The Day of Small Nonsense.

 Today was one of those days where one thing just kind of rolls into another thing, and before you know it, the day is gone. Tim had an appointment to get the car inspected. He got it inspected a couple weeks ago, and they told him that it needed a new inner tie rod end. He dutifully bought the parts and set to work. Except that he discovered that while it showed minor wear, it was in his opinion, perfectly fine. He used to hold an inspection license. He used to do inspections, back in the day before he became a machinist. (He went to school for that because being a mechanic was a dead end job, working for someone who was trying to squeeze every bit of profit he could from his workers). So he became a machinist, and then Reagan put NAFTA in to play and all those well paying machinists jobs left the country. After being laid off from one machinist job after another, in frustration he said, "I will never again tie my future to a company." Because of these layoffs (4 of them in 3 years), we were afraid of losing our house, and began to sock every bit of money into paying off our house loan, and we got it done just a matter of months before he got laid off again, a matter of months before the Crash of 2008, when the price of houses plummeted, and he discovered that houses were being sold for pennies on the dollar. We bought our first house for $2000. Of course, it had a hole in the bathroom floor that went clear through to the basement. We wound up having to jack up the house and install new beams under it, and that's one spooky thing, being in a basement, jacking up a whole house and hearing that creeeeeeeaaaaakkk of a house leaving its foundation. My sister was in college by that point, and her husband came and worked for us on Saturdays, and taught Tim a whole lot. The plan was to fix that house up and then rent it, and then winnow the rents (It was a two unit) into the purchase of another house, except Tim found another house before we got it done and he pestered to buy it, and, as usual, I gave in because I got tired of him arguing the point. We signed the papers the day after I found out I had cancer. It was too late to call it off without losing a bunch of money that we didn't have to lose, but strangely, once it was signed, we had someone call and ask if we, by chance, had a place for rent, and Tim said yes. When he walked down to that building, an old friend from highschool happened to be walking by and said, "Tim! I didn't know you lived here!" and Tim explained that he didn't, but that he was getting ready to show an apartment, and the old friend said, "I am looking for a place to live!!!" and so both apartments were rented that night, and we didn't even have time to put an ad in the paper. It took a long time to fix the first house but the rents from the second house covered all that, and Tim was laid off so he had plenty of time, and all this kept him from getting too bitter about the loss of his rosy future as a machinist. Then came a house down the street went on the market...and then over on the south side and then...well...we got ourselves a business out of the deal. Tim also got called back to work. So, between the two of things, we were hopping busy, and have remained that way until this very day.

But...I digress...back to the tie rod end...Tim looked at it, and lo, the man was pissed.  He came into the house. "I'm not changing that!" he said in disgust. "There's nothing wrong with it." So today he took the car in to be inspected at another inspection site, and the car passed just fine, which made his day. He does love to be right. (Explanation: some inspections stations gamble that if they fail a vehicle, the customer will pay them to fix it.)

We dropped off some paperwork, and then headed over to spend the afternoon at the rehab putting together the plumbing. When we finished for the day, we headed for Lowe's to pick up the stuff we needed for tomorrow. 

Then I was off to get a haircut, and then to get the grocery shopping done for Superbowl Sunday. We have friends coming over for a meal and the game. 

The Big Nonsense:

My oldest daughter found this one. https://www.youtube.com/@AssemblyRequiredPodcast. She's is very good and you can subscribe to the channel at no cost. What I most like about her is her unwavering faith that we can come together and push back against what is happening. That is a hopeful thing, and I think that people really are looking to recapture some amount of hope.

Don't forget to drop your links in the comments.

Joan? Are you still able to comment?