ganesha the car is overheating and acting strangely, so i took it to jack – the guy i got it from, who owns burien imports – because he said that he would also fix the cigarette lighter which i would use as a power adaptor for my cell-phone, if it worked, which it didn’t, until yesterday.

on thursday, last week, i went to kirkland for their “2nd thursday art walk”. it was raining, and the store that i parked in front of actually closed about half-an-hour after i got there (which meant that nobody was “art-walking” on that side of the street any longer), but on the way there, i had to fight with traffic and deal with the fact that ganesha the car was overheating. then, when i decided that the kirkland 2nd thursday art walk had run its course, i had to fight traffic again going the other way (which is only possible because seattle has the worst traffic ANYWHERE on a pretty regular basis) and it’s a miracle that i made it home without breaking down, even with the heater turned up all the way and the fan on full blast… 8(

of course by the time i took it to jack’s shop, yesterday, it wasn’t overheating at all, which was a good thing, since jack wouldn’t look at it anyway, because “it’s not an import” which means that he doesn’t even have a shop manual for it. i left it with him anyway, because he said he was going to fix my cigarette lighter problem, and went out for a perfectly timed day on the bus.

i took one bus into downtown seattle, from burien, got off it, and almost immediately got on another bus to fremont, where i picked up my shoes from the shoe-repair guy. i then relaxed, smoked a bowl, and caught a bus back into downtown seattle, where i wandered the pike place market for a while, talked with the flute-maker with whom i interacted earlier this week when he picked up something that i put on freecycle, got some lunch and then caught a bus back towards burien, which, strangely enough, was being driven by a guy that plays in la banda gozona with me. i made it back to burien, where i wandered around for a while, went to my appointment with ned, and then called jack who had my car ready. i then got on another bus back to jack’s shop, and got home around 6:00. at no time during the course of the day did i have to wait longer than 5 minutes for a bus… which sort of makes me wonder why we have so many traffic problems around here…

in spite of the fact that “it’s not an import”, jack had some insight as to what might be wrong with the car, specifically the thermostat is probably acting sluggish, which would make sense: i hadn’t driven it for a few days before thursday, which is when it started acting strangely, and i have driven it every day since then, which is why it’s not acting sluggish now. he also said that the exhaust manifold needs a new gasket, which he said he could replace for a “couple hours” of labour… he did show me the exhaust manifold, however, and showed me what i had to do to replace the gasket, so i’m thinking…

now i’m going to go to the auto-parts store and purchase a shop manual for my car, and get the low-down on replacing an exhaust manifold gasket.