Mostly Harmless

The best moment of the American Idol finale on Wednesday was not the crowning of Ruben as the new AI — ‘cuz that was lame. Rather, it was Clive Davis presenting Kelly Clarkson with her RIAA Platinum certification for “Thankful,” which was released waaaaaay back in the middle of last month.

Here’s Kelly’s official site; (’cuz some people seem to think that Kelly will be swinging by here to read comments, based on the comments on a posting I made here nine months ago.)

Don’t forget the J2K site — there’s actually stuff there now, instead of a lame “official site coming soon” page, woot!

For future reference: when the oil light comes on during high-speed cornering maneuvers it means that the oil is two quarts low.

That is only slightly “more low” than normal, since I choose not to spend $300 on a new gasket I add a quart every 1,000 miles or so. So either I’ve forgotten to do that for a while or the pace has picked up.

Speaking of things I’m not spending money on… I had to recharge the A/C in the car again this year. It seems there is a slow leak. As I had expected this leak is somewhere expensive. I’m told that the “how expensive” is about $1,500. The “why” has something to do with a lengthy “tearing apart the dash” process that I didn’t bother investigating further.

Now that I know where the problem is I can bypass any attempts to fix it and just get a quicky recharge every year. My car being an Audi there are precious few service shops that can actually recharge the A/C — the connector is a 1/2″ Acme and it has to be charged on the high-side. I know of lots of places that can’t do that, like… most national chains (Midas, etc.). The people who can do it are the Audi dealer, and Dealer Automotive Services.

Those BMW leases keep looking more attractive, but I’m in “real soon I’m gonna look for a house, no, I really mean it”-mode, so I’ll be holding off on new car purchases for a while.

So, like, there’s this rodent that I’ve seen cruising across my living room a few times — late at night, out of the corner of my eye. I’m expecting that he, or she, will meet his, or her, doom very shortly.

I have purchased the finest in non-messy, yet deadly, mouse traps. Having 30% more power to crush the life from his, or her, tiny rodent body, while at the same time not rending the blood from said body.

Good design in mouse traps is important to me.

Thanks to the recent surge in Apple stock I was able to dump my shares for only a teensy loss; thus locking-in some down-payment cash for the house that I have not yet begun to look for.

So… I suppose I should start looking for a house then. Sometime. Soonish. Before the sweltering heat of Summer burns me out of the apartment. That’d be nice.