by Lee Stranahan | Apr 19, 2024 | Food, Life |
I don’t really remember ever taking a ‘pure’ vacation. I always have combined trips with work, usually doing a seminar of some kind. We stayed at a yurt in the mountians above Santa Barbara. No cable TV, no computers. Beautiful and very indoor / outdoor living. California King sized bed with comfy sheets. I grilled burgers. Played Mario Kart DS with Jack on one side of me and Olivia on the other, for hours. They’d both kiss me on the cheek when I won a race. Lauren took bath after bath in the clawfoot tub. I took a couple of 4am tubs, too. Had one great meal at La Super Rica Taqueria and a really lousy one at Rusty’s pizza, but the kids played arcade games and didn’t notice how bad the food was or even the faces Lauren made drinking the Merlot that they got out of the fridge. Went to the Unitarian Society church on Easter Sunday, which was a beautiful building. It’s spring and anything is possible.
On the way back, we stopped by the beach area around Rincon in Ventura. The kids had crazy amounts of fun running in and out of the surf.
Then I was back to work Tuesday and it was very busy and then the utilities were all screwy and Lauren missed the tub.
by Lee Stranahan | Apr 13, 2024 | Life |
The kids and I went over to visit Lucky Car in it’s temporary, safe from Burbank Parking Enforcement holding pen. We cleaned out much of the clutter and transfered some of the important stuff from one vehicle to another. The little kids ate ice cream in the old car while Shane and I cleaned. I had all the doors open and was playing KROQ in both cars, so as you walked the few feet from one car to another the sound was continuous. The kids got a sugar high and went nuts. Good times.
by Lee Stranahan | Apr 12, 2024 | Life |
This is still part of what happened last weekend when we got the new car.
I wanted to go into work to get something going on the computer. It was about 4:45am, so it was pitch black out. I went out to the car; the new car. I had just started the engine, when there was a bright light out the window. At first, I thought it was a car making a turn out of the alley but the light stayed on. So, I get out of my car and it’s police officer who has a bright light mounted on his car and is aiming it my car. He asks me where I’m going and I tell him work. He asks for ID, so I show him my driver’s license and work ID badge. He says I can go. No explanation at all. Totally weird.
I’m pretty sure it’s not legal, but whatever. No reason to push it. But if I’d been in the old Lucky Car with expired out of state tags, it could have gone differently.
by Lee Stranahan | Apr 12, 2024 | Life |
1) Four Way Chili @ Chili John’s
2) Sausage, Meatball, Mushroom Pizza @ Tony’s Bella Vista
3) Combo Italian Beef @ Taste Chicago
4) Media Noche Sandwich @ Porto’s
5) 35 Cent Black Cherry Soda @ Albertson’s
by Lee Stranahan | Apr 11, 2024 | Life |
Lucky Car is the big green Ford Windstar minivan that we’ve been driving for a couple of years. As I mentioned elsewhere, I bought it for $1850 on EBay at a point when we really needed a car and money was incredibly tight.
Someday, I need to tell the whole story of buying the car and driving cross country. The car was unregistered, uninsured, and had a license plate that I’d aquired under suspicious circumstances. But all’s well that ends well. The trip worked out fine and eventually the car drove us down to Southern California.
About 18 months ago, I started at my current job. To balance out that good news, the brakes went out on the car to point where I could literally push the petal all the way down to the floor and the car wouldn’t even slow down. The only way to stop the car was to pull on the hand brake, and that took about twenty feet to stop it. We were living in an extended stay hotel at the time. But that all worked out, too. I took the bus for a while and saved money to fix the car. We moved in a sub-let apartment for a couple of months and then into our current apartment.
And Lucky Car has been there the whole time. It’s a big wheezy squeaky hunk of automobile but it’s taken the kids to school and brought furniture home and toted groceries. It’s time to move on. Our new car is really great and our life already feels different, but I did want to give props to the old car because it got us to this point.
Lucky Car is for sale. $850 and you can drive it away. It needs power steering fluid added once a week and probably needs a new muffler. The front bumpers are scuffed and there’s a few dents. It needs to be smogged for California driving. But it’s got luck.
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