1993-10-28 Woozle writes to Rebekah

Dear Rebekah,

I haven't sent you the first $100 I promised, and we may not even be able to send it this Friday. Rather than just lie low and not say anything until I'm finally able to cough up the checque, I thought I'd give you a status report.

The proximate cause of all this was that I needed to pay Dan (bass player) sooner than expected for the tape deck he's selling me, which in turn was due to the bank giving him flack about a mortgage because they're trying to stall for time until the interest rates go up again, but that's a long story. Suffice it to say that he really needed it right then, but if you need payment #1 I should be able to borrow that much back from him now because his crisis has passed.

Meanwhile, the Dodge is paying me back for the past two years of neglect; it died in the middle of a busy intersection at the bottom of a hill during rush hour yesterday morning (after they'd already fixed it once). They got it running again, but now there's some sort of engine-electrical problem for which I have to take it up the road tomorrow morning to this guy who has a tuning 'scope.

And sitting patiently in the queue behind all this is Livia's car (the Ford Taurus), which needs some suspension work; the steering wheel groans like a sick mule, and the brakes squeak even when they're not being used. I repaired 2 or 3 bad radiator hoses a couple of weeks ago, but the cooling system should probably be checked out & flushed -- and of course the whole thing is slightly overdue for an 8k-mile checkup. The engine also sounds rather rough.

Not that I'm complaining or anything. The positive side to all this is that (1) we've started to make small dents (pockmarks, really) in our credit card bills, (2) the Taurus will be paid for this February, and (3) we've finally started taking care of these things we've been dreading (car & cat repairs). Livia gets paid $400 tomorrow, but most of it has to go for The Monthlies: health & car insurance, car & college loans, and credit cards. Things should start looking up in November, assuming no new surprises await us.

In other news of recent vintage, Brian Pope's music fest across the street seems to have been a great success. There were a few minor snafus, but I think everyone enjoyed themselves and there were no reports of anything getting out of control. There wasn't even noticeable litter the next morning.

Also, the deck hasn't collapsed any since we last talked, and my mother's gift to Livia and myself, a helmet with a plastic shield (the plastic shield is for me, the new helmet for Livia), arrived the other day. So now we can both have ear protection when a-whacking we go.

I think I'd better get this ready to send now, or you won't be receiving it until next year. If Livia has anything to add when she gets home, she can scribble it at the end.

Cheers,

Nick (& Livia in absentia)