Last Thursday I had my friends over and one of them was feeling kinda down because his parents were away and he’s just been alone in his house. Playing Red Faction Guerilla cheered him up and the following day I went over. We hung out and I ended up staying the night which was cool and an achievement for me because sleeping over is something that would have caused me an anxiety attack in the past.

Saturday morning I gave my friend a lift to work and later on picked up a Torx T50 bit. The Fiesta was so dirty that I decided the easiest way to clean it would be to take the seats out. I swear the carpet is designed to hold dog hair. It wasn’t until Sunday afternoon that I’d finished cleaning the car and got the seats back in.

I just read some very old chat logs about a sleep over I was going to have with my friend. We where chatting about what we were going to do and looking forward to it. I remember getting so anxious I felt sick and we had to get his dad to come and pick him up. The closer we got to the sleeping part the more sick I felt but as soon as he was gone I no longer felt sick. The following day I went to the doctors and got diagnosed with Social Anxiety Disorder.

On Monday I took out my grandad and aunty in the Fiesta. I was kinda worried since it was a three door but they got in alright and weren’t thrown about driving down the country roads to get to a river side café. They liked the car and I liked spending time out with them, we had a little walk and some ice cream. Whilst driving there my petrol light came on to indicate the end of its first tank from me. When I got home I stuck it in the garage and left it there until Thursday when the Nissan’s fuel light starting to make itself known.

I took Alex out for a good drive down a local road in the dark. It gets dark early now which is not something I like. I do like the night but I really like early dawn or late dusk where everything is a little dark but you can still see fine without your lights on but everything with a light stands out. The seating position and headlights are both higher than the Nissan and it also has front fog lights which I tried out to light up the side of the road. I turned them off the same time I turn off the full beam.

Today I cleaned the throttle body so now the car’s ECU has to adjust itself. At start it revs to 2500rpm instead of 2000rpm and whilst driving to this road it would idle at 2000rpm in traffic for a little bit. I was experimenting with filming the drive up and down this road which was a lot of fun to drive but the front footage didn’t come out the way I wanted. I enjoyed the road more than the camera did. It’s only been two days and I’ve already used two bars of petrol. My Fiesta has silly digital fuel gauge with bars instead of the common analogue one. I’m not sure if I could watch an analogue gauge go down as I drive it about.

My cousin reminded me that I did buy this car as a toy to have fun in and Alex said that the smile on my face when I fly down a country road proves it. Every weekend since I’ve bought it so far I’ve done some kinda of job to it. Cleaning the throttle body today was easy and only took about 15 mins where as cleaning the interior last weekend took many hours. Either way I got to take something apart and didn’t need help with it. Although taking the passenger’s seat out through the driver’s side would have been a lot easier with another pair of hands.

I’m a lot more confident working on cars now than I was before, this could be because if something goes wrong I have another car I can use until it’s fixed. Every time I work on my car without needed supervision my skill, knowledge and confidence improves. In a few weeks time I’m going to give the car a full service and I’ll see if my friend wants to help me with it, with me being the more mechanical one for once.