Frozed

I just got back from the dermatologist. I procrastinated on my yearly skin cancer screening, because the one thing you should always be sure to do when faced with the possibility of contracting a highly curable cancer is to put off checkups as long as possible.

He froze about half of my head with his little spray bottle and said I could keep the rest of my head until my next visit. More or less.

This is the first time I’ve had to have anything frozen. But none of it was significant, thank God. If there is one time it’s good to have your prayers answered, it’s when you go in to make sure you don’t have melanoma. And I have been spared again. I think he froze three spots. I also showed him a thing on my arm, and he opined that I had self-medicated by scratching it completely off. Now I know how to save money on dermatology. I also rely on Maynard, who likes to walk around on my bare back biting out anything that strikes him as odd or potentially tasty.

One satisfying thing is that my health insurance coughed up part of the fee. With any luck, it will never kick in for anything other than preventive checkups. I know I’ll never break even. But that beats the alternative. God bless them; they can have it all, as long as I stay healthy.

I always get nervous when I go to the dermatologist, because to me, totally harmless skin irregularities and deadly cancers look exactly alike. I guess medical school is worth the money, because my doctor took–no exaggeration–three seconds to check my back and determine that my worst problem was love handles.

I like this guy because he doesn’t wait until the end of the session to tell you you’re not going to die. He looks at a bump, and he says, “This is nothing,” and he whips out the spray.

Sometimes I get the impression that I annoy doctors and dentists by being healthy. They see so many terrible problems, and then I walk in all worried about a new freckle or the mere possibility that I might have a cavity.

Lots of people in Florida die from skin cancer. I had a neighbor who died from melanoma. So even though I had no reason to think I was in trouble, now that I’m clear for another year, I can’t help feeling like I got a second chance at life. Silly, I know. I’m used to having things jump out and grab me without warning. I guess it’s hard to get over that.

I’m going to take another crack at truck shopping. I resisted getting a four-wheel drive because it has more parts to break, and it’s not very useful where I live. But it turns out the other options I want may be impossible to get without four-wheel drive. I also had the ridiculous feeling that I would get lower mileage, but that’s dumb, because there is no reason why the front wheels would have any more friction in their bearings than they would on a two-wheel drive. I don’t know exactly how it works these days. I don’t know whether the four-wheel engagement locks hubs which are otherwise free-spinning, or whether the wheels are rigidly connected to long axles which engage somewhere farther upstream, but the mileage figures show that it doesn’t matter.

I would like to be a useful person. It’s hard to do that with a T-bird. We’re supposed to be good stewards when it comes to money. With that in mind, it could be hard to explain why your only four-wheeled vehicle has two seats and a trunk the size of a kitchen drawer. It would be pretty good for driving lonely flight attendants and swimsuit models around, while explaining why they need to start going to church, but there isn’t much call for that, as far as I know.

I’m trying to make the garage more ergonomic. I mounted my lathe back plate on the wall. I’m planning to put in a second hoist above the mill, so I can move the vise and rotary table on and off the table without popping something vital in my upper body. I need to be able to lift stuff and then move it a couple of feet horizontally. Maybe I should try to hang the hoist on a rail or a jib. It only needs to be capable of lifting a couple of hundred pounds, but the smallest hoists I’ve seen are rated for 1,000. I guess that’s not important.

People have suggested getting a cart I can shove things off on, but a cart takes up a lot of room. Maybe a narrow shelf behind the mill would work, if I fixed it up so it had a part that acted as a bridge to the mill table.

My knurling tool never arrived. The seller had a computer issue. Their software kept telling them it had shipped. The other day they apologized and said it was on the way. I was tempted to ask them if they had actually seen the package, or if they had asked their lying software again.

I finally have drill bits on the way. I found a set of good cobalt bits at a price too low to turn down. The stock market is in the toilet today because retailers are face-planting left and right. Having seen the deals on new and used tools over the last year, I could have predicted that. Sometimes it’s shocking when you learn what startles “experts.”

Yesterday I tried to help my sister with car maintenance. She has a newish BMW 335i. What a horrible car. It has no oil dipstick. I’m serious. If you want to check the oil, you get out the manual and go through a bunch of steps, and three minutes later, the computer tells you not how much oil is in the crankcase, but how much oil it thinks you should add. And you have to run the engine while you do this. The brake fluid is the same way, and the brake reservoir is fixed so it takes a strap wrench. I stuck some oil in the car to keep it from seizing before she took it in for its BMW-endorsed Owner-not-allowed “free” maintenance, but I gave up on the brakes. Hope she doesn’t run into anything.

This car is like a HAL 9000. It talks to you, it tells you what to do, and it ignores your wishes. I can’t stand it. I’m sure it’s great for people who have more money than brains and who trust a talking car and a greedy dealer more than they trust themselves. But it’s not for me. If this thing conks out on a lonely highway, you have to wait for the BMW Luftwaffe helicopter to save you. Give me a car I have a hope of fixing. I just want transportation. Not a new world order. I don’t want a screen in my car coming on every day, telling me I have to hate Goldstein. This car is so authoritarian, overpriced, and hostile to privacy, they should call it the Obamamobile.

I’m glad that health care nonsense is not working out. I’d be on a nine-month freeze-spray waitlist, and if I lived until I received treatment, the government would pay $5000 in other people’s money for the service.