My Boring Life
…I appreciate the time and energy you put into making things grow, or not grow, as your whim permits, but really, attempting to play with evolution to force my corner of the country to grow gills is really not nessecary. You can stop sending us rain for a while. Please send it to Texas instead.
Small donors aren’t donating to the presidential re-election campaign.
Maybe I won’t be buying that Vizio as a 2nd tv after all.
School Committee learns an economics lesson.
Thought fruit juice was healthy? Think again!
Why does the NYPD have the capability to bring down a plane??
Just a couple, while I’m drinking my coffee:
Lissa has an awesome story and picture up. I happen to think the picture is ‘shopped, but its funny anyway.
And for your dose of cuteness today: 5 week old Corgi puppies!
Ok, so we’re finally shopping for a snow blower. Shoulda done it sooner, but well, see my previous posts about life, but we’re getting a little close to winter now to be leaving it much longer. We got away last winter without one, and for the majority of the winter that was tolerable. Till that big storm back at the beginning of March. If we’d had a snow blower I’d probably still have not made it to work, but at least Husband probably wouldn’t have been late to his job, and the only reason HE made it to work was his dad came over with the truck and plowed for us (since its a 1/2hr + drive in good weather thats saying something).
So, snow blowers…..the driveway is long, at least 40ft long, and almost that wide at the point closest to the garage and carport. Partially paved, partially gravel. I know we need at a two stage model, I’d love a zero turn model (or whatever they call it on snowblowers), but there’s a definite upwards price limit. Also have to keep in mind that it would be nice if I could manage it myself, but I’m not an especially large person and have very small hands which can sometimes make handling controls interesting.
We’re looking at this one, not not necessarily from Amazon (though its listed with free shipping….). Any suggestions, advice or whatnot for us?
Playing around with header images and other such stuff. If something catches your eye, good or bad, please let me know, I’ll probly be playing with it for a while.
I was following links, from the Gun Blog Black List, and ran across this video. Forgot to save the link to the blog where I found it, sorry, if you think it might have been your blog please let me know.
But thats scary to watch. The fact that there was apparently no loss of life (at least in the mine itself) is amazing.
…..I do have to say that I AM looking forward to getting rid of the mosquito’s. I know some area’s of the country are dry as hell, but here we’ve had the opposite problem, its been so wet as to having low grade flooding almost constantly all summer (which the exception of the month of July), seriously, we’re talking standing water in my yard every time we get even a little bit of rain. And that doesn’t even take into account what Irene and her ilk dumped on us. So the mosquito’s are a constant voracious pest, even at high noon they’re all over. I can’t wait till they’re gone!
Just came in from taking the puppy out for a potty break and even with the Off Clip On (which normally does a pretty decent job at keeping them off) I’m itching in several spots.
….Please see my previous comment to Blogger about the difference between making things fancier and actually improving them.
Well, the good news is that it could have been EVER SO MUCH WORSE.
The bad news is we just spent $500 more on my car than we expected too.
Took my car in for new tires today, I probly could have gone another winter on the old ones, but it would have been pushing it, especially if we have a bad winter again. Cringed at the price of the tires, but yah, about what we expected. Go ahead and do an alignment, and do an oil change while you’re at it please. Did NOT go to the Dealership for this, unless its warrenty work we never do, a reliable local place is almost always cheaper, not to mention nicer to deal with.
So they put it up on the lift, pull off the tires, and come back out to tell me that there’s a problem. The lower control arm/ball joint connection is badly rusted, on both sides of the car, and needs replacement ASAP, like “I’m not sure its safe for you to drive” ASAP (and they just don’t say that there, they’re the perfect example of live and let the customer do what they want).
Crap. So while they’re calling to find out if they can get the parts and how much they’ll cost, I’m calling the Dealership to find out if they’re covered under warrenty. Or, I’m TRYING to call the Dealership. The line is busy. How is the line busy, its a multi-brand dealership with major multiple lines? Maybe I have a wrong number. So I dig out a business card out of my purse. Nope, right number. So I use my phone to Google for a different number, if nothing else one of the other car brand desks can transfer me to the Dodge repair shop folks right? Nope, every number rings busy. WTF?! So the shop guys hand me their landline phone in case its something with my cell. Nope, busy signal. F*ck. Well I’m not going to drive it over there (risking life and limb, cause of course now that I KNOW there’s a problem it would be NOW that it would fall apart) on the hope that its covered only to discover that its not and that the Dealership is going to charge twice as much to fix it. So I tell them to go ahead and do it. This is why we keep a paid off credit card with a high availible balence around. One of the repair guys, sensitive to the fact that I’m still not happy about not getting ahold of the dealership, tells me to come with him out to my car, and procedes to remove the passenger side lower control arm so he can show me how bad it is.
Now for those of you who (like me) aren’t car savvy, the lower control arm looks like a big metal boomerang with the ball joint inset at one end that attaches to the wheel assembly, and a bushing inset at the other to connect to whatever in the car it connects too (or at least the one from my car does, online data shows they differ from car to car). From what I can find online its what keeps your steering tires inline when you hit bumps and bounce around on the road. Having one fail (in any way shape or form) while driving can mean loosing control of your car in a very painfull way.
So he pulls it off the car, and says “crap, now I’m really glad we’re doing this…..” which doesn’t fill me with thoughts of joy. He points out the ball joint, and the area around it, and how rusty it all is, and says that THAT is what initially caught his attention and the recomendation for the replacement. He then procedes to point out the bushing on the other end, grabs ahold of the bushing and starts to say “but this is even wor….” and the metal holding the bushing in place disintergrates in a cloud of rust leaving him with the control arm in one hand and the bushing in the other. Cool huh? Yah, not so much.
So, $220each for a new control arm with ball joint and bushing for each side of the car, plus an hour’s labor, on top of the price of the new tires, and I’m off, and hey, the extra squeeling sounds I was getting on corners is gone! Well thats cool. Though I never did hear any of the other warning sounds the repair guys kept asking me if I’d heard (seriously, I think 5 different guys asked me the same question at some various point during this whole thing. I promise I’m not that car clueless, if it had been clunking on corners I’d have already had it into the shop).
Seriously Life, I know it coulda been alot worse, but can we just stop now? I’d like to have a few normal months for a change so I can get things back under control!!