It's been all about the S the last few days.
On Saturday (ironic, it starts with an 'S' day), my battery in my Jeep completely died a sudden death. There was a plastic sleeve attached to the battery that contained the purchase receipt. Purchased in 2002, well that explains it. It took about 10 - 15 phone calls to actually find someone available to take me to O'Reily's (I was trying to work out in concentric circles from my house), but I finally got a new battery. The guy testing the old one simply said, "Yup, it's dead," with a total resignation telling me that there was no hope in rejuvenating it. New battery, check. Now I'm mobile again...
Fast forward to where I'm headed west on Stadium. A loud thunk followed by an instantaneous loss of power steering control, coupled with a drop in battery voltage from 14 V to barely 10 V, and a slowly rising engine thermometer told me something was wrong with the Jeep. I drove to HyVee's parking lot, popped the hood, and to my horror see my shredded serpentine belt wrapped around the fan axle and held tight. This explained everything; the thunk I heard while driving was the serpentine belt coming loose and falling into the fan blades, pulling the belt off the power steering pump (causing a loss of power steering), the alternator (causing the sudden drop in engine voltage). The freezing up of the fan and lack of water pump circulation triggered the slow and steady rise of engine temperature well beyond what an engine should run (had I thought of it at the time, I could have helped ease the engine temp by turning on my heater full blast to dissipate the heat). After Adam helped me replace the serpentine belt, he noticed that the water pump pulley had bad bearings, and so today we towed it to a garage, explained the problem, and asked for a check-up and estimate.
Year two started today, and it'll be fun and challenging. This year is all pathology; the study of the mechanisms of disease. We had a lecture on cellular response to injury, which covered hypoxia, necrosis, apoptosis, and some other fun stuff. We also had two lectures on patient care; one was diagnostic approach to cough and dyspnea (difficulty breathing) and chest radiology (with lots of chest x-ray cases). Fun!
I'm starting to use Tyler's old electric razor. I have been having lots of thoughts on the whole "keep something to remember him by" philosophy. At times I've felt guilty for benefiting through a friend's death, at others happy to help redeem stuff that may otherwise find it's way to the dumpster. There's still several other things sitting around that belonged to Tyler, although most of his stuff is gone. There are a few books that he read portions of, or had plans to read, that his parents left behind. One of them I'll likely read. Some days I look at the remaining stuff that belonged to him thinking he'll still be coming back to pick it up; I'm just borrowing some things, really. At least, without those remnants, it'd be far harder to remember the year we three just finished living together and the life he lived here.
As for the sex, I found this article in the news today. Just a little food for thought. Maybe some of you I know work around teenagers will find it an interesting topic.
