AAA

Got some stuff done today.  The first order of business was shoveling mud off the small concrete "driveway" in front of our garage.  My garage.  Shoveling mud off the small concrete "driveway" in front of my garage.  We... man, this is hard.  I live on a dirt road, and a lot of dirt has washed down in front of the garage with the heavy rainstorms we've had over past weeks.  So I shoveled a bunch away, then worked out how to use the power washer and washed off the garage door.  Then I tackled the car: got out the shop vac I brought home on Friday and sucked up a lot of straw out of the minivan, and I'm still not sure why there was straw in the minivan - possibly plants that Jerry ordered were packed in straw?  Finally got out the last of the pine needles from our last Christmas tree.  I so vividly remember taking that tree to the tree mulch pile at the township recycling center with Jerry not long after he was diagnosed with cancer, and crying because I was so afraid it could be our last ever tree.  And I was right.  So anyway, pine needles gone, straw gone... I went through a wooden box (an old Baltic birch drawer someone put together in the shop years ago when we made drawers out of Baltic birch) that I always assumed contained stuff it was important to have in the car, and found, yes, some important stuff, but also broken cassette tape boxes, various caps Jerry hadn't worn in years, random notes and other things that had been stuffed into the box for lack of a better place to put it in the moment and never taken out of it again.  So I cleared that out too and reloaded it with the car-related stuff.

And when I was done I just wanted to show Jerry, because I think he'd be pleased at how much neater the car is now.

As I looked at the car, I realized I had no idea where the spare tire is - I mean, I have some vague recollection that there's a compartment in there somewhere, but I didn't know where exactly it was, even though I know I've seen it (among other things, there was that time we were driving to Alabama on I-65 and got a flat).  Which caused me to remember once again how hopeless I am about cars, and how little I know about them, and how really screwed I'd be if something happened to the car, which as it is is almost 12 years old.  So when I came in I went online and joined AAA.  (I know they're politically and environmentally horrible, and with some googling I've found some alternatives, but right now I need to deal with what I need to deal with and am not going to deal with what I can't be thinking about right now.  So it's done.)

I've been stymied in my attempt to upload the video of Jerry leading 77 at Lookout Mountain last year.  The ripper program doesn't like something about the disk.  Ah well...

And Jerry's PC now will not go on.  I hope I can sort this out - I just want to make sure I get all the photos off of it.