BowerBlog

If you think mechanics have it easy making a living, think again. This is just an example of what I/we have to put up with at work sometimes. This vehicle came in yesterday for a no-start. The guy that owns it is half-crazy and lives in his van. He’s been here several times before and we always cringe when we see him coming, but he pays his bills in cash and never argues about the price.

If you’re at all familiar with full size vans, in order to do anything to the engine short of checking the oil, you have to go inside the van and pull the engine cover off. (We refer to it as a “dog house”) This is what I found when I opened the door of the van.

 How would you like to have to crawl inside this thing and practically have to put your head on the floor to get to the engine? I wore double rubber gloves and put an old set of overalls on to work on this. It took me almost an hour to move enough junk that I could actually get to the doghouse to remove it! Here’s what the back looked like:

Good morning all!
Well, once again, it’s been ages since I’ve updated the site, but then again, I’ve been a busy little boy

To begin with, I got my first paying client for C-Digital Imaging last night. KB Performance Marketing is paying me to design and write a website for their client Bryan Sebetto, a sprint car driver. I presented the owner with several themes, she decided one one and we settled on a preliminary price to get the basic site up. Of course, being as I’m just starting out, I had to low-ball the price way below the going rate, but it got me the job and will hopefully lead to others. For the amount of time it will take to get this done, I’m going to lose money, but I gotta do what I gotta do to get started. As long as they are happy with my work, I think I can count on them to help promote my services.

I’ve also be quite busy at the shop and helping out SR as he still only has use of one arm. It’s amazing how simple tasks can become nearly impossible with one arm disabled. You don’t realize what it’s like until you experience it. The whole situation has really opened my eyes as to what permanently disabled folk must go through every day.

Of course, there’s always my News-Messenger blog to get done, which I had gotten way behind on. Luckily the new city editor is quite understanding and allowed me to miss a few weeks of posts without dropping my blog.

With all the pressure I’ve been under, I’ve decided I need to make a few minor changes in my life. I understand that there are folks under way more pressure than I every day, but for me, this has been a fair amount of stress lately. I’m going to try to not take things so seriously from now on. After all, the sun will still rise tomorrow no matter what happens and life itself is pretty much a joke in the first place, so why be so serious about everything? I’m going to try to spend less time at work and more time with those I care about and more time on my business (which I enjoy doing). I’m going to try to start treating people as they treat me instead of cowing down to even those that I know would never treat me the same as I do them. For example, I have some friends/customers that have no use for me until they need something done to their vehicle or computer. I always jump right to it when they need something done and that’s going to stop. I don’t need users in my life; they will get treated by me as they treat me. Really, it boils down to the fact that I need to have a little more respect for myself. I can’t expect anyone to have respect for me if I don’t have it for myself.

OK, down off my soapbox now I’d best get to work, I have a couple of big jobs to get done today. Everyone have a great weekend and hopefully I’ll have time to post more often.

As Always,
Chris

Man O Man, what a January this has been!
Hi all, sorry for not posting for a while, but things have been just a bit busy in my neck of the woods. So many things have happened this month with so many highs and lows that my head is still spinning
Where do I start? Well, first off, SR’s mother passed away unexpectedly. Then, SR’s daughter got into a serious accident 2 days after the funeral. Then, SR got into a serious accident and totalled out his truck! Take a look at this pic; it’s hard to believe he lived through it!

Amongst all this, there have been numerous small fires for me to put out.

A friend’s furnace went out during some very cold weather, I got it fixed.
There were several emergency jobs at work.
The office at work has adopted me as their IT support guy, so I’ve been running over there all the time.
I’m way behind on my blog posts for our local newspaper.
One of the guys at work got fired and I’ve had to take over some of his duties.
Yada, yada, yada

I’ve pretty much only been to my apartment this month to feed the animals and get cleaned up. The place looks like a bomb went off
Oh wait…..my place looks like that all the time anyways.

However, things seem like they are calming down now. Slowly but surely, the normal routine is returning to everyone’s life. I’ll say one thing about this month; if nothing else it has taught me how valuable the people I love are to my life. I need to make a better effort to let them all know that.

Hopefully I’ll be posting more often now. In the meantime, ya’ll take care!
As Always,
Chris