Lots of bullets

Boy, you guys ARE fickle, aren't you? I fail to write new stuff for a few days while I'm recovering from the weekend, and you trail off and read other people's stuff. Or maybe you clean your bathroom. How the fuck should I know?

Anyway, I am back. Current status:

• I have a mystery leak in the bathroom plumbing that appears and disappears when it feels like it, but at least I've narrowed it down: it's in the hot water pipe supplying the bathtub, and I can isolate that line from the rest of the house, meaning I can still do laundry, clean dishes in the sink, and other things for which hot water is useful.
  
• I have a Passat TDI with a misadjusted gear selector cable, after having to back up rather rapidly at a toll barrier on the Pennsylvania Turnpike on Saturday on our way up to western New York. I got in the wrong lane and had to back out, and after doing so, I found that third and fifth gears were no longer accessible to me, though second and fourth were fine and reverse and first were negotiable.
  
• I am exhausted... we drove (or, rather, I drove) about 1,200 miles between last Friday morning and this Monday morning.
  
• The bills are all paid, though cash is a little low right now and could use some replenishment.
  
• My father looks terrible, weaker and paler than I've ever seen him. I was uncomfortable all the time we were there, just because I was forced to think hard about the idea he isn't gonna last much longer.
  
• Suzanne is pretty good to travel long distances with, though she absolutely sucks at staying awake to talk to me so that I can stay awake. She literally can fall asleep in less than five miles when we're driving home to her house from dinner in the next town.
  
• Gas is getting pretty damn cheap. I paid $2.62 for diesel on Friday evening, and by Monday morning it was down to $2.50. Gas in southern New Jersey was $2.35 for the cheap stuff, and I have reports from friends that it's now $2.23 in Charlottesville, Virginia and $2.13 in eastern Ohio near Canton.
  
• Both laptops at home are now completely backed up for the first time in about six months. I feel better now.
  
• My work Blackberry is a piece of crap. It hasn't given me a single work email in almost a month, and nobody here can seem to figure out why.
  
• The new iTunes kicks ass. They've added a bunch of new features to handle the new movie downloads, and they've added a thing that automatically looks up any missing album artwork you may have and goes to Apple to get it, among other things. Why would you use anything else?
  

I had a strange series of dreams last night, one which was a continuation of a dream I had several weeks ago, which had me back at what was supposed to be the college I went to but which seems askew, and another one in which Melody appeared, but was very sick. I assume that's some sort of superimposition about the things I worry about with my father, but I'm not gonna analyze it much beyond that. I'm not that big a believer in dreams, unless they're really entertaining or contain really attractive women.

I haven't gotten the second UPS shipping label for my second broken Sony DSC-U30 digital camera. The first one is all ready, as soon as I find a small box to ship the thing back in. The shipping label for the second one (the older one) has not yet arrived, so I guess it's time to harrass them about it. What I intend to do with two little cameras, I am not sure, but I'd rather have them around to deal with than not have them around. Who knows, maybe we can send one of them to Suzanne's parents so that they can take pictures and send them to us, rather than solely the other way around. My stepmother took a pretty good picture of me and Suzanne on Sunday, and I took a lot of good pictures around town while we were there. I continue to be blown away at how considerate and tasteful that new Nikon D50 is.

It's almost time to get out of here. I'm driving the red Passat today, with all its bursty power and poorer mileage. I feel like I need to buy two of everything that I plug into the cars because I always forget the charger for the iPod, or the cassette adapter, or the GPS, or something, when moving from one to the other.

Time to get the oil guys to come and fill the tank.