Wednesday - Busy But Good

Today is a very busy morning, followed by a more "sedate" afternoon. Somewhat, at least. That's the goal. I start out by going to the "other" gym because I have a 7:15 am appointment to get my car looked at and I would rather drive to the far ends of the city at 4:30 am than at 6:30 am. Construction - the bane of easy access to anywhere in my metro area - is in full bloom. I'm trying to avoid it. 

Winter is over and Road Construction season is in full bloom.
Orange and black are NOT my favorite colors. 

After the car gets done, I can start my day - grocery shopping and lots of laundry loads. I suspect I'll be drying my final load around dinnertime tonight. It's a crazy day. Still, it could be much worse. The weather will be wonderful and we'll have one of the warmer days of our Spring weather. 

I've been using Spotify for less than a year now, but
I really like it. I can access it at my gym, but it's
easier for me to just use the app on my phone. 

I'll have my earbuds and phone with me, so I can plug into Spotify while I exercise and afterward at the car place. There's nothing quite as boring as a car place when you're waiting for work to be completed, so I can read and listen to music while I wait. 

I have a small Uninterruptible Power Supply from APC on
my computer, and a larger one on DH's computer since his
is on the side of the room where more electronics are located. 

I must have had a power surge last night because my UPS was beeping a continuous beep when I got down to the computer room this morning. I shut it down and then restarted, and it seems to be fine now. I'm crossing my fingers that it remains that way. It's always annoying when it goes off, although it's doing exactly what it's supposed to. 

Happy Wednesday to all of you, and have a great day! 

So have an excellent Wednesday. I'll finally be able to talk with Aearwen late this afternoon after two weeks of messed-up schedules. I can hardly wait to catch up with what's been happening with her. Enjoy your day and I'll be back tomorrow. 

Anniversary and Space - Why Can't Walls Expand When Needed?

We had a lovely and very low key anniversary day wandering the grounds of the Renaissance Festival and watching a very entertaining, if frustrating, football game. All in all, a nice day but very hot. We are having a late-season heat wave with July temperatures in September and even dressed in light-weight outfits, it was stifling when the pub filled with people watching the overtime of the football game. After plays, both good and bad, the game came to an end after a ten minute overtime. Final score didn't matter because it ended up tied. ARGH

Minnesota vs Green Bay has a long history. We're in
neighboring states and it's a treasured rivalry. Everyone
should have brought their "A" games to this one. 

This game was against our arch-rivals, the Green Bay Packers, and was in their home stadium (they'll be visiting our nice, warm, indoor stadium in November - good scheduling for a change. I have to wonder if our field goal kicker will have a job today. He missed three - THREE!!! - field goals yesterday, any one of which would have won the game for us. Admittedly, two were very long - a 48 yard and a 49 yard kick, but the third one, in the overtime portion of the game, was from 35 yards and this one also went wide right. FAIL! 

Diggs performed beautifully, catching some amazing balls such
as this one. Without him, we would have lost the game. Cousins
also did pretty well as quarterback. It was our kicking that
fell short. 

I'm sure Carlson (our kicker) feels horrible, but he just failed massively at the one thing he had been hired to do, and not only failed, but failed three times in a single game. Fortunately the rest of the team managed to get their act together and pulled out the tie. It's not a win, but it also wasn't a loss, so I'll call this week a win/win and look forward to the next game. 

We're supposed to have approx 2-1/2 feet between the two cars
and the cars and the sides of the garage. We actually have a lot
of side room, but it's taken up with things like the radial arm saw
and a band saw, the snow blower and lawn mower, and
various ladders and lumber. We have some serious work to get
done in here before Tuesday night. 

After returning home we measured the garage for the new truck. Oh yeah - DH really liked the truck a lot. Although Joshua would have let us take it home with us that night, We still have work to do before bringing it home, so we'll go back on Tuesday night to do the final paperwork, leave Ghost (the old Saturn) with the dealership, and take away Shadow, our new truck. 

We'll be saying good-bye to Ghost, my mom's old 1992 Saturn. It's time. 

The truck and the garage will be tight. It will barely fit, but once some of the wood for the wood shed gets moved and the extension ladder can move closer to the wall again, the length won't be a problem at all. Width will be a bit different. We both have to be able to get in and out of our respective cars, and if we didn't have the sides of the garage filled with things like the lawnmower and snow blower. Tuesday DH will have to clean out Ghost and work on the garage. It's do-able, but will take some shifting and moving. 

We have a few busy days ahead of us before bringing Shadow home, and our anniversary dinner consisted of Chinese take-out, but all in all, not too bad. I hope your weekend was excellent and that you have a wonderful Monday. I'll be back tomorrow. 

I Love Trucks

Trucks are fun! I had forgotten how much I enjoy pickup trucks, so it was fun to wander the sales areas and to test drive a few models of trucks yesterday. I did come up with two firm recommendations for DH, one of which I'm leaning toward a bit harder. It's going to have to be up to him, though, since it will be his truck. I'm pushing to go test drive the Toyota tonight after work, so we'll see if he ends up in favor of that or not. Guess I'd better get some gas into Minion - I'm low in the tank and I don't want to tempt the traffic jams in the end stages of rush hour. 

I always wanted to drive a Peterbilt top of the line big
rig, but I've never had the opportunity. Oh well, there's
certainly no room for one in my garage. 

Although I've never owned a truck, I've driven quite a few of them over the years ... everything from small pickups to larger hauling vans. I've always found them to be great fun, and would have looked into making a living driving the big rigs if life hadn't thrown other career directions into my path. Admittedly, there's not a lot of commonality between a big rig and a compact pickup truck, but I'll still enjoy driving DH's truck, no matter what model he ends up choosing. 

The Chevy Colorado Extended Cab is one of the two trucks
I looked closer at. I think it would do well for DH, but that he
would get more for his money with the Toyota. 

Yesterday, after my swim, I headed out to do a few errands and to drive over to the two automobile dealerships I had chosen. I wanted to catch the salespeople soon after the stores opened. I planned on checking out Chevy and Toyota trucks. I was leaning toward the Toyota, but had a lovely perk of a $50 gift card of my choice if I test drove a truck at the Chevy dealership. SCORE! I drove a larger Silvarado at the Chevy dealership and loved driving the larger truck, but ended up thinking their smaller truck, the Colorado, would be the best choice for DH. 

I really liked the Toyota Tacoma SR5 Extended Cab. The reviews
were a bit spotty, but I think it will do better at what DH wants
a truck for than the Colorado will (and I loved the color). I really
want DH to take a test drive. 

I then drove over to the Toyota dealership which was hopping. It's one of the largest dealerships in the Upper Midwest and it showed. They had more than 20 salespeople and the desks were pushed in almost randomly. I really liked the salesman who approached me first. He was laid back, not pushy at all, and he had me into the Tacoma and behind the wheel within 20 minutes. Great truck! 

I'm not fond of pushy car salespeople, but really liked the
salespeople I was working with yesterday. The Chevy
woman was from Cornwall, England, and the Toyota man
was from Canada. Lots to talk about outside of cars. 

I'm pushing DH to buy the Toyota because I think it is the superior truck, but I think he would be happy with either one. The reviews are close, the options are close, there are some definite pluses for the Toyota over the Chevy, but it comes down to his choice. After driving them and then coming back home to measure the garage (either one will fit, but just barely!), I was finally able to continue my day's chores, topping my day off with a nice long chat with Aearwen. 

Here's hoping all of you have a wonderful Thursday. It's always best to let DH cogitate a bit, so he'll be thinking about trucks all day and looking things up on his own. Then we'll see what suits him. Enjoy your day and I'll be back tomorrow. 

Catastrophic Failure - What A Mess!

Yesterday we experienced catastrophic failure on two fronts. It was a rather exhausting day. 

If you recall (if I mentioned it - because I really don't remember if I said anything about it in yesterday's blog or not), DH's car is in the repair shop yet again. In mid-afternoon I got a call from the shop. One of the fuel feeds for a cylinder had frozen and needed replacement. It's a four-cylinder engine, and this could potentially happen to the other three cylinders as well in an unforeseen time frame. Finding the part (a very hard thing since the car is 26 years old) and replacing it is $500+. If they did all four now, the repair bill would be closer to $1000! Replacing the one frozen cylinder is $500. Still expensive, and yet another repair for Ghost this year - an occurrence that's becoming too frequent. 

Although Mom's Saturn is one year newer than this one, they're
basically identical. It was part of my inheritance after she passed,
and I drove it up from Colorado and gave it to DH. A free car!
I think we've gotten our money's worth. It's time to find a
truck to replace it. 

After a quick consult with DH where he basically left the decision up to me, I decided to repair the single cylinder. I knew DH wanted a new truck, and just hadn't backed into that wall of "no choice" hard enough yet, but this year has been a series of repairs after repairs after repairs. Frankly, I'm unwilling to pour more good money after bad. So we're getting the one cylinder repaired and it will be ready for pick-up tonight. DH, in the meantime, has told me to choose a new truck for him. I'm busy researching a Toyota Tacoma for him - stripped down and basic, but functional for what he wants to do and affordable. 

Thunderstorms are magic to look at over the flatlands, but not so
much fun to actually experience. It was a wet day at the State
Fair yesterday and at its' height, the storm was dumping some
serious rain down from almost black skies. 

Our second catastrophic failure of the day was caused by storms. During the day we had some really heavy thunderstorms pass through, dumping some serious pounding rain. A lot of lighter rain preceded and followed the storms. It was a very wet and soggy day. When we got home last night, we went out to check the backyard. I pulled a few ripe tomatoes, he checked how well the yard held up through the storms. 

It didn't. Hold up, that is. 

Instead of this photo that I took a month or so ago, this bank
was missing a huge chunk of sod from the center near
that tree, had deep gullies where the water had eroded the
bank, and the bottom was solid, deep mud, almost like
clay in consistency. 

The lower bank where we had worked so hard almost a month ago putting down sod, had lost huge chunks to heavy run-off. Exactly what we were trying to avoid with our reconstruction, happened, and it was a MESS. We worked until there was no more light, repairing the bank where we could, and replacing the washed-away rolls of sodden sod, staking the sod with fence staking instead of the U-pins we had used. 

The ground itself had turned into super-sodden clay at the base. I assume that was the mixture of sand and topsoil thrown together with WAY too much water, but DH was sinking into cloying mud up to his ankles at times. We'll need to change the downspouts from the roof and make some channels in other parts of the yard. It's a real mess. Of course, he has to be at the shop today, and also work five days next week. Truly, this couldn't have happened at a worse time. But that's how life goes - always tossing new challenges your way. 

I'm looking at getting one of these - a Toyota Tacoma SR 4x2 Access
Cab. It's the smallest of the trucks, and it doesn't have the second
set of doors or back seats which we really don't need. We need a
truck bed that can haul a full sheet of plywood, and this one can
handle the width with only a short amount hanging over the
tailgate. I'll need to measure the garage. Parking both vehicles
inside is essential, and we need to be able to get out of the
cars and into the house. 

Goals for today are stabilizing the bank a bit more since rain is in the forecast daily for the next two weeks, and get to work on finding a new truck for DH. We need a functional, dependable car, and I'm not wasting any more money on Mom's old Saturn. Enough already - "Ghost" deserves retirement. 

On my personal front, the indoor pool is now closed for cleaning for two weeks. The outdoor pool now becomes our only swimming option without driving to the next closest YMCA. If it is raining with lightning nearby, I'll have to take the drive east, but no choice because I need my swims. I'll have enough days off while my friend Sharon is visiting. It could be an interesting two weeks ahead before the indoor pool re-opens, the outdoor pool closes, and things return to "normal" at the Y. 

Have a good and uneventful weekend. At this point, I just want to make it through the next two weeks with relative ease. I'm not sure if that's possible, but that's my goal. Happy Saturday! 

Cars - Past and Present

DH's car was back in the shop all day yesterday. It was stuttering when he was starting it and he thought the engine might not turn over, so we wanted it checked out. We picked it up last night - new battery and a new starter. More money flying out of the car window. OUCH! He really needs a new car, this one is 25+ years old, but he wants a small truck and is holding out for the new reissued Ford Ranger due in 2019. I have a feeling he'll be disappointed by that truck if it doesn't require the back seat in the cab. We only need the one seat, but everything I'm seeing on the new truck has the double row cab. Still, if we can nurse his car through, I guess we'll keep trying. As he said, the total of the two major repairs this year are still less than monthly car payments. 

Back to the 50's is one of the largest car shows in the nation and
happens every year around Father's Day at the Minnesota State
Fairgrounds. If you're into older cars, this is the place to be! 

It's Saturday, so I'm happy. There are piles of brush throughout my front and back yard, so I suspect my Sunday will be spent on several back and forth trips to the compost collection. That's not too bad, except the major annual car show is taking place between my home and the yard waste collection yard. That might pose some traffic problems. 

The Fairgrounds are packed with cars and spectators, all looking at
hundreds of older cars in various stages of refurbishing. Vendors of
all types - food, gifts and a variety of car fix-up and painting people -
populate stands throughout the Fairgrounds. It's a BIG deal. 

It's always fun to look at the old cars, though. The car show - "Back to the 50's" - is put on by the Minnesota Street Rod Association and is one of two major car shows held at the Fairgrounds each year. They take over the entire Fairgrounds area, all of the campgrounds on the grounds, and all of the hotels. Restaurants get increased numbers of customers and the cars cruise up and down Snelling Avenue. Yesterday, while driving home from work, I saw the usual groups of people in their lawn chairs lining the road, watching the various cars drive past. 

This was my car - except the roof was white and I didn't have
the very fancy tires. Still, the red is the right color and it's
the right model. That car took me through high school and
into college and had so many adventures in its' life. I think
my particular model went on into the demolition derby when
I sold it after it got too expensive to maintain it. 

It was fun driving to and from work yesterday, even though the morning traffic really sucked. I saw a two-tone 1964 Chevy Impala on my way to work yesterday. I don't see a lot of the 1964's, usually seeing either the 1963's or the 1965's. The difference is the back bumper design. I have a love for this car. It was a car that my Mom adored. We had one with a red body and white roof that she drove from Denver to Mexico City and back one summer, taking Dad and me on a wonderful trip of a lifetime. When I got old enough to drive, she sold the car to me and bought a more compact Chevy Nova. 

The 1964 Chevy Impala Station Wagon always looked very
ungainly and rather boat-like. It was overly large and
very blocky. The one I saw yesterday was painted in
a brilliant turquoise color, a color I usually associate
with a 1950's BelAire. Still, the wagon is rare and it
was a beauty. 

On my way home, I saw another 1964 Chevy Impala, and I also saw a Chevy Impala station wagon - an extremely rare car. There are a lot of cars from the 50's, and lots of older cars and hot rods, but the Impalas always ring my chimes. That first car love, you know? 

Have a great weekend. An hour from now will find me swimming in the outdoor pool, and I don't think I'll be driven out by thunderstorms today. I'm looking forward to stretching my wings a bit in the 50-meter pool instead of the much shorter laps of the indoor 25-yard pool. I'll be back on Monday. 

Wednesday - Greens, Water and Less Drama

Life seems to save the harder things to throw at you until you are old enough to be able to deal with them. At least that's what it seems like. Of course, we had the identity theft issue that started a few months ago. We're still dealing with ramifications of that and other entities, thank goodness for Life Lock and Experian because they're doing a good job with notification and shut-down procedures. 

Several large-ticket expenses over the past few months have
been a kick. Still, we have to drive safe vehicles, so no real
choices in the matter. 

Then over the past three months we had the tire issue for my car and the muffler issue for DH's. That caused a bit of financial groaning, but at least the repairs were something that could be resolved in a day. We picked DH's car up picked last night. My tires were more expensive than his muffler, but not by much. It's a hit to our bank accounts, but we now have two safe cars to drive for a while. DH says that's the last major money he's willing to put into the Saturn. He's starting to get more and more serious about buying a smaller truck. 

The outdoor pool is ready to go. It opens on Saturday
and I'll be swimming in it often throughout the summer,
and on every Saturday since the indoor pool is closed
on weekends. 

In April we had the one identity theft issue, and going in-depth through our reports over the past two weeks, I put alerts on several "sniffs" of credit cards that I found there that we had not initiated. I think we caught these in time too, but it's quite obvious that I'll have to keep my eye on it. DH complains, but he's unable to do the work with the credit report bureaus because it upsets him so much, so that task falls to me. What a surprise - LOL! 

I love the variety of greens we get in the spring. Here's a quick
shot of the trees around my gym, taken at the same time as
the pool photos in the other pictures today. 

The best news is that Spring is finally here and quickly moving to Summer. Spring means spring greens. We only get the variety of green colors in our plants early on before the summer heat has painted everything in a shimmer of increased uniformity. I adore the early greens and their variety. It makes me want to reach for my paints or pastels. 

Ir's not too bad a photo for being taken through the
chain linked fencing. The outdoor pool is Olympic
sized - 50 meters long. Sixteen laps of this will give
me my mile. I'm really looking forward to playing
in these waters. 

The outdoor pool is almost ready. It opens on Saturday and I'll be there (along with lots of other people, I'm sure). We're supposed to be experiencing a heat wave over the weekend too, so that outdoor water will be a delight. I've peppered my post today with green trees and some dawn shots of the outdoor pool that I took as I was leaving the gym yesterday morning. Have a glorious Wednesday and I'll be back tomorrow. 

Mufflers Can Fall and A Last Royal Wedding Word

Well, one can never say that DH and I don't live an "interesting" life. Maybe a little bit of boredom wouldn't go wrong. Yesterday evening, as DH was backing out of the store's parking lot, I heard a very loud noise. I banged on his windows to get him to stop and pull back into the parking spot, then looked at the back of his car, where his muffler was angling down, dragging the tailpipe on the asphalt behind him. No wonder it was loud! 

DH's muffler was angled so that the tailpipe was actually the part
dragging on the ground, but it was this bad! 

He continued on toward home, and I followed a few minutes behind him. Almost home he texted that he would go directly to our car repair guys. I had already spoken to them setting up a 7:00 am appointment for today, but it was the better decision to drive straight there. As I drove into their parking lot, I saw the muffler lying on the asphalt of the upper section as DH was parking his car in the lower service lot. 

Driving down to the service bays of the repair shop, I saw
his muffler lying on the pavement. 

DH went up with gloves on to retrieve the fallen muffler, then we went in and gave the repair guys the key. Since DH is working for Chickie today (she's going to the baseball game with her brother, taking a day of vacation), it actually works out well. The service guys can have the car for the day, DH can join me for breakfast, and transportation won't be a problem. 

I have to admit that seeing the muffler sitting on the pavement as I drove down to where DH had parked his car made me laugh. It was one of the funnier things I'd see for a while, and the placement was actually quite lucky - it was a bit out of the way and wouldn't endanger any other drivers or vehicles. 

Lady Diana, Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton all had
very different styles in dress and in tiaras. I'm really
coming down on the side of Kate Middleton for the
dress as well as the tiara, although Meghan's veil was
spectacular. 

A few final thoughts on the Royal Wedding. First, there was a question about the tiara - whether it was the same one that Princess Diana had worn. Here is a photo of all three brides in their tiaras. Princess Diana wore the Spencer tiara, which belonged to her family, dating back several generations. Kate Middleton wore the Cartier Halo tiara which holds almost 1000 diamonds. It was classic and elegant without being weighty. Meghan Markle wore Queen Mary's Sapphire Bandeau. 

I adored Kate Middleton's dress, and still do. That lace bodice, beautifully
fitted, and the V-neck, were stunning. Her train was long, but not
overly so. Her gown is still being made and worn today - years after
the event, in price ranges from $299 on up. It's still high up there
in wedding dress popularity. We'll have to wait and see how popular
Meghan's gown is over the years, although it's also lovely. 

And a final word on "the dress". When I compare the three dresses - that of Lady Diana, Kate Middleton and Meghan Markle, I have to say that I love Kate's Alexander McQueen dress the best, but I adored the embroidered tulle train of Meghan's ensemble. Of course, I'm a major fan of designer Alexander McQueen anyway, so maybe my opinion doesn't count. There was really nothing much that I liked about Lady Diana's dress (it was so totally over the top), although her fashion style later on in her life was impeccable. 

Happy Tuesday to all. Enjoy your day and hope that there is enough undercarriage left to DH's car to attach a new muffler. The car is more than 25 years old, and I'm sure there's a lot of rust on that frame. I'll be back on Wednesday. 

Tires and Glasses - Nothing's Inexpensive Any More

Yesterday was exciting - NOT. No problem getting my morning swim in, and the car was fine on the drive out to the dealership, but then it was a lot of "hurry up and wait". Thank goodness for a fully charged cell phone and a library full of ebooks. I think I read through three novellas on my phone while waiting for my car. 

I ended up with four new tires. One tire had been
damaged, but the other three were pretty low o
their tread. It's great to have new tires, but the
expense was a total OUCH. 

Then there was the problem of the tire - one of the two reasons I was at the mechanic's in the first place. The standard checkup and oil change I had budgeted for. The tire issues I had not. Turns out there was "an item" embedded in my tire which was causing the pressure problem. I park my car at work and it's in a parking lot, but the lot has a lot of to and from all day. I've had "stuff" in my tires in the past since I first moved to this location in early 1993. Adding one bad tire to worn treads on the others, equaled a financial tsunami. By the time I walked out around noon (almost five hours wasted waiting for my car), I was a LOT poorer. Well - to be honest, my credit card debt had grown a lot. *sigh* I'll be paying this off for months. 

I hated to add to my credit card debt, but DH said
he'd help with the bill for the four new tires. I know
I'll get it paid off, but it's higher than I want
right now. 

That left a really busy day that was cut almost in half because of my hurry-up-and-wait from the morning. Argh! I did the grocery shopping, picked up my new glasses (which are wonderful for near and far but - of course - suck for the midrange), and managed all of the laundry, pulling the final load from the dryer at 6:00 pm. I made the beds and even, amazingly enough, managed to sweep and wash the kitchen floor and have a lovely, if often interrupted, conversation with Aearwen after all. 

I've been getting my specialty frames fitted with new lenses
for many years now. Since I now have one pair I can
wear with my correct prescription, it's time to get some
new lenses in my favorite frames. 

Highest on my priority list right now is to get a set of my midrange glasses made. I'll be looking up re-lensing later today and see if I want to use the firm I've used in the past, or find a different one. These glasses are single vision, so they won't be expensive. I want to get at least one more set of bifocals too. My credit card is going to be groaning. At least DH said he would help with the car expense. There's nothing inexpensive about four new tires. 

Tonight is the Project Runway All-Stars Season 6 Finale. DH will be relieved when I'm finished with Project Runway for a while, but I'm sure it won't be for long. Fashion is always such fun and I do love watching the Runway. We did start watching the latest season of Iron Chef Gauntlet last night. It's always intense and there's some pretty amazing food being prepared by the chefs who are invited to compete. 

Talk to everyone tomorrow. Have an excellent Thursday! 

Saturday's Unexpected Phone Call

Saturday at the shop was a zoo - bouncing between customers, trying to work on packaging some of the new items that had arrived on Friday, and, of course, answering phone calls. In the middle of all that, I got a phone call from Claire, Chickie's Mom. She was quite upset, not really making a lot of sense, and there were voices in the background.

Claire's car went into the side of the car running the red light in front of
her. A driver in a car passing on the other side stayed and gave a full
report to the police. Claire had the right of way and the green light.
That's her bumper on the sidewalk near the mail box, her bumper bar
has been pushed into her radiator. The liquid at curbside is all of the
liquid that had been in the radiator and the wheel wells are scraping
against the tires. It's probably toast, and she'll get a pittance for the
value because it's quite old. 

She said she had been in a car accident but that she was OK. She didn't get a lot more said before the phone was taken over by the paramedic who was seeing her. He said that there had been an accident and that, although she was shaken up, she appeared to be all right. He gave me the address where this had happened and I told him I wasn't a family member, just a good friend, but that I would try to get in touch with her daughter. After hanging up my cell phone, I speed dialed her daughter, told her about Claire, and she said she'd head over there immediately.

I got periodic updates through the day, and at the end of the day Chickie popped in to give me an in-person update. Apparently as Claire was going north on a major street, a man in a car heading west on the cross street turned left in front of her, ignoring the red light for his direction at the intersection. She hit directly into him.

Although Claire seemed to be fine and refused to go to the hospital or clinic with the paramedics, she was certainly shaken up. She has rheumatoid arthritis, so movement can be difficult for her some times and there is pain. A car accident was NOT what she needed. After the car was put onto the tow truck, Chickie took Claire to the nearby Urgent Care facility for a checkup. The doctor there said she appeared to be all right, although he was concerned about her knee which had cracked against the underside of the dashboard quite hard. He prescribed some pain pills and some muscle relaxants, and advised her to come in again if there was excessive pain.

I didn't hear anything over the remainder of the weekend, so hope that everything is OK with Claire now. Car accidents are such frightening things. I've been in a few and usually not for the better. I'm hoping that a few sore muscles and a trashed car (unfortunately, I fear Claire's car is beyond fixing), will be as bad as this accident will get.

Have a great Monday. I'm off to the WBL YMCA pool today, and then the Chiropractor before heading to breakfast and work. At least this week I'll finally get my Wednesday off. I desperately need it! Enjoy your day!

Fantasy Books and Schedules

Today's swim is a no-go, not because of weather or injury, but because I have an appointment to get my car looked over (and a recall repaired) before I leave for my trip to Milwaukee in early June. I wanted to get my appointment out of the way as early as possible, so I'll be there at the doors at 6:30 am. But the dealership is quite a distance from home, so swimming had to be sacrificed. Oh well, it's just one day, and I'll be back getting wet and getting a good workout tomorrow.

DH is looking for some fantasy book recommendations. Do you have any
resources to recommend? 

Sending out a query to all of my book-reading friends. DH wants to find more fantasy books (the genre he loves to read) but he's a bit clueless about computers, etc. I recommended Goodreads to him, but he huffed. Although I'm a member of Goodreads, I get most of my recommendations from various book review websites specializing in the genre I prefer to read. I'm wondering if there is a list of 20-50 of the top rated fantasy novels of the past year available anywhere? Does Amazon have such a thing? I can cull through Goodreads for him and set up an account with his email addy, but don't want to go to the trouble if it won't do what he needs. ADVICE?

Apparently there is a website I can recommend to him. He can at least
look through the listings and the book descriptions to figure out whether
a book will be of interest to him or not. Love the things I can find on-line - LOL.

Today will be a very busy one, so I'm going to dive right into it. I hope you have a wonderful Wednesday and a stellar day in general. I'll be back on schedule tomorrow.

Getting Older - Not Always Sunshine and Butterflies

We're all getting older. It's one of those things that gives us no choice - time proceeds and we walk, run, or stumble alongside it. Some authors equate time with a river, I look at it as more like a wave - sometimes moving faster, sometimes slower. Of course time doesn't actually change, but our perception of its' passage certainly does. Why speak about time? Well, time is measured in many ways and one of those ways are dealing with the items that surround us.

Time is a river ... or is it? An MIT Professor has suggested a
new theory of time. Check out the article here.  

For instance, DH's car. DH's car used to belong to my mother. When she died in the early part of this century, it was one of the things I inherited. At that time it was a car that was around 10-12 years old, and in pretty good shape. I stuffed it full of items I was keeping, shipped a few boxes, and sold everything else. I drove the car to Minnesota and gave the car to DH because his old car wasn't reliable any more. He's been driving Mom's car for the past 15+ years now.

I've never been fond of Mom's car. Of course, I don't like white cars
up here in the Frozen Northlands. To me, a white car looks like
a portable pile of snow. But DH likes it - it runs and it didn't cost him
anything and the heater works. A total win-win. 

Adding up the numbers above, you can see that Mom's car has aged from a sprightly 10+ years old to a creaky 25+ years old. But the car is still reliable, and he only drives it to work and around the general neighborhood, so no long trips in the car. One of the issues with the car was the ignition key would sometimes stick  and it would take some maneuvering of the steering wheel to get the key to release. But on Saturday night, the key wouldn't release at all.

No tow truck was necessary, thank goodness. We had a spare key, so we were
able to lock the doors despite the fact that the key was in the
ignition. It could have been a lot worse. 

Fortunately, the car was still mobile, so first thing Monday morning I phoned my neighborhood auto repair who has done great work for us in the past and asked if they could shoehorn DH's car into their schedule. We could leave it for the day. They said "Bring it on over," so we did. I suspect DH was envisioning all sorts of electrical work, but we got lucky, in a way. Apparently a linkage cable had snapped. The age of the car made getting a new cable for this an impossible dream, but the car would run fine without the cable, DH would just have to make sure to use care when shifting out of park since he would no longer need to have his foot depressing the brake pedal before the shift would operate.

For a change, an auto repair didn't cause a huge hole
in our money supplies. Even better, I don't have to
play chauffeur for days while we try to get the car
repaired. A total win-win.  

Less than $200 and a disconnected circuit and missing cable later, we picked up a repaired car after work lat night. Transportation balance in my household has once again been established. Hallelujah! One less issue for anxiety. I wonder when we'll have to get something similar done on our bodies as we age. We'll just tell the doctors to disconnect the circuit, pull out the useless cable, and oh ... make sure to keep that medical bill less than $200. Happy Tuesday!!!!