Monday, January 22, 2007

How time flies

I just saw that it has been since Dec. 14th since I last blogged. Shame on me. Anyhow it has been a crazy sorta month. First the harddrive died(yes again) on my laptop. I am still waiting for the new one. I am less than happy with Seagate right now. Then the harddrive went out on the desk top. We had been having problems with the desk top, so I really didn't mind replacing the drive. Then just this last weekend while driving on I 95 home to Richmond from DC, our car just died. So not cool. We had to towed two miles to Quantico, stayed in a hotel and rented a car the next day. So $500 later, we had it at the mechanic. Now mind you, we had just gotten the car back from the mechanic, and he replaced an upper radiator hose. We had been having a coolant leak, and he thought it may have been the water pump, but decided it was an upper radiator hose instead. A couple of days later the mechanic in Quantico determined that it was the timing belt that had broke, and that the water pump was leaking. $600 later we would have a car we could drive the 80 miles home. The mechanic then also found that the tensioner was broke, which was what caused the belt to brake. So we drove home with a repaired car, and the mechanics promise that if anything were to happen he would fix it, even if it meant towing it back to Quantico. Well considering that the car is 15 years old, and we had been talking about buying a new one, we went through the "fun" process of car shopping. Now mind you we weren't buying new, more like 5 or so years old, and we had a "cap" as to what we were willing to spend. We did not want to get financing, as it is really nice not having a car payment. Unfortunately, we didn't have all the cash available right away. We were hoping that Craigs dad's house would sell and we would use part of that money to buy a car. But now we felt like we couldn't wait, so we decided to sell some stock. We knew that we wouldn't have the stock money until next week, but did that stop my husband? Not at all. He decided to go to Richmond Auto Auctions without me on Thursday and bought a new Expedition. Needless to say I was a little angry that he didn't even call me, and that I had no say in the car that I was going to drive. Plus there is the thing that it had to be paid for in full by Monday, and we wouldn't have our money until Wed. . So, it ended up taking just about every penny we had until the money comes in. So just when the story starts to sound good, it gets bad again...kinda. While driving home from picking up the new car, the old car broke down again (same problem I am guessing). The mechanic after being called, said he would drive down on Monday(today) and fix the car. Well he didn't come today, so we will need to call him tomorrow. I just need it working so we can sell it. I am ready to cut my losses on this one and to move on. In the midst of all this I have been knitting and finishing projects and starting new ones, which I will update when I have a spare moment. TTFN, Miki