This morning I
went to Borders and bought 15 paperback books. Then I drove a quarter
mile to Albertson's to buy groceries. Since I hadn't bought groceries
in a few weeks I ended up spending about $115 which is three weeks
worth. I don't expect to buy any more groceries this month.
When I came back out my car wouldn't start. I expected that because
when I started my car after Borders the engine didn't turn over as
crisply as it did the first time in the morning. So I called Dave who
was leaving work then and had him stop by and give me a jump.
I had the thought that maybe it's the security system. I remember my
previous car had a system that failed and I couldn't get my car to
start. And maybe it's something similar this time if the security
battery is failing. Usually the engine doesn't even turn. But sometimes
it does a bit and jumping it works just fine so that's probably not the
cause.
I do wander what the cause is since I'm getting apprehensive about
using my car if I can't trust it. The original battery lasted four
years, 4-1/2 at the outside if you include the time from manufacture.
And that's kind of short. Now I have a new battery which worked fine
for a month but now seems to have the same problems as before.
I should take my car to Sears and see if they can find something wrong.
It's got to be something in the battery system. Either the battery
itself or delivering power to the starter motor. I don't think it's the
charger since I can leave the car alone for a few hours and it will
usually start up again. You know, that behavior also indicates it's not
a battery problem. And Sears did check the battery system and it
checked out ok, though it probably wasn't a really thorough test.
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After reading
Clinton's book I've managed to finish reading one book per day. So far
10 books after "My Life". I'm usually reading three or four books at a
time (rotating and reading 20-50 pages each so I don't get bored) and
when I first started I was close to done on three books.
So I've taken that momentum and used it to keep up the book a day pace.
Reading GURPS Fantasy has slowed me down considerably and at this point
it's going to be difficult to finish a book Monday and certainly
Tuesday.
And of course obsessing on this I've been neglecting other things. I do
that way too much. I get into a "must finish doing this" mode and
ignore other things. It happens with books and watching DVDs or taped
television programs. Because everything I do is sort of a to-do type
thing I do get into that mindset.
So far this year I've read 89 books, 15 since the start of November. I
may be able to hit 104 books by the end of this year, which is a fairly
good 2 books a week pace for me. Sometimes I look at my big pile of
books to read and think that I have way too many books to read.
But if I can someday catch up it'll be much easier since not that many
new books are printed each month. Big genres are Star Trek with 2-4
books each month, MechWarrior with a book every other month, maybe
Conan once the new books start coming out at about one a month, and
that's it. The rest of my book categories are all veteran series with
maybe a handful of books per year, combined. Oh, and there's also
military books. But I'm going to cut back drastically on that so
probably not much from that area.
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