Today Sucked in a Special Way.

Today my trusty Dremel rotary tool died.  So it goes.

To be fair, I'm pretty hard on my tools and I tend to use them up, but I really wasn't ready to rush out and replace this $90 tool.  Instead, I shelled out ten dollars for a set of Torx screwdrivers and a few more dollars for some spare parts to see if I could somehow resurrect this poor departed device.

I had a lot of other things to work on, but found myself so emotionally invested in keeping this one tiny thing alive that I didn't get to any of them.  In the end, it proved to be beyond my abilities to repair the Dremel.  I suppose it was just the Dremel's time.  So it goes.

I was halfway past giving up on my vain efforts to repair it when I got a call from the formeman down at the boatyard where my boat, the Heart of Gold is lying alongside the dock while she awaits repairs.

"Hi there," says I, "how's things?"

"Not good," says he, "your boat tried to sink last night, the engine was completely underwater by the time we noticed it.  We pumped the water out, but there's oil and diesel fuel all over inside the boat."

"Fuck," says I, "I guess I'm on my way to Alameda."

I drove to Alameda to find that the entire engine room was coated in a thick black sludge of diesel fuel and used motor oil.  It turns out that the float switch which turns on the bilge pump decided to go on vacation.  At the same time the flax packing gland that seals up the hole around the propeller shaft figured "haha, now that nobody's here and the bilge pump isn't working, I'm going to just let all of the Oakland Estuary spill into the engine room." 

Fuck you flax packing.  You and the horse you rode in on.  And your little dog too.

Once I'd fixed what I could I then went to the boatyard foreman to discuss the upcoming very expensive cleanup and engine overhaul that would be required.  Bear in mind that earlier that day I was having a hard time coming up with $90 to replace a tool that is essential in almost all of my workshop projects.  This new pile of expenses is really going to be painful.  This is when I looked at the time.  It was very nearly five o' clock. 

Rush hour.  I hate rush hour.

Since I'm averse to the notion of waiting in lines and rush hour traffic strikes me as the worst version of waiting in lines, I decided to stop and see a movie instead.  That way, I'd get to drive home in relative peace and solitude long after the rat race is over for the day. 

I saw Transformers 3.  If it wasn't for that, the day would've been kinda okay.  Instead it was as if I'd paid eleven dollars (ELEVEN DOLLARS?!?!) to have Michael Bay make a bunch of noise, slap me in the face, and then run away laughing.

So today sucked.


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