I Thimk

If you pay me $1 million, I'll show you how to recoup your email.

http://www.wikihow.com/Recover-Deleted-Email

Yes, but, I fear the FBI may get mad because I deleted their mail. I could get blamed for wiretapping Trump Tower.

a beautiful day in Albuquerque. I had a good short talk with one of my good neighbors. Far as I know they are all good, but the immediate ones near me are pretty special. Today's was the guy who started to tear when he helped Diane and me get Katy in the car on the way to the vet for her euthanasia. Both guys have warm hearts..

Anyway, he walked up behind me and quickly said, Hi Jo! not to scare me. He noticed my stick (I use it as a cane to the mailbox, as the pavement is quite miserable for anyone with balance problems - lots of tilts and dips in the street or especially with the sidewalk situation. He said "I know, I know". Turns out he has recently found out he has early glaucoma in both eyes, damn it. He's relatively young - I'd guess 50 at the oldest. I feel for him; well, them.
I have glaucoma in one eye, but mine is from surgical trauma and isn't getting worse, knock on wood. For him, though, wow, that is hard to learn.

Sometimes I hate where I live, some of that my fault for not checking the bus system out further. As a former landscape architect, I take Abq as a mess in many ways that I've whined about on a2k before. On the other hand, I like this odd side street, I really lucked out with the neighbors, the skies are often gorgeous, I love the common sighting of quail, and once in a long while get to see a roadrunner on our block.

With the junk mail a week or two ago, I got some colorful invite to open some kind of thingy where you pull a tab and see your own special number, after which you should call a Ford dealership and find out if you won a prize. I could use a prize, but I'm not at all interested in visiting a dealership. I pulled the tab and the numbers lit up. I watched them, so weird, they stayed lit for at least a week. I presume I lost thousands...

So...... how is the truck?

Me too. Is there anyone in the US who didn't get those glowing numbers in the mail? I compared mine with my neighbor's numbers - All the same :-)

He could not get the truck to mess up, the way it did for my wife - stalling out, hard to restart. Maybe we got some bad gas. But, he did tell me the truck has not had a tuneup at all under my ownership. He quoted a price of about $550. Which includes replacing the fuel filter. I am hoping for a tax refund that will cover it.

Often when I leave the truck with him, I visit my old job and the ladies in the office. They really are a great pair. But I have seen them enough lately. Not to wear out my welcome, I instead walked over to the train depot, a public attraction, recalling the early days of Tomball (Which used to be Peck instead of Tomball). They have tables and benches there, a public restroom, and nearby eating places. I brought a spiral notebook along, to work on a new short story. A robin took special notice of me. I could tell it had gotten used to being tossed bits of food by persons using the table. The wind was chilly. Lucky I brought a jacket, as I had felt warm enough before setting out. Then I walked around the old town resale shops and had a conversation with a couple that was on the road or bumming. They had backpacks and looked pretty ragged. I did not ask. The girl marveled that a man my age had done so much walking. Turned out she could see my progress various times. When the mechanic did not call to tell me he had the problem diagnosed, I walked back and ended up taking the truck.

<snort>

I don't know, check the data, wherever it resides.

I remember, only partly, a similar situation. When I last drove, things stayed ok; there is a primo volvo place here, and I didn't dislike them the one time I went there. I also liked an ordinary mechanic, being used to a good one, a neighbor back in Venice.

I'm in a plotz scenario. I am not driving now but that is recent, as I've gotten mildly more rickity. I've had weird eyes, though I didn't know it then, growing apprehension later, diagnosed when I was 48, re night blindness and poor peripheral vision, turned out to be retinitis pigmentosa.
But, mine has not varied. I got a letter from where, I don't remember, I think UCLA, if I had any birth defect.
Yes, I was a blue baby.

I also have little sense of smell.
In the mean time, my vision has been checked forevermore, and has been steady.

Still my same self, I drove a zillion miles and I still have a good record. I will put mine up easily.

I've used this same mechanic since maybe 1999 or so. Can't recall exactly. He was living at the apartments where I worked. Still has the same shop. I take him at his word on any car related problem.

Talking about auto repair shops, we've been using the same one in Sunnyvale for at least the past two decades -if not longer. The owner, Mike, owns another shop in San Jose, but they have been consistently fairly priced. Their shop is on a main street here in town, and their parking lot is always full; many other people think the same way we do about this shop.

I used my last regular mechanic until he died. His replacement only got one job from me. I was lucky to find the present one.

Hey Ed, check to see if you have a Triple A (AAA) repair shop within reasonable driving distance. My son found one in a nearby area and they offer tune-ups, oil changes, sell and mount tires all for a lot less than the more commercial mechanics do. It's a great way for Triple A to continue in business. Travelers can google maps and accommodations and I suppose this it he way they have decided to continue their business. They still offer all the travel help, trip-tiks and other things. But the service stations are efficentient and much more affordable than other places.

Thanks for the tip. Especially when we're on the road outside our area.

I googled the nearest one. It's on Hwy 249. I think I prefer the closeness of Haney, plus the fact he always gets my truck back to me so quickly, almost always by around noon of the same day. I can drop it off and be in a good spot to wait for him to finish. Going to AAA I would be stuck out there, because I rarely have somebody to go with me to drive me around.
But, I thank you. It's good advice.

The new Aldi grocery story will be open today. I will be there at around two o'clock. I have before me a coupon for $5 off of a $25 purchase. Their online prices seem very cheap, compared with Kroger in the same vicinity. The one inconvenience will be the traffic, which already was bad, but the brand new Walmart is across the street and I may have to make a U-turn some place to get to it.

Just curious. What year & mileage is your truck?

On cars & trucks after around 1996 there is really no such thing as a 'tune-up', there is nothing under the hood to 'tune'. Fuel filter, spark plugs and air filter are about the only periodic maintenance items and those only at around 100K miles for plugs and 50K for the others.

I'm thinking of my GF's $28 coil that they wanted $1300.00 to replace. (along with another $2000 of totally unneeded 'repairs') That was on a 3 year old car with less than 30k miles.

It's a '98 Ranger. I have been looking around to see if that price is in line and I trust my mechanic enough to think it is. I don't know that this truck has ever had a single tune up. I know it hasn't in the years I have owned it.

For older vehicles, a 90,000-, 100,000- or 120,000-mile tune-up can cost $500-$1,200 or more, depending on the repairs and adjustments needed. Smith Specialty Automotive in Kansas lists what might be included in a 120,000-mile major servicing and tune-up[1] .
http://cars.costhelper.com/tune-up.html

I have taken to paying for the simplest jobs, including oil changes, because I know they are better at the lube part of it. I tend to not do well attempting my own auto maintenance.