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What did you do this week?
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!
Waited to see if I can make it to next grade and I, along with most people in my class can, although, given my (and likely most people in my class) motivation to do stuff sank pretty low now that we're at home, I admittedly chalk this to the state and the teachers.
I also went to the psychologist early this week.
Context, also venting
Wasn't my first time there actually. Mainly because after the first time I went there, my mom felt like my father could & should take me there. My father felt otherwise, and when the day came, didn't take me there and my mom argued with him later that day for that. Thing is, if my mom handed that to me, I would probably have done that. First time I actually felt actually sad/bummed out hearing my parents argue.But anyway, my mom ended on the note to schedule getting new glasses next day, which was a rainy day, so my father had to take me there. I interpreted this as her telling us to reschedule the psychologist appointment, so I accidentally did that.
Since I only have 30 minutes of time with her every 2 weeks unfortunately, it will take a while to get over the introduction stage where she can give me proper advice, although it's nice to talk about personal matters to someone IRL.
Anyway, we celebrated Christmas
(technically we celebrated the end of Christmas eve but noone has time for that type of pedantry)by going to a typical Brazilian grillfest and dinner with (part of) the family and generic Brazilian pop music. A few people had a few... (...toy bombs?) to try out, some of which were actually pretty powerful. Anyway, I personally don't enjoy this type of thing a lot, so I spent a lot of my time on the laptop my uncle had there until my parents left. (Which was around 2 AM.)The smallest cat we have here at home disappeared for a few days but returned today, so that was definitely one wholesome thing for Christmas today.
Lastly, I've made one of the many alt accounts I plan to and put it in the password manager I picked, which was BitWarden. I also made a Protonmail email account to host all those alt accounts (although I admittedly would have liked to have made more than one but those options seem to be paid, which is fine, but I'm not working age.)
Besides the usual, I finally got around to taking a melodica apart to fix a stuck note and also tuned it. It takes some patience and trial-and-error since you have to file down metal reeds a little, put it back together, and check the tuning again to see how it changed. But it sounds much nicer.
Today we had a video chat with my brother's family. My wife baked some bread and we will be taking it over to her sister and her boyfriend's family, which is pretty large. They invited us to dinner but we are not doing that!
Outside the usual xmas holiday stuff, the start of the week was an interesting one.
On Sunday I met up with the guys to disassemble, transport, and reassemble a large wooden play house/swing set combo for my near-as-makes-no-difference niece. In the backyard where we picked up the swing set was a Nissan/Datsun 280Z (not the same car as I didn't take a photo) being restored, being one of my friend's attainable dream car this set forth a chain of events that had ups, downs, sleeplessness, surety it was a scam, and ultimately a renewed faith in humanity...
The S30 chassis (the Nissan/Datsun 240/260/280Z cars) has been creeping up in price over recent years with even rusted out examples commanding several thousand dollars. Nonetheless my friend did another search Monday night because the car had been on his mind since Sunday's chance meeting. Lo and behold, he finds an ad that is short on pictures, details, has the model name wrong (listed as a 280ZX which is a different car entirely), but the picture shows a 1977-1978 280Z sitting on cinderblocks with the hood removed and a description listed as some "Motor transmission is there, interior salvageable, $500 today or goes to the scrap yard tomorrow."
$500 for a doesn't-look-too-bad attainable dream car restoration project? Sign us up!
10pm Monday I get message from the friend with a screenshot of the ad.
11pm he's confirmed it's still available.
Midnight we're figuring out how we're going to get it as we presently do not have a working truck or trailer at all. Have figured out that the wheel bolt pattern for it matches the wheels on my limousine, lugnut thread pitch matches my Z32, so just awaiting the word on where we can pick up the car and searching for 24 hour truck/trailer rental places (they don't exist any longer).
1am and the seller is willing to drive it 30 minutes from wherever it is located (about two hours from us) to my friend's grandmother's house by tacking on $150 to the price. So we're up to a $650 dream car purchase in the middle of the night.
2am and my car is loaded up with tires, tools, and lugnuts. Just awaiting an address to meet the guy and help him put it on a trailer (since it doesn't have wheels he can find) or just over the hills and through the woods to grandmother's house. Seller says he'll need some time so how about we meet at 6am. We agree and I go get two hours of sleep before needing to pick up my friend and head towards the countryside.
4am grab friend.
5:30am arrive at grandmother's house.
6am no car.
7am no car, phone call from guy saying his truck wouldn't start, sounds like a "good ol' boy", but sounds genuine, one of his workers from his shop is coming by so he'll be late.
8am no car.
9am no car, text says they're loaded and stopping for fuel. This entire time we've offered to meet him, help load it onto the trailer (would have been miles easier with wheels on it), but turned down. Don't even have an address where the car was located. Discussion about this being one of those people that get off posting scam ads wasting people's time starts.
10am no car, no longer answering texts or calls.
11am no car, decide 5 hours late is enough, 2 hours since last contact, leave money with friend's sister with instructions that "if they show up and can get the car off the trailer give them the money and have them sign the bill of sale", head back to town, sleepless friend goes to work, I go back home.
Noon nothing.
1pm nothing.
2pm friend says he gets a call from a different number, guy identifies himself as "the guy from the shop helping him with the car", says they're on their way. Friend just says "yeah okay, you know where to take it the car", scam assumption continues.
3pm nothing.
4pm nothing.
5pm I receive a perfectly framed picture of the car, on the trailer, sitting on the logs used to roll it onto the trailer, with grandmother's house in the background. The gold ol' boys turned out to in fact be good ol' boys and came through, just late and a bit shit at communicating.
So a new car joins our pack to make it an even baker's dozen between the three of us. We have our hands full, plenty of things to work on, and are happy as a lark. Good story to add to the collection, good times to still be had.