have been a few times that I have posted things to this blog that I think I have thought through very thoroughly and worded very carefully. Then I post the blog entry and realize that there were some things I failed to think through when people start calling me and IMing me to complain. For example, shortly before a good friend got divorced, I posted an entry about a strange phone call I received from his soon-to-be X. I was super careful I thought not to phrase anything that might offend my friend. I focused so hard on that, that I forgot to take into consideration what might happen if his X were to read it. ‘Course she didn’t read it but her friends did. And there were hard feelings, and phone calls, and it was all just a silly waste of time. This time, I was pretty sure there was no way that the person with the HM wife was going to come read this that I forgot to think about my friends. It didn’t occur to me that I had written it so obscurely that people might read it and ask “Is he talking about me?” So let me clear some things up before I get any more phone calls or emails. The High Maintenance post is written about someone who I don’t think has ever or will ever find or read this blog. So I know there are still a couple of you sitting there, saying “He might just be saying that. It could still be about me.” Well stop that! It’s not. Ok?.. Ok, then that’s settled.

I pulled up to a stoplight on the way to work this morning and looked over to see how bad the gas companies are screwing us. “$2.99!?!?! Wooooo Hoooo!” I actually caught myself cheering out loud in the car there. Then I stopped. “$2.99? That’s not a good deal. I recall filling up my entire tank of gas for $8.00.” And that wasn’t that long ago. So the gas companies have this predictable pattern they follow pretty closely. Gas prices will move along for half a year or so fluctuating up and down by a few percentages. Then some event will happen that will trigger a jump in prices. And they’ll jump like 20% or more. Then there will be public outrage, email campaigns to convince the nation to skip one day of gas purchases, news stories on which state has the best and the worst prices, some well known actors or politicians will use it to push their agenda or make a bigger name for themselves. And then the gas companies will “listen” and gas prices will come down by 5% and the nation lapses into oblivious and joyful acceptance. Little do the masses realize that they have just been snowed into being happy about a 15% increase. Not since the founding of DeBeers has the world had the wool pulled over their collective eyes like this. Diamonds are forever. Bull Crap. Oil production is becoming more expensive. Bull Crap. Greedy Bastards. It’s all just carbon! I think I’m going to find a way to harvest nitrogen from the air or hydrogen from the oceans and convince the world it’s worth 300 time more than what it costs to harvest. It’s brilliant!

So I was talking with an acquaintance the other day and he accused (in a round-a-bout way) my wife of being high maintenance. I had to stop and rethink the conversation to make sure I had heard him correctly. It reminded me of the part where Harry explains to Sally that she is the worst kind. “High maintenance but you think you’re low maintenance”. So this man is telling me that because my wife likes to take care of herself physically and makes sure she looks good when she goes out, (not to say that she doesn’t go grocery shopping in here gym clothes, because she does that quite often) that she is high maintenance. He was saying that his life was so nice because he never had to wait for his wife to get ready for anything because she would just throw things on and not worry about what anyone thinks. (To me this sounds like a nice way of saying, “yeah, my wife’s ugly and she knows it”) I felt bad for him because his wife is really the worst kind. High maintenance but she thinks she is low maintenance. Just to prove my point it would seem, she called him on his phone while we were standing there talking to ask him to make a decision that she was totally capable of making. I had to stop and laugh to myself. He couldn’t see it. Towards the end of our conversation, she called him again, this time to ask some other stupid question. Is it because she is really that incapable of doing anything on her own? I dare say not. I submit that it is because she is high maintenance. High maintenance doesn’t mean taking care of yourself and making sure you are dressed nice. High maintenance means that it requires A LOT to maintain something. This could be a lot of money, a lot of effort, a lot of exactness like in Sally’s case, or a lot of time from the husband. Then when talking about our different work schedules, he explained how he thought it would be cool to have his own business but that his wife would never be able to give him the time it would require. So he’ll spend the rest of his career working for the man, 9 to 5, at some dead-end job and retire at 65 to live off his 401K for the rest of his life. I had to stop and count my blessings. I was telling my wife how thankful I am that she can handle the house without me. How she can get by when I have some weeks that I’ll work 80 or 90 hours and only see the kids 3 times that week. How she can make decisions without having to call me for every little thing. I put in long hours at work. And I know it’ll pay off and we’ll get to the point where we have employees to handle everything I do and still afford to pay me what I need. Until then, it’s got to be done by someone. And I could never do it without my wife.