the ghost of hp lovecraft visits alaska

either someone has managed to create biological real-world grey goo, or else the lovecraftian elder gods have been unearthed in alaska.

the alaska daily news reports a many-mile long organic unidentified blob is floating along with the ocean current off the coast of alaska.

reports that the blob arranged itself to spell out "i'm ready for my close-up, deadliest catch film crew" have not been confirmed

i continue to be afflicted by annoyances

if i didn't know me and i wasn't actually living this life, this is about the point where i would begin to wonder if i wasn't reading some fictionalized manufactured faux drama designed to garner sympathy or gloat about how many annoyances i am afflicted with.

so, ants seem to have gone away. my plumbing works. i have a hole in my floor, but it's currently covered over and i am talking to my contractor about getting someone in to fix that bit of floor and the tenant's kitchen wall. difficult-to-solve work problems seem to be fixable and i have a full solution going into service tomorrow morning.

...

and i got a flat tire on the way to work today.

well, "flat tire" is something of a misnomer, as i have runflat tires. but the mini said "bing" and the flat tire light (which looks kind of like it should be the international symbol for buttcrack as you can see in this sample from some other car's control panel) went on. so i slowed down and finished my drive to work, mostly okay -- i could feel the car driving weird, but the runflats are supposed to be good for something like 25 miles at under 55mph after going flat. after i got to work i looked at the tires. it was pretty clear which the bad one was, and it was pretty beat up. i called the folks at direct tire and got an afternoon appointment for new tires.

went there this afternoon (driving extra slow because really the tire looked to be in crap shape), and when they tried to do an alignment on the car after mounting the tires, they noticed the front control rod bushings were pretty beat and one of them was starting to tear. so not only money for shiny new runflat replacements (i replaced them all because the one remaining rear tire was almost as beat as the other, and the front were in mediocre-at-best shape, so fuck that, new tires for all wheels), *BUT* additional fun with a later appt to get the bushing's fixed.

direct tire had wireless in their waiting area and i had my laptop out to do a bit of work while i was waiting, so when they gave me the news about the bushings, i was able to do a bit of googling and discover that this is a not-uncommon complaint about minis, that my 5+ year old mini did not seem out of spec to have this happening, and that the part is cheap but the labor to get the part in and out is a bit annoying, so yeah, not a totally cheap thing to replace. i love living in the future.

also, wtf, i don't have a userpic of my mini? i'll have to fix that some time soon. fixed that.