car-related morning

While driving to Worcester with no passenger-side window, I noticed an unusual sound, not unlike that of two pieces of metal rubbing together. It slowly grew louder as I approached the city, until the squeals and shrieks of rending steel were almost unbearable.

Then I left my car to have a new window put in.

When I came to pick it up, the squealing was still there and, if anything, worse. So I drove over to Saturn of Worcester. As it turned out, the pads were pretty much gone, so new pads and rotors were installed, and the rear brakes were adjusted and so on.

I suspect this has been happening for quite a while. It should have been a hint, I think, that both rental cars I've driven in the past couple of months have had MUCH more sensitive brakes than my current vehicle. My new brakes are, indeed, much more sensitive, and require much less stomping to slow the car down.

I also ordered a new bezel and air control panel. I will replace these myself, and I will install the old factory stereo so I can listen to CDs as I drive.

And ideally, that will be the last car thing I have to do for a while. I suspect the next round will be the transmission, and I suspect that will be somewhere in late summer. I'm REALLY not looking forward to that, either, but my current transmission has 118,000 miles on it, so it's only a matter of time.

Anyway, happy car now, finally. Yay.

recovery

We stopped at Home Depot and acquired the appropriate driver for the screws that hold the stereo and other dashboard things in place in my car.

In the parking lot, I reinstalled the factory stereo, just for the sake of being able to listen to things. I found CDs in the trunk (and thus unstolen), and played them for my companion as we roamed the wilds of Route 9 looking for CDs and other random things.

Went to Newbury Comics, where we were surprised to see hundreds of cars and hordes of high school indie kids milling about. Turns out The Get-Up Kids were playing a free show there tonight at 7. We made our way farther down Route 9 in search of CDs, booze, and cheese, and we returned later.

I found five of the missing eight CDs. Still missing are The Capricorns and He Said, which isn't really too surprising, and My Bloody Valentine.

Yes, Newbury Comics didn't have a copy of Loveless in stock. Only one of the best-regarded albums of the 90's, but, no, can't have a few spare copies around. Nope.

A pleasant evening of roaming about, though. Cheese and booze were acquired, and some of each are now being ingested.

Soon, crashing.

Booze Review: Graham's Six Grapes

This is a port made of several varietals blended together in order to emulate old port in a young wine. It's semi-successful, although there's something vaguely wrong about it that I find hard to pin down. It's a little alcoholy, and has a strange distant aftertaste. It's certainly not bad, and it's much better than one would expect for the price.

For another five bucks, though, you can pick up a Warre's LBV, which is enough nicer to be well worth it. This might be worthwhile for a change or something, but I wouldn't make it my main tipple.