Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

This will almost certainly come as a surprise to those of you who have been following the significant changes in my life over the past six months or so, but I needed a new business suit for a commitment I have in July. (I will explain that when it happens sometime after Westercon.) I woke up stupidly early — earlier than I usually do for Day Jobbe, even — and was the first customer in the door at the Wigwam after they opened. Later in the morning, I drove to Sparks and into the Jiffy Lube where I get the Astro serviced. I was so early that they had no other customers, so by the time I got back from the Starbucks on the far side of the shopping center's parking lot, they already had both the oil change done and the rear differential fluid serviced.

With the vehicle maintenance done, it was time to head to Men's Wearhouse, where I've never shopped before, as I've owned only a handful (as in less than six) of suits in my life including the one I bought today. I didn't make an advance appointment (I didn't even know that was a thing) so when I checked in, I found that I was number 10 in the queue, with two service people helping them.

Obviously, things were busy, and coming in on a Saturday did not help. Also, I had not considered that a bunch of guys were shopping for suits for the spring proms. Oh, well, it gave me time to browse around.

The last time I bought a suit, I weighed around 330 pounds. I now weigh around 220 pounds. That's why I need to buy a new suit. The only one I have (many of you have seen me wearing it to host Match Game SF) now hangs on me more like a tent than a suit. I didn't even know what size I needed to get.

Wandering around the store, I found myself in the clearance section, and decided to toss on a few suit jackets of a color that I thought suited me (ahem) to check sizes. To my surprise, the very first one I picked up seemed to fit well enough. Finding a pair of slacks of similar size/pattern that fit would prove to be more of a challenge.

Eventually, after perhaps an hour, they called my name and I spoke with a sales specialist. She measured me, and while my nominal jacket size is considerably smaller than the jacket I got from the clearance rack, I think it fits me well enough to go with it. That is in part because I may still end up hosting MGSF and I generally need to be able to lift my arms over my head, which this new jacket still allows.

The specialist measured my waist. I'm in between sizes, and there were not a lot of slacks that were a close match for the jacket. She found slacks in waist sizes 36, 38, and 40 inches. I tried them all. The 36 does not fit at all, and the 38 was tighter than I liked, although it's possible that I will eventually shrink into it as I continue to lose weight. However, I decided that the 40 will work, although I'll have to wear a belt again.

I paid for the new suit and set off for home. I think I got somewhat lucky. The suit was originally priced at $440, but was on clearance for $200 off that. The slacks were not on sale, but $60 was not out of line.

Having forgotten to take pictures of when I was trying on the suit, I put everything back on when I got home. I realized that I've forgotten how to tie a tie, it having been at least two years since I last had to do so. Eventually I managed it.

( Cleaning Up as Nicely as Possible )

The suit seems to work, and it did not cost a fortune, so I think it was a pretty good day's work.

When we got home from Reno, I called High Desert Auto Repair. They had, as I suggested, replaced the fuel filter (with the high-end filter, which was fine with me; skimping on parts costs more money in the long run than it saves) and testing the fuel pump. They could find nothing wrong with the pump. The minivan started multiple times, with no sign of hesitation. They had no further ideas, and suggested that I come get the vehicle. They are closed on weekends, so unless I wanted to wait until Monday, I needed to come get it today.

Getting there was not a problem. Lisa asked if she needed to get the pickup back out of the garage. I said no. The auto place is only about 500 m from the house: it's a straight walk down the length of Center street from where we are at the corner of Front and Center across from the site of the original train station (that is not a coincidence — the original town was platted by the railroad) to the auto shop. It only took me ten minutes.

I'm afraid I had to break the Buy Nothing rules. It was a local business, not a chain, but I don't carry $300 in cash around with me, so I had to put it on a credit card. I felt bad about that, but I did want the vehicle back now, not next week, if I could help it. Lisa's pickup rides very roughly and she wants to work on it to boot. I paid for the repairs and drove home via the post office. Let's hope that it was, as the shop speculated, a problem with the fuel, and the new filter will help with it. They pointed out that while that vehicle is old, it's also pretty sturdy and mechanically simple, so it's not surprising that it has held together so long given that I have regular fluid maintenance done.

Now that we have the Astro back, we're going to try going back to Reno in the wee hours of Saturday morning to go to Winco Foods for a large-scale grocery run. Tonight and tomorrow are forecast as the end of the warm spring-like spell we've had, with the temperatures after that dropping by some 10°C, so it's better if we get this done now.

The car shop called and informed me that the Astro started right up and they've driven it around. In order to test anything else would require a fishing expeditions. There are no failure codes in the computer, and nothing obviously wrong. For now, they'll let it sit overnight and try again tomorrow.

This is actually a bit worrisome. Intermittent failures are difficult to diagnose. If it works today, but then when you get to Reno, do your errand, and then it won't start, you're screwed.

I took today off for recovery and slept until around 7:30 AM, which is very much sleeping in for me, not just by my usual work standards, but because during the hospital stay, they typically would show up between 3 and 4 AM to do tests, injections, and sometimes medicines by mouth. Once they would do that, I would not try going back to sleep (it never worked), but would start my day, usually asking for a coffee and a cup of broth if the food prep station had it.

After gingerly starting my day and restarting my oral medications (most of which were on hold during the hospital stay), I got dressed and slowly walked down to the Wigwam where I had breakfast. The folks there, who have been so great to me (and Kayla), had wondered where I'd been, so I filled them in and told them that Kayla isn't likely to be around for a couple of weeks.

After breakfast, I walked home, took a shower, and applied a lawn mower razor to my face to remove a week of beard growth.

( Trimming Back the Wild Man )

Lisa and I went out for errands. We went to the post office, and then to Walgreens, where on instructions from the discharge people, I bought some Motrin (acetaminophen/ibuprofen) for pain relief. From there is was to the optician. They had texted me while I was hospitalized that my glasses were ready. I had texted them back to tell them there would be a delay.

Once I got home, I contacted a local garage about getting the Astro in to the shop to have the problem with it addressed: it turns over but will not start. Lisa has ideas, but does not feel up to working on it; however, she did remove the console so that the shop will be able to get the "doghouse" cover off. The shop that is within walking distance says they can take it on Tuesday, so I will have it towed to them on Monday.

Finally, I made an appointment for 2 PM a week from Friday to go back to the post-surgical center at Renown to have the surgical staples removed from my belly.

I took a number of photos while I was in the hospital. Most of them were of food served to me, or of the hospital room, and a few are of TMI, so go poking around in my Flickr account at your peril. This afternoon, I got some of the labeled, and they may show up in the backdated entries I hope to write about the whole experience. Remember that I do my journaling here for myself, with y'all allowed to watch, and sometimes that means you get TMI. (The very TMI stuff is in private-to-me-only entries.)

On Monday of this week, I went to Big R and paid for a pallet (390 logs) of Pres-to-Logs. As usual, I had give them the SKU and deal with the people who thought we wanted a pack of six logs or a ton of wood pellets, but eventually we got that sorted out. I committed to getting the pallet by Friday. Of course, with Lisa's injury, she only can use one arm, so I need to do the heavy lifting.

Today after work, Lisa guided me backing up to the utility trailer, and somewhat to our surprise, it fit onto the tow hitch on the first try. Lisa did have to fiddle with the wiring on the turn signals to get the right one to work.

( Getting the Wood )

The fastest we've ever unloaded a ton of firewood is about an hour. I expect it will take quite a bit longer for me to unload this one. The sooner, the better, because we have to leave the trailer hitched up while it's loaded; otherwise, the trailer would tip the load off the back, and we'd be left with a mess of broken logs. So at the first opportunity after work tomorrow, it's time to start shifting logs. Fortunately, the next couple of days show little chance of rain.

This afternoon, we took the recycling to Reno. We really couldn't put it off much longer, because there wasn't any more room in the minivan. (To recap: the county in which I live does not offer much recycling, and certainly not curbside pickup. The nearest comprehensive recycling center is in Reno.) Because the recycling drop-off center closes at 3 PM, we needed to get moving moderately early.

After dumping the recycling, Lisa said, "Now we need to go to Big O Tires."

"Why?" I said.

She replied, "Because the right front tire is low."

Oh, brother. It was the right rear tire that went flat on Saturday morning, so at least it wasn't that the tire they fixed had failed. I drove on surface streets at relatively low speed over to Big O. It took them about an hour to get to us and fix the tire, but fix it they did, and it was still all warranty work, so we were on our way with no charge.

We only had one other errand, in that we wanted some HP sauce, and while sometimes we run across the licensed US version in stores, the only place we can get it reliably is the imported stuff at Cost Plus World Market, so that's where we went. We were here over the weekend, but forgot to get it.

We got home just before dark, and I went back to Day Jobbe for an hour or so, having left a little early because of needing to make the cut-off time at the recycling center.

Not terribly exciting stuff, but at least our problems were only small ones, and if the tire was going to go flat, I guess it's better to happen while we are near the place it can be fixed than, say, out on the road on a long trip.

Today's plan was to drive to Roseville, where I could get lab test draws done for my annual medical checkup that will be in a couple of weeks. Sutter Health has no labs in Reno, so Roseville is the nearest lab to which I can get on a Saturday, but the lab does close at Noon. We figured that would not be a problem, though, as we planned to leave at 6:30 AM.

( The Astro Had Other Plans )

Dealing with the spare cost us an hour, but that was okay, because Big O Tires where we'd get the warranty repair opened at 7:30. We drove to Sparks, and they repaired the tire fairly quickly. Because the spare is a full size tire, not a mini-spare, we just put the repaired tire in the back of the fan and set off for Roseville later than planned. Fortunately, we still had an hour or so to spare, and we got to the lab just before 11 AM.

To my surprise, I only had to wait a few minutes before they brought me in, took the blood and urine samples, and sent me on my way. Lisa was also surprised that we were at the lab less than 30 minutes.

Neither of us had eaten since last night, and I proposed that we go to a restaurant at which I've stopped a few times but at which Lisa had never eaten. We headed east for Emigrant Gap.

( The Rustic Table )

Aside from getting stuck in road work for a while on I-80 (I jumped off at Kingvale and took old US-40 around part of the slowdown) and taking a brief rest stop on the edge of Reno, we made decent time heading home, arriving back in Fernley around 4:15 PM, before sundown.

Tomorrow we will swap the repaired tire back onto the van and put the spare away, then work on some other chores. Aside from the annoyance with the tire, it was a nice enough trip, with good traveling weather.

After the Westercon 76 closing ceremony, we said our goodbyes and set off homeward bound.

( Across the Desert )

After checking in to the Holiday Inn Express, Lisa took a bath and I checked the train schedule for the Big Boy for Monday. It was so late that we did not try getting a look at Elko yard, where we expect they had tied up for a couple of days for a Union Pacific employee event not open to the public. I was pleased to see that the first stop was later in the morning than I thought, so I wasn't going to have to be up at 4 AM in order to be on the road in time. But it was still much later than we'd planned, and I knew I wasn't going to get enough sleep.

This afternoon after work, Lisa and I went to Fallon mainly to shop at their larger Big R. We weren't able to find everything we wanted, but we did get a new swamp cooler pump and some other items for which Lisa was looking. The pump is not expensive: $35 plus tax.

As we were returning to Fernley, the Astro started coughing. I was out of gas! I coasted to a place that was off the highway and safe. I was very surprised, as the Astro typically has a range of up to 500 miles, but I had run up only about 400. However, Lisa reminded me that I've been running the air conditioning most of the time, and that on Tuesday, I somehow managed to drive all the way to Reno (around 40 miles) with the van in D instead of OD, which is harmless, but wastes fuel.

We had just passed the Fox Peak Gas Station, and Lisa asked why I had not pulled in there. I couldn't put my finger on it at the time, but later I realized that the reason was that I would have had to make a left turn at the traffic light, and I didn't want to run out of gas while in the left turn pocket. However, because after that turn I didn't feel safe pulling over unless I'd been forced to do so and until I reached a much safer place to do it, we ended up about 1500 m beyond the gas station.

So there was nothing for us to do but to walk back to Fox Peak, buy a small gas can and a gallon gas, and then walk back to the minivan. Oh, I could have called AAA, which would have been included in our service, but it probably would have taken at least an hour to get anything done. I think it took less time to do the walk and get the gas ourselves. It's a little tricky crossing US-50 at the Nevada Pacific Parkway because there is no pedestrian crossing, and the westbound lanes literally never get a red light because of the nature of the intersection. Fortunately, there were sufficient gaps in traffic that we were able to get across the road.

Fortunately, it was just being out of gas. Lisa poured the gallon of gasoline into the Astro and it started right up. We drove on to the Pilot truck stop and refueled. When I did the math, I found that the gas mileage on that last tank was only about 15.5 miles per gallon. I'll need to bear that in mind for our trip to Westercon and refuel more often.

After refueling, we headed home to install the new water pump, but that's a separate story.

After work today, we tried starting the Rolling Stone and it started right up, so we decided to go with Plan A and simply drive to Yerrington to collect the RV from Wild West Chevrolet without turning off the RV, then driving home.

The minivan was waiting. They did a lot of work on it, replacing the condenser (the most expensive part), which had been leaking, an AC hose assembly (second most expensive), and bunch of other parts. There was a whole lot of labor on this as well. The total cost, including some difficult to source parts and labor, was over $3400. The total cost including the work done in February: $10,300. Still cheaper than buying a new car, but also painful.

Speaking of painful, it took us a whole lot longer to get home than expected, for reasons I will explain tomorrow. However, the Astro ran just fine, and produced lots of nice cold air for the whole trip. Lisa and I talked about how much more comfortable the Winnipeg road trip would have been last year had we had working AC and didn't have a Service Engine Soon light on for the entire trip.

( And We're Home )

I am too tired to write about the problems we had with the Rolling Stone, so I will save that story for tomorrow. For now, suffice it to say that I'm very glad I keep my AAA dues up to day at the AAA plus level.