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Hello, my name is Judas Gutenberg and this is my blaag (pronounced as you would the vomit noise "hyroop-bleuach").



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   the limits of tool rental
Thursday, March 10 2011
It was a warmish though dreary rainy day, and I had the job of dropping off the household tax information (as assembled by Gretchen) at the offices of our accountant. Our taxes are probably simple enough for us to do them (I did my own back when I lived in Charlottesville), but Gretchen has a long history of outsourcing that job, and so it continues.
While I was out, I dropped by the tool rental place out on 9W north of Lake Katrine to see if they had tap and die sets to rent. I really want to fix the fucked-up threads around the rangefinder plug in our fuel tank before our next fuel delivery arrives. But once I'd made it past the scary-looking (though friendly) shop boxer dog, the guy running the place said that his place no longer rents such small tools. One assumes small tools are subject to the sorts of damage and loss that can't always be determined upon return. So if I want to fix that hole, I'll have to buy a two inch hole tap that costs at least $50 or else risk a fuel leak that could prove much more expensive. Of course, the good thing about a tool so large and obscure is that, even when used, it has high resale value on Ebay.
I was so hungry as I drove around that I had to stop somewhere for food, though vegan options along 9W aren't great. I ended up at the Hudson Valley Mall of all places, and there's a Chinese place in the food court where the egg rolls are supposedly vegetarian. Being egg rolls, they may actually contain some of their namesake non-vegan ingredient, but they do not look like or taste like they do, and today that was good enough for me. Some kerfuffle had occurred just before I showed up, and there were four or five police conferring with mall security about fifty feet away as I waited for my second egg roll to be prepared (there had only been one in the egg roll basket, and I'd requested two).


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