I'll try to keep what would be a lengthy update brief. Regarding the rental house fiasco, we went to court. I accompanied my father to the wood-paneled courtroom in my county's courthouse and waited for the happy couple to arrive. Thankfully only the guy did. The girl not only didn't show up, she didn't even respond to the court papers delivered to her (where you normally plead your guilt or innocence). As a result, all charges against her were applied by default. That meant that the guy (who wasn't there for most of the awful things that happened to our house) was alone to defend against our slew of pictures and bills and receipts.
In the end we won the case hands-down. The court even awarded us our filing fees and court costs, too, so we were quite happy. We told the guy later (with whom we were very civil) that we were sorry it came to this, and if he wanted to he could go after the girl in court on his own. "Believe me," he told us, he's "thought about it."
So that was a huge relief for my father and mother. It was also a big weight off of my shoulders, although my parents both say they doubt we'll ever get a cent out of that worthless girl. But she has the charges against her, so anytime she applies for a loan or anything else the banks will know.
In the meantime I've been cleaning up the fruit room downstairs (the one they tore through), and it has been fantastic learning so much about its contents. Even the stuff that wasn't taken out of the boxes I made sure to inspect, and I've gained so much knowledge about my family's history. Some of the things were sad (hand-painted canvases from WWII Japan of Mt. Fuji tossed on the ground like scratch paper, one of my grandpa's baseball uniforms from the 1940s crumpled on the ground under a chair), but some of the things were fantastic (pictures I never knew we had, plates from my great-great-grandparents, etc.). It was so touching at times to hold something I knew my great grandmother held nearly a century ago, and it was beyond moving to find my father's baby books diligently filled with my grandmother's beautiful cursive. She kept the books so detailed because when my dad was born my grandpa was away in Korea during the war. There were a few times when I was almost moved to tears.
But as of right now the house is put back together. I spent so much time during my winter break and on weekends since then painting, scrubbing, fixing things, redoing the floors, on and on with my parents, and I'm happy to report that we have two great renters back in the house---one of whom was my mom's physical therapist when she broke her hand a while back.
Another project of mine has been to ready the Honda S90 to come to school with me. Especially now that I know I'll be in this town again next year for medical school, it's been fantastic to get the old thing running consistently to be able to bring it. I'll have to post some pictures soon, but with any luck the bike will be brought here on Sunday via a friend's truck.
Another fun project I undertook during spring break was to use Craigslist to hunt down an old helmet I've been looking for. Given its perfect shape for the task at hand, I spent all week stripping it down and repainting it in the iconic paint scheme of Ayrton Senna. It turned out unbelievably well, but I still have quite a bit of touch-up to do as well as applying the sponsor decals. So pardon the roughness, as it was my first ever helmet paint job, it's not done yet.
I'll try to keep this post short, so that's about all for now. I've also been writing quite a bit for F1 Austin, and as always you can follow my F1 and life musings on Twitter at @WoodsiesGarage. More to come soon, my friends!
