Baby me'd a buy yu a topless Hummer...

There's something to having a car with a non-functioning air conditioning unit, is nuff joke you get in traffic at evening time. Don't get me wrong there's also a scary side to it, with all these people selling stuff, walking up and down between the cars, who knows what might happen but that's why I tuck my handbag on the backseat out of sight... Anyway, today on Maxfield Avenue--or maybe that part before Half Way Tree is still Eastwood Park Road--and I had this man who was selling air freshners telling me how he was going to buy me a Hummer. So I said, "No thank you, I'm fine."

Man: Alright then, a topless (convertible) Hummer.

Me: No, really I'm okay.

Man: Is what you want then...

Me: Nothing... I'm good.

[as I was driving off] Man: I'll buy you a private jet then! You can get a small plane.

Remember there are three lanes of traffic on this road and let me tell you everybody else was cracking up with laughter. And poor me I was just looking for the doughnut man to get some jelly doughnuts to take home. PMS has me craving all manner of sweets. The daaaarling that J is he brought me not one but three packs of fun size Butterfinger bars. So I've put them in the fridge to firm up and I'll snack on those later rather than going out to buy a sundae.

• Mood:tired & sad, i miss j!

Mobay to Kingston in 3 hours flat

So far I've already had one person flop my show about how that's slow using the Chalky Hill through Linsteda route but I don't care. I think I did damn good consider the traffic, mad taxi and bus drivers, the insane trailer head driver round by Moneague and the assortment of goats and dogs that were in the road... not to mention the amount of 'pavement ends 300m' that I had to deal with and the everlasting pot holes that only Jamaican roads can serve up.

Chalky Hill took nerves of steel. The last time I was up there J had to kiss off the side of the road to avoid a crazy oil tanker driver that was pelting up the hill and we broke the left control arm on my old VW Vento. Luckily there was a man in an Isuzu Big Horn that I was able to follow for most of the way. "Max" (the new fastback 240sx) handled very well. He slides through corners so neutrally that I was able to save my brakes (which is good since they're not back at 100% yet, J needs to bring me a brake master cylinder when he's coming back next week).

I had a truck man stop beside me on the 1st Spanish town roundabout and tell me that I can go and drive at Dover Raceway *lol* I couldn't help but grin. Apparently he was shocked that I shot around him at the roundabout. "So is where you come from?" he asked me. I pointed out that I'd been behind him for quite awhile but I'd been on my cellphone (with J who was running to catch his connection from Miami to Dallas) so I'd eased off until I finished my call and could concentrate. He just shock his head and said that for a female driver I'm definitely not ordinary :-)

• Mood:missing J alot

It's been a long, long day...

Wow, I'm exhausted... I can't begin to imagine how J feels though, he's had a full day at work including a couple of runs and now he's home finishing up packing to fly down here tomorrow. I woke up early (as if I ever sleep past 6:30am these days anyway!) and got to work finishing off this week's article. I had it pretty much wrapped up by midday and then it was down to the newspaper to fine tune it and load it onto the servers.

After I got done at the newspaper I decided to go and check Victor (the ultimate Nissan mechanic) since his shop is down the road from the paper. He said the car seems solid and sent me up the road to a front end and alignment garage to let them have a looksee under the 240SX. Well, damn good thing I did that because I have a front caliper leak... in layman's terms that means my brakes could fail. My blood ran cold when I realized that tomorrow I'm driving pretty much to the other end of the island to Montego Bay to pick up J, a drive which involves a lot of uphill and downhill and sharp corners.

Thankfully a supplier in town had the seal kit I needed and I was able to get there (with the help of an ex-taximan's directions) in time to get the parts. So tomorrow morning I'm up early again--well more like out of the house early because I'll be up anyway LOL--to be at the garage at 8:30am so that they can repair the calipers so I can be on my way to Mobay by 10am.

I'm just really glad that I went by Victor and I'm even more glad that I finished my article today so that I don't have it hanging over my head along with this trip to the garage for tomorrow morning.

• Mood:tired & my back hurts
• Music:rain falling outside

Be strong and courageous...

"Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go." Joshua 1:9 (NIV)

In the mornings I read the Our Daily Bread devotional from their website. They have a handy like to Bible Gateway, which brings up the day's reading right away, in this internet and computer age I've found that I'm more likely to read it if it's on the computer than if I have to go and hunt through my Bible. That said at night I read to J from the Couple's Devotional Bible. It has daily passages and commentaries geared specially towards married couples. It's very good, I'd recommend it to married couple actually because it also has 'Marriage Builders' tasks that you can work through together to strengthen your bond.

Anyway my point with this is that this passage from Joshua is from today's ODB devotion but it's also from last weekend's CB readings (June 4 & 5). It's really interesting how these two seem to go hand in hand almost and to the best of my knowledge they're not published by the same company.

Just had to blog this, in my own nerdy way I think it's quite interesting :)

• Mood:calm...
• Music:a radio somewhere playing MJ "You Are Not Alone"

Doriftoooooo!

Recorded my first proper drift in Jamaica about 15 minutes ago at the intersection of West Kings House Road and Constant Spring Road. Last week with Thunder I guess I contemplated trying but then I remember what Basil said about his clutch so I backed down everytime my fingers tingled to go for it. And that's fair enough, I'd ragged on the man's car all day. I did stupidness at Vernam but put my foot down otherwise. No, not street racing, I wasn't racing anybody, just driving Thunder. So now I have this 1990 Nissan 240SX. It's an pignosed S13 fastback with a KA24E engine (the single cam to the one that originally came in my baby Q - Mommy misses you Q!)

Yes, I'm a gear-head and I'm not ashamed I tell you! The tint at the bottom of the windshield is a bit annoying to be honest with you but at least it's not crappy tint link Andre's old hatchback (the 1993 that I drove while Q was laid up last year that eventually we bought and swapped its SR20DET into Q). The only three things are:

1. The A/C compressor doesn't work. It's been cooler recently but I'm going to get a used one put in right away, I'll melt otherwise. And I know J would be miserably if he came here and had to drive under a combination of no air conditioning; and
2. The passenger side window doesn't go down because the window lock switch on the driver's console is busted. Easy electronic fix, hopefully it doesn't need a new switch; and
3. The right headlight comes up automatically but has to be wound down manually. At least they come up and work I say. We have spare headlight motors on the crashed car so that won't be all new parts to buy.

Other than that there's just some cosmetic bits but like I told the previous owner, the car is one color, I can drive around with some paint missing... after all I remember red, white and black and spraypaint Q :) And I can drift it!

Drift total: 2 L <- left hand drifts (somehow I haven't gotten right hand ones down yet)

• Mood:happy and tired
• Music:CNN news about the MJ's aquittal