I got my vehicle registration notice in the mail this month. That means I’ve had my new truck for one year, now. (It was “new” to me; it was “used” to the dealership.)

After buying and settling into our new house last year, I decided it was time to upgrade from an older-model sedan to a newer-model SUV. So I called my dad and got his input, advice, and help to find the right truck.

My dad loved car dealing. He’d been through the car selling and buying process many times through his years, and it was something he just really enjoyed. A few years before, he had helped us find our minivan. We told him what we were looking for — make, model, color, mileage, price, etc. — and a couple weeks later, he’d found it. Tada! Just like that.

He then quickly found a good buyer for the car the minivan was replacing. He was that good at the whole thing.

So last year, I told him to start looking for an SUV. I told him what I was looking for — less specifically than with the minivan — and a couple weeks later he’d found several vehicles within my range of choices.

In the two weeks while he was searching for me, I had come to be interested in the Ford Escape. It’s an SUV, but it’s not a big bus. The very first vehicle he found for me to look at was a red Mercury Mariner. The Mariner is the same chassis and body style as the Escape, (as is the Mazda Tribute); you can’t easily tell the difference between them without seeing the name plate. But the Mercury name didn’t sit well with me.

“No offense, Dad,” I said, “but a Mercury isn’t my kind of car. It’s my grandparents car.” I mean, I’d never noticed anyone under the age of 60 driving a Mercury.

He nodded, “I understand, son. But you realize it’s the same thing as a Ford Escape, right?”

Yeah, I understood intellectually. But at my gut level, a Mercury was an old person’s car.

So I passed on the Mariner without bothering to look at it in person. Within another couple weeks, he showed me some other vehicles in the same general range that I was looking for: a Jeep, a Honda, and a couple of others. Then he found a Ford Escape. It looked good in the pictures he sent me, and so we went to the dealership for a test drive. Coincidentally, it was the same dealership that had the Mercury Mariner Dad had told me about first.

I test drove the Escape, but there was a wind noise from somewhere that just bugged me enough that I couldn’t sell myself on it. While back at the dealership, after the test drive, the Mariner came into our discussion. “What the heck,” I said, “I’m here, let’s give it a test.”

It was a good looking truck. And it drove great. Yeah, I fell in love with it and bought it. So after all the other SUVs we looked at, and all the other test drives we went on after he showed me that Mariner first thing, I ended up, again going with his first find. Just goes to show, the man knew how to find the right vehicle.

That car shopping experience was the last time my dad was really up and about mostly normal. A few weeks later he went into the hospital for cancer surgery, and things went very bad for several weeks. He never completely recovered from that experience, and six months after helping me find my new truck, he passed away from the cancer.

This license registration renewal letter on my desk is a bitter-sweet reminder of a happy memory.

Bullgrit

I can’t believe it, I actually got sunburned — before May. Saturday was a really nice day: clear blue skies, warm but not hot (77 degrees), with a cool breeze. I wore jeans and a t-shirt all day.

We went to the local “Spring Daze” festival in the morning, to walk around the park visiting all the craft booths. After lunch, I managed to get a 30 minute nap out on the hammock in our backyard — a wonderful treat. Then we went to Calfgrit6’s soccer game from 2:30 to after 3:30. So all added up, I was out in the sun for almost four hours. But I never felt really hot, so I never thought about how much sun I might be getting.

Both boys got sunscreen lathered on, but I just thought that was because they were fair skinned and would be running around out in the sun more than I would. It wasn’t even May, yet, so the idea of actually getting any sun affects on my skin never crossed my mind.

But the next morning, when I saw myself in the mirror, whoa! My face and arms are bright red. My skin feels tight, and it stings a bit.

I’m glad that at least my back and shoulders aren’t burned, because I was wearing a t-shirt, but this just means my first color for the summer will be a farmer’s tan. Just great. Now, because it’s so rare for me to be able to get out in the sun and get any kind of tanning, my arms and neck will probably stay darker than my shoulders and torso all summer. I’ll look [more] like a total dork when I take the boys to the swimming pool.

I don’t have the free time to lay out and even out any tan. Maybe I can take off my shirt when I mow the grass or wash my truck. But subjecting the neighbors to my pale, white body might be considered indecent public exposure. I don’t know if that comes with jail time or just a monetary fine.

Bullgrit

A few years ago, at a different job and company, I had a situation with BitTorrent and the company IT department.

At the time, I had never heard of BitTorrent, and even now I only know the general idea of what it is. It’s a program for file sharing over the Internet. I’ve never been into any of that file sharing stuff, legal or illegal. I just recently bought and downloaded Portal 2 through Steam, and that transaction brought the old trouble with the IT department to mind. (For my non-game-geek readers, buying and downloading games through the Steam online distribution system is completely legal and actually the normal and publisher-preferred way to get many new games.)

I was just sitting at my desk, working, and one of the IT guys came and stood at the “door” to my cubicle.

“Hey Bullgrit,” he said.

I stopped what I was doing and turned to him. I knew he was an IT guy, but I’d never had any direct dealings with him before, and I didn’t know his name. “Hey,” I said.

“So, how’s BitTorrent working out for you?” Then he took a swig from his can of Dr. Pepper. His body language was screaming at me. His stance at my door and his facial expression showed obvious disgust and stated, Yeah, you’ve been caught!

Like I said, I had never heard of BitTorrent, and he spoke so quickly that I didn’t understand what he said. “Bit turner? Huh?” I responded. I was very confused. He was obviously confrontational, but I didn’t have a clue what it could be about.

“We found BitTorrent on your computer,” he added. I still didn’t understand the word. He seemed to be so anxious for some kind of angry situation that he was still talking fast.

“OK,” I said. “What is it?” I looked at my computer screen. I don’t know why. I gathered from his attitude that this “bit turner” thing was bad, and my computer must be infected with it.

“Never mind,” he spat, and stormed off.

I sat there a minute wondering, what the hell?

I got up and went to some coworkers. “One of the IT guys just came to me and told me I have . . . bit turner? on my computer. But he wouldn’t say what that means. Is that a new virus or something?”

The coworkers thought for a moment, and then realized the name was BitTorrent. They told me what it was, what it was used for, and I understood what it meant for a corporate IT department to find it on one’s work computer.

I went to the IT department to find the guy who had just come to me, but he wasn’t around. I wasn’t able to find him the rest of that day. I did manage to get up with him the next day, though. I told him I found out what BitTorrent was, and told him that I didn’t know how it got on my computer.

He was in a very different mood this day. He said he investigated it on my computer, (apparently remotely, while I continued my normal work), and found that it seemed to have been installed through some backdoor in the system. No files had been transferred onto or off of my computer. He deleted the program and my computer was clean, now. I thanked him and left.

Then I went to my boss to tell him what IT had found and done on my computer.

“Yeah,” my boss said, “Doug told me he had found BitTorrent, and he was investigating it. Good to know nothing happened with it.” We talked about the situation for another couple minutes, and then I went on back to my work.

So, apparently Doug, the IT guy, had reported the BitTorrent discovery to my boss and to the head of IT, and they said to figure out what was happening on the computer. Neither said to confront me about it – my boss immediately assumed some cyber hacking, rather than any illegal action on my part. Doug’s coming to me and confronting me about it was purely his own decision.

I guess he must have figured that getting me to admit to installing and using the program immediately would be easier and faster than him having to go through the programming of my computer. Well, he didn’t expect to find me completely ignorant of what the hell he was even talking about.

I sometimes wonder how that confrontation would have gone differently if I had known what BitTorrent was, even if I didn’t have anything to do with it getting on my company computer.

Bullgrit

I haven’t had a soft drink/soda in going on 9 years; I decided to give up my Mountain Dew, Dr. Pepper, and Coke addiction when our first child was still little. I didn’t need all the bad gunk, (caffeine, sugar, etc.), and I figured it would be easier to keep our (then only) child from getting into them if he didn’t see me always drinking the stuff. I talked about quitting cold turkey here.

Several months ago, I discovered Tropicana Light Orangeade. It comes in a 20 oz bottle, has no caffeine, and only 10 calories per bottle. It actually tastes really good, and so it immediately became my personal little treat to satisfy my sweet cravings without injecting a bunch of sugar into my system. It served as my stereotypical “beer” each evening when I got home from work. I’d pull into the garage, get out of my truck, open the garage refrigerator, grab a bottle of this orangeade, and walk into the house.

But then it stopped showing up in stores. It disappeared from everywhere we had previously found it. Turns out, Tropicana stopped making the drink. Well, damn.

I went a few weeks without having my liquid cheer, and then I was introduced to Fanta Zero Orange drink: sugar free, 0 calories, looked promising. But how did it taste?

The carbonation shocked me. I know that’s a strange concept, but really, it did. I haven’t had a single swig of anything carbonated in almost a decade. My palate has long sense forgotten the sensation, so the fizz and bubbles totally caught me off guard. I actually had the reaction you see on TV and in movies when someone throws back a shot of whiskey for the first time.

But otherwise, it’s good. I decided to give this a shot at being my “evening beer,” and although it took a few cans to get over the carbonation sensation, it’s serving me well.

* * *

As a family, we usually drink water with our meals. (Plus some milk and/or juice at breakfast.) Neither of our boys drinks any kind of soda, and only rarely will I drink tea. (Ice tea, sweet, the way God makes it, naturally.) Judging from the way some restaurants, (mostly of the fast food variety), we must be the only people in America who drink water with our meals.

Whenever we order something that can come as a single, (like a sandwich), or as a combo, (like a sandwich and drink), it seems to throw the order-taker for a loop when we turn down the “deal.” Yesterday, I actually had to explain my decision to the cashier when he tried to explain to me how we’d get the drink with the food due to the day’s special deal. We made our order at one end of the line, and then when we and our food reached the check out, the guy automatically handed us soda cups, (instead of the water cups we know they usually give for water).

“We’re just getting water,” I said.

“But,” he said, “you get a drink with the meal today.”

I looked up at the sign announcing the daily deals, and saw the price. Sure, the food-and-drink deal was cheaper than normally buying the food and drink individually, but it was still a buck higher than just the food and water. (The drinks are normally $1.50.) I’m not all that tight with my money, but this would be four bucks more for something we didn’t want and wouldn’t get. It’s the principle of the thing.

“No,” I said, “we don’t want the daily deal. We just want waters.”

“Really? he said, astonished.

“Yes, we just want waters.”

“OK, well, you can still use these cups to get water,” he said, and tried to give me the big cups.

We go to this restaurant a lot, so we know how the system works. “You probably should just give us the water cups, since we aren’t paying for sodas,” I said.

The teenager at the register shrugged his shoulders and traded the big soda cups for the smaller, clear water cups. He then told me the price of our meals.

I looked at the register screen. “You charged us for sodas,” I said. We’ve been there a lot. I know how much our meals usually cost.

“No,” he argued. “The sodas are free with the deal today.”

“No,” I argued back. “How much is a burrito normally?”

“Um, I don’t know,” he said. “Charlie,” he spoke to his coworker, “how much is a burrito?”

Charlie looked over at us and answered, “Something like four forty-nine.”

“And,” I added to the cashier, “how much is the daily special with the drink?”

“Um, I don’t know,” he said. “Charlie…”

I looked up at the daily special announcement: the meal plus drink was $5.55. A dollar more, per meal, for drinks we didn’t want.

Charlie came to the register and listened to the cashier explain the inconceivable concept of how we didn’t want the meal special. Fortunately, Charlie didn’t try to argue with me, and he just altered the sale to the correct amount. I paid, took my water cups and moved on with our food.

Really, that whole exchange was unnecessary. I don’t think the cashier even really understood what my “problem” was. He’s probably still confused about why anyone wouldn’t take “free soda.” I wonder if he ever bothered looking at the prices to see what the meal deal actually was. We don’t drink water to save money, we drink water to drink water. Are we the only Americans who do?

Bullgrit