The fun never stops

As John Donne so aptly put it way back in 1624, the bell eventually tolls for all of us. 

This clod that you are reading will bee washed away by the sea one day too, like everybody else. 

You get to a point in your life where the calendar pages fly by and suddenly you are old one day and have to ask yourself, how the hell did that happen?

I measure weeks by Mondays, the day the trash cans come out to be picked up and then come back again, it seems like there is practically no in between any more, what is happening to the rest of the week?

In any case, with age, comes entropy and mechanical failure. I have two friends that got new hips in the last week or so, both by Dr. Knudson. 

Hopefully they will feel better soon and it will relieve them of the hitch in their giddy up.

My arthritis is certainly on the wax. My wife has to open certain jar tops for me. 

We sit on the floor and play cards at night, My feet go numb and after a long session, I creak and stutter getting up like the tin man on a rusty bender. Knees, hips, feet, it is quite the sight.

Of course I will be sixty seven in about sixteen days or so and such discomfort is supposed to come with the territory. Once I am up and moving and get some grease back in the joints, things start to feel a lot better.

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My automobiles are feeling the same sorts of grief as my body, only in dog years. Both my Mazda and the ProMaster are 2019's. Five years old and mechanical things like to start breaking. I took my van in for a service and they told me that I had a radiator leak.

They pressure tested it and it was not a hose, it was a seam split, where the plastic meets the metal. An unnatural marriage if there ever was one. I had been smelling something amiss for some time but it was staying cool and I paid it no further attention.

But I have a trip to Palm Springs and then one to San Francisco scheduled and I really didn't need the thing blowing at an inconvenient time. So I spent the gelt this week and had it fixed.

Now my mechanic told me that it was not an easy job, at least four hours. Truth was, he told me it took all day. They had to take the entire bumper off to get to it and it was sort of a bitch, even after watching the YouTube how to do it video.

He called me about three and told me that the hose attachments to the radiator are plastic and have a klugey German seal and spring inside and that they tend to break and that I might as well change those out too or risk going through the whole business again. Ram followed the German Sprinter model on this. 

I told him to go ahead, it's only money that I am short of right now, another $275 for new hoses. Whole thing ran about $1475 with tax.

It's been a pretty trouble free van, shouldn't bitch too much. Same thing happened to Bill with his ProMaster, they build these parts to fail nowadays.

I got an art delivery from Shlomo, my New York shipper on Friday. He has the fancy Mercedes model witht he custom cab. Said he had the same radiator problem and didn't change the hoses and they broke three times in quick succession before he got wise and threatened the dealer with a lawsuit. They fixed it. 

I was going to put new brakes on the Madza, he thinks he can save the rotors if we do it soon. Needs two more tires too. But the van takes precedence for now with shows coming up.

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Take care of yourselves and each other. This election thing will pass, somebody will be pissed off and we will all find a way to survive. May the best woman win.