shamoo

Ramblings of the Epitome
2002-11-04 07:13:43 (UTC)

Dave and Busters then I attempt my first motor swap

Nothing too exciting has happened since my last entry, but
I'll try to entertain you with what little I do have.

This past Friday, Amanda, Hannah, and I decided to go out
for a while. The original plan was to get out of New
Jersey because, as Amanda put it, "I need to get out of
this place." Well sure, I was up for anything. We
decided on either New York City, Atlantic City, or
Philadelphia. All pretty crazy ideas, but hey, we were
crazy people. Hannah had called asking if she could
come. We were slightly wary of this idea because her
midnight curfew would surely put a hold on things. Since
we were nice and let her come, our plan of getting out
of "this place" wasn't going to happen. Her Harley riding
mom didn't want her in the city. The plans changed to a
romp in the Garden State Plaza mall, then dinner at
Hooters on Route 17. In the mall, a few of my Revtech
friends called and asked if we wanted to meet up with
them. They were currently in Jersey City (supposedly 20
minutes away) and on their way to Friday's right on Route
17.

We decided to drive to Jimmy's apartment (or a restaurant
near it). After getting lost and making several wrong
turns, we arrived. We were in the restaurant for not more
than 2 minutes when we left again with a small group of
them to go back to Route 17. When we all got to Friday's,
we had a group of about 27 people. The time was also
10:30pm. In an hour and a half, Hannah had to be home.
Great. Having 27 people seated and served at Friday's was
going to take just about 3 years, so we were forced to
leave. On the drive home, I glanced at Amanda a few times
and saw that tired look that she always gets. I felt bad
that we didn't do anything and ended up driving around for
several hours.

Since we were originally planning to have dinner several
hours ago, the two girls were about to chow down on my
leg, so we stopped at White Castle. We couldn't stop at
the White Castle in Sayreville, no sir. We stopped at the
one in the middle of the damn hood in Elizabeth. Two nice
looking preppy girls and an Asian dude. Enter a groups of
brothas. I hear them make a comment on how there's never
white people in this place. I pretended I didn't hear it
and tried my best not to make eye contact with anyone.
Great.

When we waited for the food to come, I watched the lady
make burgers. It's actually quite disturbing watching the
actual burger making process at White Castle. They would
put the burger meat on top of the crusty old burnt onion
squares that she had wiped onto the pan not 2 seconds
earlier. As it was sizzling, she prepared the cooked
ones. For those who wanted pickles, another employee
would shove the pickles into the burgers, which had
ALREADY been inserted into the little boxes. For those
who didn't want onions, the lady would use her crusty
spatula and open the onion fraught burger and scrape them
away. Of course she wouldn't get all the onions off, just
most of them. Now what if I was allergic to onions and I
asked for no onions on my burger? As I bit into the
delicious piece of meat, the solitary onion that she
forgot to scrape off would enter my mouth. As I
pondered "Is that an onion I'm tasting," I would already
be on the floor convulsing until my imminent demise.
Great. Luckily I'm not allergic to anything.

Eating burgers, drinking a 32oz soda, shifting, and
driving wasn't an easy task. However, the epitome had no
problems at all. All of a sudden, while cruising down
Route 9 and minding my own business, a black VW Golf
speeds up behind me and gets next to me. I was greeted by
a nasty sounding engine snort. "Did he just rev at you?"
Amanda asked. "I think so," I replied. Well, of course I
couldn't let this opportunity pass me by. He had to hear
it. I downshifted a single gear and torque lurched at him
and blew off hardcore at him. At the next light, he
asked, "Is that turbo?" I said yes, but I should have
played dumb and said, "What's a turbo?" Haha. Ownage.
He refused to pass me after that and stayed in my blind
spot for several miles until he turned off.

The next day (Saturday), I wanted to go to Dave and
Busters with some of my Revtech and ZoomXNYC friends.
Amanda was supposed to come too, but I knew she wouldn't.
This was confirmed when I was at work, and she said she
had to go to Toms River. Oh well. I wasn't about to go
alone, so I decided not to go. But before I go on, I have
to mention what happened at work.

At my exciting job of being a piano teacher, I encounter
many types of people...usually Asian people, but at times,
people even stranger than that come along. This day, for
instance, I was in the midst of teaching a little girl by
the name of Elija. Now keep in mind, some kids have
talent. Some kids need a little push from me to realize
that talent. Some kids are simply stupid. Elija was
that. She could not grasp simple concepts that a normal 6
year old would understand in a matter of 5 minutes. For
the past 3 weeks, I've been trying to teach her the same
simple thing, but she doesn't get it. All she does is
look at me and nod. ::sigh:: "Do you know what this time
signature means?" [Elija nods] "What?" [Elija shrugs].
WTF? Why the hell did you nod then? Jeez. Today I told
her parents after the lesson that she might be a little
too young to understand what I'm teaching. I let them
know that I would be happy to continue teaching her, but I
don't want to waste their time and money by doing that.
Honestly, most of the time I could care less if they want
to stay with me as a teacher or not. I get paid
regardless of how the student performs. But when the
student is so stupid, the half hour drags on forever.
With the good students, I'm tempted to even give them a
few more minutes, which I usually do if there isn't
another one right afterwards. In any case, the parents
just smiled and nodded at me. I wonder where Elija got
that from. Outside I heard them complain to the manager
about how I had the nerve to tell them what to do with
their child. Haha. What ass clowns. It's not my fault
their child is stupid. Rick, the manager proceeded to
defend me and tell them how I am a concert pianist who has
been playing for many years. He trusts my decision and
would have to agree with whatever I say. He said he would
be happy to refund their money for the remaining lessons
if they so chose. In the end, they said they would try a
few more weeks. Ownage.

Once I got home, I sat myself down in front of the
computer as always and tried to think of something to do.
I wanted to go to Dave and Busters still, but I needed to
find someone to go with. Hannah had called and asked to
hang out, but I didn't want to work out the midnight
curfew again. Eventually, I got in touch with Kevin and
Lance and they agreed to meet up with me at Dave and
Busters when they got out of work. Nice! Five minutes
before I was about to leave, Paul called and said he would
come too. Nice times two! As I was pulling out of my
driveway, my mom ran out and snagged her EZPass. Dammit!

We finally made it to Jimmy's apartment in Jersey City at
9:15pm. Marc had told all of us to make sure we were
there at precisely 9pm. We waited there for a while until
Marc pulled up at 9:32pm. Hugo and T pulled in at about
10:15pm. Very timely, eh? Eventually, we were on our
way. I was the lead pack of 3 other cars. A Nissan
Sentra Spec V, a supercharged XTerra, and a chromed out
Expedition. There was some slight spirited driving, but
not much. When we walked into D&B, we were told that the
under 21 policy ended at 10:30pm every night. We had 3
people under 21, plus Kevin and Lance were also less than
21. After Marc pulled the manager to the side, he let us
in. We didn't even have to pay the cover charge. Kevin
and Lance were nervous standing there. I called to them,
and waved them in past the ID checker, manager, sercurity
guards, and cover charge booth. Nice. Revtech ownz j00.

Dinner was nice. That's what I would say if I even had
dinner. I was there for the drinks. I ordered a regular
coke (hey, I needed something to have my appetizer with),
a tall glass of Long Island Iced Tea, and three Martinis.
It was a fun time as all of us chatted at the table. Soon
we were off to the arcades. I just pulled out some money
from the ATM for Kevin and some more drinks.
Unfortunately, the manager caught on that the under 21
kiddies were still there. They started to kick them out,
so we had to leave too. Damn! Two fresh 20 dollar bills
in my pocket and nothing to use it on. I thought to
myself, "It ended up to be good that Amanda didn't come."

We made our way back to the parking lot where we all
parked to discuss what the plans were for the rest of the
evening. It was still early, with it being only 1:30am.
Haha. Some of the guys wanted to go home, and most of
them wanted to go to Queens where this club would be sure
to let them in. I wanted to go, but Paul wanted to go
home. Since I was his ride, I had to go too. I almost
let him take my car home while I stayed out with the guys,
but I thought better of it. In a few minutes, I realized
that this was a good idea, when my car started to overheat
like a madman with err...and overheating car. Right
before we started driving, Paul took my keys because he
claimed that I wasn't in a position to drive. Sure, take
em. He drove for about 10 minutes before he started
swerving and his eyes started to close. We swapped at a
rest stop where we refilled the car with coolant. The
rest of the way home, the temperature gauge was perfect.
I got home at about 3:30am.

Today was quite a busy day. In the morning, I went to
work for a few hours. After work, I was on the phone
trying to close a deal I made with a GSR motor. After
that, it was off to the internet to do some research. I
was going to attempt this motor swap by myself in my
garage. Kevin was using his Civic HX as a guinea pig. I
was pretty stoked. I got the garage all ready for him to
get here. The tools were all nicely laid out, the air
compressor was ready, the jack and jackstands were
standing at attention, all was set to go.

The actual work was a lot harder than I previously
anticipated. Most people said that taking out the motor
was an hour job. Sure, if you're a pro. The first time I
did a suspension swap, it took 3 days. Now I can do it in
under 30 minutes. This is my first real swap, so I
predict it will take several days as well. The biggest
problem was taking out the axles. I didn't have a ball
joint remover, so Kevin and I laid on the cold cement
hammering at the joint for hours without any success. We
then moved onto disconnecting the wiring harness, intake
manifold, and all the vacuum lines.

Regina stopped by to watch, but she ended up just sleeping
in my family room. Awww. It is now 2:06am. Kevin and
Regina have gone home. I have since given up on taking
out the motor for tonight. My hands hurt from three
pretty large wounds. My hands are dirty and there is
black stuff under my nails. The back of my head has
coolant/power steering residue on it. And I can't take a
shower until tomorrow morning because doing it now would
wake up my parents. Nice.

Looking at Amanda's away message, I can't help but
remember that Incubus song that I used to listen to. Lots
of good stuff came from that song.
"To see you when I wake up
Is a gift I didn't think could be real
To know that you feel the same
As I do is a three-fold utopian dream
You do something to me
That I can't explain
So would I be out of line
If I said I miss you?
I see your picture I smell your skin
On the empty pillow next to mine
You have only been gone 10 days
But already I'm wasting away
I know I'll see you again
Whether far or soon
But I need you to know that I care and I miss you."

::sigh::

Goodnite.




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