Lowered Volvo.

There's been this black-primered lowered Volvo for sale up there in the strip center next to the strip center that has the Video Review in it. It's parked out by the fancy dress store I've never once set foot in, and the dry cleaners, and the whatever else. Regular Volvo, mid-eighties, but painted this badass fierce rad primer black and lowered down onto what somebody who was into this kind of thing would probably say were sweet wheels, or rims, or both. I myself am not a huge cheering fan of the dropping one's automobile down to within an inch and a half of the ground, but I can see how just the technical fiasco involved would be impressive. I spent the better part of seven hours trying to understand and repair shower valve stems today, so I can get half hold of what it would be to take a regular Volvo, stand there and look at it a while, and then decide to see if you could set it down almost entirely onto the ground. The mechanics of such a feat at least seem impressive. Anyway. We were coming back home from one of the many plumbing somewheres and there was an interested party test-driving the lowered Volvo, negotiating gingerly around the treacherous dip at the intersection of Elam and Cornwallis. The lowered Volvo burns oil. The lowered Volvo has one of those mufflers that make your automobile sound like a cross between a sullen eighth-grader and a turkey call. The lowered Volvo has bad shocks: as they went through the dip, the riders bounced around inside of that thing. Get the right dude, and the lowered Volvo is the supreme accomplishment of man. Lunar modules? Air conditioning? Shower stem? All pale compared to the black-primered lowered Volvo wagon.

Truck dead briefly and then resurrected by the good folks down the street at the Citgo, courtesy of a new brake hose something on the driver's front side. I'm waist-deep in a plumbing project I deeply, deeply misunderstand. We were all day long in somebody else's smoke, detritus from down east wildfires. It is surely cooler out than it has been. It continues not to rain. June is supposed to be easy. I had always thought of June as something that might be easy. June is not easy. People are out there making decisions. Test-driving. Imagining. Breathing smoke. Watching the sky. Purchasing for themselves heavy-duty handle-pullers, a tool built precisely for the job that's had them so damn flummoxed all afternoon. Well, friends and fans of weather, my handles are pulled now. Good and. What happens next is anybody's guess.