Ron's Big Life Update - February 1996

"Yo." - Vanilla Ice, 1991.

Things have been turbulent out here, and with the wind chill, OY! Let me attempt to recap the events of the last week or so.

Pittsburgh lost the Super Bowl, but did better than everyone expected. On my way home from a Super Bowl party at a friend's house (hi, Jen), I got rear-ended. (For you current or former Rochestarians, I was heading east on Elmwood Avenue, waiting to turn left on Goodman St.) I was perfectly OK except for some sore knees, and the guy who hit me was OK, but my little 'yota was completely totalled. It was a pretty sorry sight; the pictures that I took of the remains will be ready on Tuesday, and I can put them in my photo album with the caption, "I survived THIS!" Well, I'm glad I had the timing belt replaced right before I left Tucson... (at least I didn't have the thing rustproofed.)

So ended the life of my little car, known to some as The Refrigerator.

Now, I'm shopping for a new car, and will probably buy a Toyota Corolla before the week ends. The one I found is a '96, and is black with a dark gray interior. Pretty slick. And EXTREMELY slick compared to my old car. I'm in a quandry about what to do with my megawatt-sound system; since my new car will come with a decent system, I think I'll try to convince my insurance company that it was part of the car and was thusly totalled. (thusly?) I think I'm getting pretty good at dealing with the new car dealers; right now, I have a price that's $150 below invoice, and is cutting into the $400 incentive that the dealer gets independent of the car. So as things look, I'll be driving a way-cool vehicle real soon.

And that's only a small part of my turbulence. Margaret rolled into town late on Friday night. She averaged 80 MPH all the way across the country, and made it out here faster than I did. We still haven't unpacked some things from her car because it's so *&^%$#@! cold outside. Just when I thought I had settled into a routine with work and everything, Margaret moves in and messes everything up. It's more fun with her here, and I wouldn't have it any other way, actually.

So Sunday, we adopted two cats. Our local Humane Society didn't have any kittens, but did have two female cats, each about 3 years old. (both fixed, had shots, etc.) They were dropped off together by their former owners, who moved to Florida. (And after spending a few weeks out here in the middle of winter, I can understand why.) The cats are not too thrilled about the move: One of them keeping walking around screaming (MEOW! MEOW! MEOW! Like Donna's cat!), and the other one won't come out of the basement. I'm hoping that time will cure them of their respective neuroses, because they're not very good pets right now. Plus, the names that the former owners gave them stink; I'm convinced that these people were not native English speakers, because they named the cats "Scooter" and "Firecracker". The lady at the Humane Society said that if we rename the cats (and we probably should), we should try to find names that sound like the old ones. Well, we gave up on finding anything that sounds even remotely close to "Firecracker", and have named the cats "Spay" and "Neuter."

Work is going well. I just found out that one of the optical guys from our group is leaving, and I will have to absorb his responsibilities until they can hire a replacement. Ho-boy...

The world's greatest radio show, Crap From The Past, is already doing well. I got about ten calls last week, and that's 9.7 calls more than the average WRUR show. And I haven't done any publicity at all yet...

Nope. I guess there's not much going on out here.

Hope things are warm and stable in your neck of the woods.

Ron "There's a lot of crap on the radio, but there's only one Crap From The Past" Gerber