Rain

Temperature, 75. Humidity, 86%. Chance of rain, 60%. Welcome to another beautiful day in the Magic City. It was supposed to hit 90 today. Yo, Al Gore! You dropped the ball again!

The best way to describe the weather today is that it’s like living inside a damp grey sweater. It’s a shame I quit drinking coffee, because this is one of those days that requires over a quart. And the rest of the week won’t be much nicer.

Naturally, this happened on the very day the pool pump started smoking and quit. Yes, I mean the leaky pump I complained about. Leak fixed; motor dead. What will happen when I replace the motor? Maybe a sinkhole will open up and swallow the pool. I should set up a video camera.

Other irritating things have happened. I had an old JVC shelf stereo I was going to put out in the garage. I sat it on the floor so I could try it out before going to the trouble of rigging shelves. I stuck the CDs from two box sets in the funky 1980s magazine. And things went fine. Next time I turned it on, nothing happened. Yesterday, I gave up, took it apart and got my CDs back. But I have a part left over, and for the life of me, I can’t figure out where it goes. I guess I’m going to have to junk the whole stereo, which is too bad. It was a piece of crap, but it would have been a fine addition to the tool area.

I’ll say this. When you force an old magazine-style CD player open and twist up a lot of the parts, and then you have to straighten the bent bits and put it back together, it’s surprising how useful an ordinary claw hammer can be.

I can probably get a similar stereo for under a hundred bucks. But that ruins the fun of free stuff.

I think my parents paid $800 for this doodad, back in the Reagan years. Twenty watts per channel. Not a good deal.

I guess a magazine CD player is never a good idea. Don’t they always get stuck eventually? When that happens, kiss your CDs or your stereo goodbye. You have to make a choice. This stereo was used very little, but the plastic gears inside it are rough and yellowed. Maybe it was built to self-destruct.

I have a horrible DVD player which I hate. I paid like $90 for it years ago. Panasonic. I should stick it out there after I dump the JVC. Better to have five CDs on a carousel than six in a disk-eating magazine. I’ll still need a receiver. Bet I can find a junker for twenty bucks. Now that I think about it, I have my mother’s ancient CD clock radio, which would probably do the job. The speakers from the JVC are okay, so whatever I do, I won’t have to replace those.

My other plan to gentrify the garage: I want to take my $9 Home Depot fan and put it on a little shelf about six feet from my workbench. I want it situated so I can reach over and turn the knob when I walk into and out of the garage. I’ve found that no matter how miserably hot it gets out there, I can survive with the fan on me.

It’s really going to hurt, throwing that pretty, new-looking free stereo on the trash heap. But you don’t pay a hundred bucks to repair something which is worth fifteen.