Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Gas Guzzler

I just paid $40 to fill up my gas tank for the first time in my whole entire life. I did borrow a car once that had a huge tank, but for cars I've owned, this is the most I've ever paid. Gas at the cheapest place in town that I trust is conveniently right across the street from work. When I went to leave, my "get gas" light was on meaning I needed at least 11 gallons for my 12 gallon tank, so I drove a couple hundred feet and stopped for gas. And gas was $3.579 which was a little shocking because it was "only" $3.459 yesterday or the day before. $40.44 total. Yikes. Good thing I bought a car capable of 31mpg, even though the way I drive it to maximize power turns that into about 25mpg. Maybe it would help if I didn't store a couple dozen kg of glass supplies in the back.

Using the "pound nails into the wall at likely intervals" method, I've located the studs for my cabinet mounting needs. They're a little strange; the middle one doesn't appear to go straight up, and they are extra solid - I'm hoping they're wood and not metal, or I need different mounting options. I think I'll drill a test hole to see what the drill bit pulls out for me. I spent about 40 days and 40 nights sorting through screw options at the Home De.pot monday night and got some good options, although none are self drilling. And I think that to get the correct cabinet height I may need to turn the outlet sideways. I hope I can do that without too much fuss.

But this time change is kicking my ass. Above and beyond all my usual sleep issues, waking up an hour or two earlier than normal tends to make me feel sick. On vacations back east I had pretty good luck taking Lunesta. Maybe I can get more of that until I adjust. After turning into a cranky freak at my SWE meeting and failing to take decent notes (which is bad because I'm the secretary and it's my job to take notes) I realized at dinner that I almost fell asleep in my plate due to the time change.

And it was sad that I had such a cranky, sucky end to my tuesday because work went great yesterday!
  1. I got proof of concept for a thruput idea which now looks more promising.
  2. My diva tool ran smoothly with the larger wafers and I was able to get my test wafers run and measured without excess fuss. (Monday was a cussfest to set up the measurements - people gather'd 'round for the show. I've been trying not to swear at work, but they were egging me on...)
  3. Along with my test, I got the wafers prepped for the next engineer in line who needs my films as a base for his.
  4. Obama took Mississippi and Wyoming.
  5. And ok, my day didn't have a totally sucky end - it turns out the place I got pizza serves Red Velvet cake and I had to get some to pull out of the sulks.
It was all grand.

Well, back to drilling holes in the wall and hoping it doesn't damage anything I can't fix with spackle.
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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

not so much a comment as a request

how bout some photos of the cabinet installation, I have a home reno fetish.......

QL

PSA said...

Would it make you feel any better if I said what you pay in $'s to fill your tank is what I pay in £? I think the last time I filled the tank on the VW Polo it was £36, no idea how much the new car is going to cost me.

CrankyOtter said...

Yeah, yeah, I'm working on the pictures. Really, they're fascinating pictures of holes and wires and cabinets on the carpeting.

I never really worried about how much I was paying for gas until recently when it's starting to be real money. Back when I was paying $12-$20 to fill my tank, my friend in germany with the same Golf was paying about $33 to fill up. It was only with the CA prices 10 years later (meaning this last year) that I hit that $33 price point. I consider anything above that to be too much, and $40 was a bit of a shock. I bought a car with good gas mileage on purpose, but it still doesn't hold a candle to half the cars across the pond. And it has the same "listed" gas mileage as my '85 nissan stanza. I've gone up 20 model years and NO (zip zero nada) improvement in gas mileage. But it was $6K more that I didn't have to get a hybrid.

And with the way the dollar is trading against the pound these days, I think I *almost* caught up to you in gas $$.