Moving along smoothly...

I had the oil changed at the local Jiffy Lube a little while ago, and I don't know if the owner was just adamant about doing an upsell, or whether the Civic really needs it, but it would appear that I need to flush both the oil and cooling systems. The fella behind the counter would be happy to do the job for, basically, an extra hundred bucks.

While I would like the Civic to last a good, long time, I'm not exactly made of money, either. So, considering I had yet to have the brakes and A/C checked (the latter is not yet an issue here in Houston, but give it a couple of weeks, or a month, and it definitely will be), I declined.

I'm working on the W-3 right now. Galina is using Natalie's Dell to sift through masses of MLS data. Natalie is sleeping.

Cheers...

A day off...

The W-3 has been sent, together with all of the W-2s for last year. Various checks have been deposited with Wells Fargo, which is open on Saturday down at the local Randall's supermarket. I even managed to visit a Lions Club garage sale.

The brakes will run a couple of hundred bucks, which is about what I expected. No news on the A/C as of yet, but I'm not sweating that... yet.

I took a good hard look at the assignment due Monday morning. Environmental impact stuff. Yech.

On the other hand, it will afford an excellent opportunity to get over a disappointment that occurred about a decade ago: doing an environmental impact translation that was so far beyond my capabilities (as in: detailed discussions of flora and fauna, requiring dictionaries I did not have at the time) that I shopped it out to someone who knew what he was doing, and paid the difference between my and his rate out of my pocket.

Multitran.ru has been pretty much down for the past week. Fortunately, I have dictionary resources on my hard disk.

Cheers...

A silky Saturday...

It turns out the A/C in the Civic is an older system that uses R-12 coolant, which is anathema in these days of politically correct science. The game plan for restoring the system is to do a retrofit ($300), after which steps can be taken to determine if there is any leakage in the system.

On the one hand, this is not exactly the most desirable of outcomes; on the other, if I am to drive this car down here in summer, not doing so is not an option.

Dinner was veal with spaghetti (the first pasta since November). I'm glad I did it, I tell you! It was delicious! I plan to walk it off tomorrow, anyway.

I translated 1500 of the 4000 words due Monday. Not as bad as I thought. Boilerplate gobbledygook about environmental protection, is all. I hope the other part is as repetitive and boring.

I tried to rent Lost in Translation at two places and found no available copies. So, tonight, we're watching some Russian film called Russian Ark. It is well and truly a strange brew, but Galina and I seem captivated by it. (We took a break from it to take a call from Drew; I'm writing this while Galina dispenses advice, which I could say should allow me to write quite a bit, but that'd be catty...)

It's been one of the nicer Saturdays in recent memory.

Cheers...