Had a kind of rough day. Mainly because, as long as I'm not in school, I'm stressed during maybe 10 days during the year. Today I was stressed.

I decided on Thursday that I definitively wanted to get my transmission fixed instead of trying to buy a new (to me) car. There's an ad on Craig's List that it can be done for $1900 by doing a manual transmission swap (theoretically, this would cost more than simply replacing the transmission, but it's cheap). I call the guy Friday, sounds legit, let him know I want to do it. He says okay for Sunday. Let's go down the list of disappointments.

-I told him, originally, that we couldn't do it at my house. He says he'll try to get a place to do it in Renton. The time comes and he just ends up doing it here. That's kind of embarrassing, kind of trashy, kind of sketchy. Oh well.
-The ad says $1900 but he needs $2000 for some reason. I agree because, well, I want my fucking car fixed and I would have called him if the ad said $2000 too. He says he'll change out the differential as well. Still uncool that he charged more than the ad says.
-The ad also says professional look... not exactly. Everything that you'd expect to not look professional does look professional, but the shifter knob is POS and the leather part doesn't connect to the shifter and that looks ghetto.
-The stereo doesn't work. I suppose this would be expected, but it's something I'll have to fix.
-There's a plastic cover missing (it's small, but still...) from my front console area. It should be somewhere, but until I find it, it looks ghetto.
-Cruise control no longer works.
-I don't like the transmission's first gear, it's too small/short.
-Car still runs high RPMs on the freeway. It's not 4000 at 70 mph, but it's 3500 which isn't like the overdrive in the Auto.
-I feel like a noob driving a stick. I've driven a stick maybe 30 times in the past 7 years and obviously never owned one. I've already improved dramatically since my first time driving the car today, but it'll take a bit of getting used to.
-clutch has a kind of long throw, friction point is kind of far out.
-doesn't seem faster (probably has more to do with me than anything, but still, if I can't drive it faster, it's not faster with me driving which is all that really matters, right? I should get better at it though.)
-to put it in reverse, you go left of first/second gear and up. It's weird.

To be fair, let's go over the pro's:
-My transmission, theoretically, will last me another 50k-100k+. It was only a matter of time before I ended up stuck on the side of the road with an even bigger bill. I drove the transmission while it was bad for 4 months, but it was getting worse, it was slipping quite a bit more and didn't even like going into third before it warmed up the last few weeks.
-gas mileage should be awesome. Got 21 driving around town, that's about what I used to get for a full tank which consisted mostly of freeway driving (80% or so)
-it's impossible to kill. I suppose this is an upside to my first gear complaint.
-I need to own a 5 speed. I wanted my next car to be a 5 speed, so if this is how I'm going to get it out of my system that's all the better.
-since putting it in reverse is weird, I'd say it's even more difficult to steal (but since there's only one key and they're laser cut, not something I'm very worried about in the first place.)
-I learned an important lesson today. Don't hire someone else to do a ghetto fix. Granted, I couldn't have done it myself, but I am used to doing ghetto fixes myself and that's alright. Yes, this is a pro.
-shifting from 3rd to 4th is a dream, it's so fast and efficient.
-I ate some humble pie today. I am not beating myself up for it, but I pretty much suck at driving a stick right now. I don't kill it and I don't do stupid shit, but I don't make it look easy either. Yes, this is a pro.
-I didn't get conned. Obviously hiring someone from Craig's List and paying them $2000 carries with it some inhibitions and worries. The guy is confident in his work and asked me to refer people to him, so he obviously thinks he did a good job on my car and assumes I'll be happy with it.
-I can go above 65 mph without feeling like I'm killing my car while doing it. I can drive on I-90 again! I honestly believe my car not going into overdrive is a huge reason I didn't go snowboarding but one time this season. It's important for me to be able to drive over 70 (it's the speed limit on I-90) as the weather gets better because there's a lot of shit I like to do off of I-90.

This is the second time in the past week that I did something that, in my opinion, is very productive to my life and I wasn't very happy about it. The other thing being benching 225, which may sound silly, but it's sign of improvement. I suppose both make sense in their own way, and I'm actually a bit happier about my bench achievement now than I was when it happened because the 'finally' feeling has worn off and now I just see it as room for improvement. This thing is not making me happy because I'm going to be broke as shit for 4 weeks now and the gearing isn't how I (naively) expected it to be ideal for me.

I've ridden my bike 5 times in the past 7 days. I think I'll be stronger this year which should be fun. I also think riding on the trainer is a little bit of a better workout than riding outside. I've put in over 5 hours in the past 3 days. I think I've exercised every day for quite a while now and I *think* it's starting to show. I just recently started eating better and the weekend is not included in that statement, hopefully I'll get back on track tomorrow.

I should be really happy with this weekend but today's stress (mainly while they were fixing my car) kind of hinders me from feeling that way. Friday I got a DVD player to play my new collection of DVDs (which is in excess of 30 new additions from the 2 weeks I've had my laptop). Hung out with Brandon. Oh yeah I guess I had another argument with Daks which left Brandon and Aly pissed off at me. Daks came downstairs drunk and was throwing shit so I came out of my room to get him to go upstairs and he brought up the Lexus thing again. I kept my cool the whole time and he was getting pissed. But he brought Brandon into it and Brandon just stayed silent and it kind of pissed me off. So after he left I was talking to Brandon and that actually pissed me off because he didn't back me up and also was accusing me of being as bad as Daks. So that did ruin the rest of Friday night from about 1 on, but no biggie.

Saturday I was thinking about going for a bike ride but it was too cold still. Went to see "I Love You, Man" with Brandon in Kirkland. Only the second time I've gone to the theater since I moved up here (almost 9 months). Good movie, not great, but my kind of movie. Then later people came over. It was cool to have people over again, but it wasn't a particularly good party.

Then today I got my car fixed. Went to DQ with Brandon and we sat for a while and talked about some shit, good stuff.

I remember I was going to stop doing my blog like this (sort of a play-by-play) but it's just natural for me to do it this way. Oh well.