CRZ is Christopher Robin Zimmerman

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23.12.16 18:13

Merry Festivus!!

22.12.16 14:19

Classic "glass half full/glass half empty" test from Kris: "Well, your bathtub didn't get as purple as I thought it might've"

21.12.16 21:59

WHAT THIS NEVER HAPPENS

21.12.16 21:34

Way ahead of schedule - thanks PokÃ©mon GO Plus!!

21.12.16 20:46

WOLVES WIN!!!!!!!!!

20.12.16 11:23

OH MY GOD I JUST RESERVED A POKÃ‰MON GO PLUS WHAT'S WRONG WITH ME

18.12.16 16:20

https://www.facebook.com/CRZed/posts/10154907620869791

18.12.16 14:42

To The Facebookâ„¢! ...the cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems

18.12.16 13:56

Rather than show you a screen shot of today's low temperature, I'll make my yearly "downstairs toilet's pipes are frozen, please only use the upstairs toilet" announcement

18.12.16 02:10

Somehow I spent the entire day with Kris - must not make that a habit

17.12.16 18:46

What can I say? EVERY year. Dude loves this hat

15.12.16 17:04

Again, when it's cold, EVERYBODY'S car breaks. AAA could get a guy to my place for three hours plus after I finally woke up and put in the call. THIS guy couldn't put on the spare, but he filled the tire with air and it didn't seem to IMMEDIATELY deflate, so I hoofed it to Schmelz to bend over.

Welp, they resealed the bead AGAIN and, because they wanted to charge me twice, found another slow leak in ANOTHER tire requiring a fix. So that was $40. Almost not too bad. BUT THEN the tech saw a lot of oil leaking from my car which I hadn't noticed before - the did some exploratory diagnosticatin' and the bottom line is I now get to enjoy the privilege of dropping off my car next Tuesday for an appx. $750 parts+labor job to replace an....you know, I just don't care. I feel like new car payments would be less than 750 except I'd have to pay them EVERY month instead of, what, every four months? Arrrrrrrrraaarrarrarrrrarrrarrrrrrrgh.

(I'm also tempted to pick up an air compressor at Menards for the garage, just on the off chance I find this tire flat AGAIN and don't want to call AAA yet again...whereupon they'll decide maybe it's the rim causing all this and I should get a new one of THOSE - hmm, wonder what they cost)

In short, I pretty much hate life and everything but thank GOD I have these exciting stories to share with you

14.12.16 22:20

Tire's flat again. I take back everything nice I said about Bobby & Steve. Can anybody drive me and Kris to Transmission?

14.12.16 18:19

FUCK YEAH PIKACHU WITH SANTA HAT

13.12.16 23:33

Look, I love my car. You love my car. There's a lot of love for my car, and like 85% of the time that's all we have is that love. But you've read about it here before and probably will again - sometimes it is so, so aggravating to continue to have this car in my life.

I'm still not exactly sure what caused my drivers' side front tire to be perfectly fine last night and COMPLETELY flat this morning. I mean, -10Âº MAY have contributed, sure. I have driven with low pressure before and this wasn't it - this felt more like the rim riding I mistakenly did in Livermore in the ol' '63 Beetle. I pulled over and checked - yep, flaaaaaaaaat.

This is where I refer you back to this morning's status for the exciting details of how great my spare held up (seriously, that vintage 2005 Michelin is probably the best tire I currently own, even with ... what, 20 miles on it now) and fast forward to 6.30 when they FINALLY told me the tire was repaired. I'm still a little fuzzy on what exactly happened - their paper says "bead leak" so I guess there was a bead leak, which they fixed, then they did their fancy "computer balancing" and reseated it on the rim. This was all well and good, but the tire was at Bobby & Steve's Auto World and the car it needed to be on was not. They're open until 10, but procuring an open bay for the install was said to be challenging. They recommended I try "between 8.30 and 9" so I talked Allison and Soren into watching me eat some tripe at Phá»Ÿ 79 and we talked long enough for me to end up at BSAW at 9, where I was asked to make use of the waiting area.

Despite over 12 years in Minneapolis, this was my first extended visit to the true winter wonderland that is Bobby & Steve's. It probably would have felt a lot more festive if they didn't need to keep their inflatables constantly inflated via some REALLY LOUD AND WHINY air blowing thingamjigs. I kinda sorta caught up with the Timberwolves game via Twitter - by the way, when I watch 0 minutes, the Timberwolves are WAY more likely to come back from 21 down and beat the Bulls, we learned - and it was closer to 9.40 by the time I was called down because the spare was back under my trunk and the old tire was back in place. I don't know if it was sympathy or just excellent BSAW customer service, but not only did they come through with their original quote of $29.99+tax out the door but they ALSO gave me a box of chocolate covered cordial cherries (value: no clue) AND a free top of the line "World Wash" at their car wash (value: $15.99) to boot!

Of course, here was my fatal mistake and the reason I'm writing to you now: yes, I opted to use the car wash code.

You know how these things work - I mean, I thought *I* did - you gently steer your car into the channel and little rolly things move you through the dazzling light show, foam, water and hot air and your car comes out (mostly) clean. SOMEHOW, my front wheel - because of course it would be the one I just had fixed - somehow, it never set correctly in the channel - almost as if it were precariously balanced on top. I'm pretty sure this isn't possible. I have no idea. What I DO know is - look I know I'm doing a lot of these inter-sentence dash pauses but I need to stress that this felt impossible, yet definitely happened - after a much longer than normal pause and nothing happening, suddenly the entire car HOPPED out of the channel, turned left and got stuck. Yet the back tires were still trying to be pushed along by the conveyor.

What does one do when you're stuck in an automated car wash? I laid on the horn for a while, got out, evaluated the situation, naively thought maybe I could somehow drive the car back to where it was supposed to be, finally spun SOME tire enough to make some interesting smoke and attract some human attention. For the first time in my life, I saw a big red "emergency stop" button pressed.

I was stuck and stuck good. The guy REALLY wasn't sure how they were gonna work out of this one. He was joined by another fellow - and another - eventually we had four men, two jacks (because they keep one around that doesn't work for some reason), a rather largish piece of wood which they apparently keep around because this happens "at least once a day" (which made me feel a LITTLE better) although not as bad as how I'd managed (which made me fail to feel a little better) but FINALLY they managed to jack up the car enough to stick the giant piece of wood under my tire and allow me to verrrrrrrry slowly drive the front left tire BACK into the channel, back out, and start over, being very, very sure to not touch a DAMN thing - wheel, pedals, windows, play button on my iPod, NOTHING - until the green light telling me to slowly drive past the air blowers was displayed. The two limo drivers who had now waited 20 minutes for the damned yellow Beetle with Pikachu in the back window and probably paid SOMETHING for their car washes finally took their turn. I drove home and tried to decide whether or not I'd trashed my alignment and if the tire would just be flat AGAIN in the morning.

I'm tempted to go out to the garage and look right now, but I think I'll wait and be surprised in seven hours. Yeah, I got another 7am meeting on Wednesday.

I would still recommend Bobby & Steve's for fixin' a flat...just be careful with the add-ons.

OK, there's my thousand (now 1027) words. Next time I'll just take a picture. GOOD NIGHT

(Pikatuu IS a hell of a lot cleaner.)

13.12.16 22:08

Guys I can't make this up - my car is stuck in the Bobby & Steve's Auto World car wash

13.12.16 21:28

WOLVES WIN!!!!!!!

13.12.16 14:41

Ollie's given me a lot of free (and some not free) entertainment over the years so I'm delighted to pony up some cash for him now that he's down one toe. Wait....I could have said that better. Anyway, please give if you can and Share if you can't!

13.12.16 11:12