So, light posting this week, I think.  The campus has emptied-out for thanksgiving break, and I’ve been taking these first few days to sneak in a little work on my own dissertation, although probably beginning today I’ll also need to get going on my teaching work for next week.  I’ve to return a huge stack of papers right after break.

Since I’ve been mostly just working the last few days, fixing up this (horrible) chapter to give it to my adviser, there’s not much interesting social news to report.  In fact I’ve been kind of enjoying a little quiet isolation.

There is however one piece of not so very great news: the car is, apparently, dead.

Ok, not dead so much as ‘irreparable,’ which is almost as bad.  Apparently my beloved red hatchback is burning oil and has bad compression in a cylinder or two, and can’t be fixed short of an engine overhaul or replacement for  $2000+ (more than the value of the car).

But the good news is that, actually, the car still works.  The engine likes to stall when it’s cold (it’s easy to restart when this happens), and now it likes also to stall when it’s really hot (and when this happens you need to wait a few minutes or sometimes an hour or more to start it again).  So it still seems to work for short trips, sort of.  Especially if you drive the speed limit, keep the heater on, and don’t accelerate too hard.  The most delicate sort of freedom!

So, until the thing falls apart completely, it may still be serviceable for picking up groceries and such.  For cheap thrills it’s possible to drive up to North Prospect (where I picked up the new tmbg and Brian Wilson’s _Smile_ last night), and contemplate the possibility of stalling out on the overpass above I-74. which I always imagine would be so very much fun.

Anyway, so I’ve been thinking about whether I could do without a car, if/when it might be necessary to do so.  Probably the answer is yes.  As long as my landlord lets me stick a washer/dryer in the basement, the only need for a car would be to pick-up groceries.  Schnuck’s and County Market are only about a 20 minute walk away, however.  Not so bad really.  Jerry’s IGA promises to deliver groceries (but only to the “house-bound”?) for an $8 delivery fee. 

And I noticed too that the Prarieland Community Supported Agriculture collective distributes shares of groceries just a block or so away from my house.  I’m always sort of fascinated by the prospect of buying a share of  produce from the organic farm that grows stuff for the PCSA.  The idea is that I’d give them $405 for my 33 week share, and then each week I could pick-up my portion of groceries, fresh from the farm, and just down the street.  The food you get depends on what’s in season.  A week of August produce would look like this, while one from October might look like this.  These look pretty good, don’t you think? 

On the other hand, it’s not quite cheap, and I should perhaps be realistic about my ability and willingness to consistently cook up and use all this interesting produce.  I can see myself ordering all this and then still surviving on delivery or bar food, which would not be good.

Further assisting carless survival might be the new downtown bakery slated to open soon.  This will hopefully be an improvement over the weird Persimmon grocery, where I swear they will try to make you pay eight dollars (or, ok $7.50+tax) for a loaf of bread.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 24th, 2004 at 12:39 pm and is filed under lived experience. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.