What my mechanic has been working on this morning

It's only about 7:30 in the morning and my mechanic has already been working on the Suburban.

The radiator needs some TLC before a trip and my mechanic is taking advantage of the cool, pleasant morning to remove it to take it to a radiator shop.  Lucky me--my mechanic is Bill.

Several years ago "someone" (not Bill or me) wrecked the front end of the Suburban.  The body parts were replaced and the vehicle looks fine, but the radiator and the air cooling unit in front of it both got pushed in and both are shaped like a saggy mattress on edge.  Both cooling units have continued to function until now.

We are hoping the old radiator can be repaired because a new one won't fit into the slot the old one came out of.  The front cooling unit impinges on the space for a new radiator.  Unless we can get the shop to put a nice curve into the flat unit so it matches the old one's curve . . . .

Barring that, Bill is going to have to do some frame work to straighten it to accept a new radiator.

If you give a mouse a cookie . . . .

Bill's painting project

Bill's car had trim in two colors--silver and matte black.  He wanted to go to all matte black so he took things into his own hands.

That is the hard top to the convertible and you're looking at the back window.  The top of the picture has the part of the back window that rests near the trunk.  Next he painted the grille and a couple of other parts.

 

I really urged him not to spray paint his Mercedes, but he did anyway.  So far it looks really nice.  I told him to check back with me in a year about that.

Hmmm . . . these exist in Brazil too?

I love seeing this model of Hyundai

I have a close connection to Korea AND to Tucson.  Although if I lived in Korea I would pronounce the name /toook sun/.   ;-)

A Saturday morning with my honey

Dh was going to take older ds to the monthly "Coffee and Cars" this morning, but ds wanted to sleep instead. So I got to go. :-) Anyone who wants to show his or her car just comes to the parking lot at a high-end mall here in town and parks it. No fees, no entrance cards, or anything, just show up. Our car is the one on the left.

Some of the shows we go to now and then have more of an antique or muscle car vibe to them. At least today, this one seemed to have more of an "exotic cars" theme going on. Lots of Ferraris and Lotuses. All that said, I'm an all-American girl, so my favorites were the Chevy Corvettes. Quite a few newer ones, but I favor the C-3s and there was only one today.

One of my life's goals is to own a C-3 Corvette some day. I want a driver, not a show piece though, because I want to DRIVE it.

This one is German, but such a fun car with the surfboard on the roof and you can't see it, but a child's Lego project was on the back seat.

On the way home we drove through quite a few different neighborhoods until we were driving through one that has lots of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans living in it. We passed a grocery store that I'd heard had terrific prices on produce, so we stopped in. Trust me, even in the southwestern United States, the average grocery store doesn't have a display like this:

In addition to lots of fresh fruits, vegetables, and rice, I picked up a bag with about 8 still-warm fire-roasted New Mexico green chilis. I've never had them freshly roasted, but I knew I could figure out how to process them when I got home. All I did was scrape off the thin burned skin, cut off the tops, slit open the side and scrape out the seeds and ribs. Then I chopped them into tiny pieces and froze them in 4 oz portions, just like buying a can of chopped green chilis, except 1/5 the price and 3xs the flavor!

The last thing I saw on our way home was one of my favorite things to ever see:

A drive up the mountain

A couple of Saturdays ago dh and I joined the Mercedes Benz Club of our city and drove 30 miles up a nearby mountain. It was 97(36) degrees here in the valley and 67(20) up there. Delightful!

On the way up we stopped at a lookout and took pictures. This is overlooking our city.Aren't we cute?

At the top we stopped at a German-themed restaurant and had lunch. I had a veggie sandwich with German potato salad and red cabbage. Unfortunately we sat at a table with a man from the club who wouldn't stop talking! Dh and I love to talk and talk to each other, but we barely got a word in edgewise, let alone a chance to talk to each other. Oh well! We'll know which table to avoid next time!

Since dh's car is a convertible, we had the top down. I had a ponytail holder and a headband and kept my hair under control. I had sunscreened my face, but forgot about my upper chest. What a sunburn! First one this year.

It was great to get out with dh and enjoy the beautiful weather and each other's company.

Chickens and cars

Last night we thought we closed all three doors to the hen house and run, but we missed one. I was met at the back door early this morning by Spot, the gold one in the middle. Today for some reason they are really mellow, hanging out by the sliding glass door, even lying down, which is rare for these girls.

I drove the car down an alley this morning and picked up a small branch which scraped on the ground all the way home and sounded really weird. When we got home I told the girls to hop out and look under the car to see exactly what was there. They said, Oh! There is a branch and there's a bunch of liquid coming out of the car. :O ???

I kneeled down to see what was going on and I saw it too. It was dripping mid-car, not from the radiator. I backed up the car so I could examine the puddle. It looked like water so I dipped my finger in and tasted it. Water.

Then I did the smartest thing I could and called dh at work to see what he thought. His first thought was that it was condensation from the air conditioner. Duh on me! I looked at the concrete floor of the carport and I could see repeated water rings in the same location from previous drips. It's just that usually I don't have any reason to squat down and look under the car after a trip, so hadn't noticed.

Phew! Dripping condensation I can live with!

I think car things are done

In June and July:

Another car and I backed slowly into each other. Oops. Had to pay a big deductible to get my bumper fixed.

Someone rear-ended another car while driving our Suburban. $750 to mostly fix the damage.

Another car rolled or backed into my car. Just got it fixed this week and the other insurance company paid. It looks good.

Someone in the family got a Robocop ticket for running a red light. Big fine.

Someone in the family got a Robocop ticket for running a right turn red light while driving my car. NOT ME. And it wasn't dh either.

Trying to sell Mom's Jeep and don't have the title. Have a buyer, but California is taking forEVER to pony up the duplicate title. Hope the buyer stays with us.

Dh is buying a car tomorrow. I'm not really happy about it.

Juuuust posting this picture again . . . .

Have you seen this picture before? Isn't it a pretty car? What do you think the chances are that it would be hit twice in two weeks' time?

I was shopping at the grocery store when I heard the dreaded overhead call for the owner of a Chrysler 300 and . . . a silver Honda. The store clerk walked out to the parking lot with me to show me my car parked right where it I left it, with a Chrysler 300 backed into it.

No driver.

It looked like the car had rolled into mine from the other side of the parking lane. We waited.

No driver.

The clerk reached into the car and got some paperwork that had the owner's name. They paged him by name.

No driver.

The clerk went to some other stores in the strip mall and they paged him.

No driver.

Finally another clerk called the police to report it and notify a tow truck. It took awhile for the police to arrive (I should have voted for that extra 0.5 cent tax for local services, shouldn't I?) and still no driver.

The police officer pushed the offending car away to see what damage had been done and my car had a small dent in the right rear bumper. He took my information and gave me the insurance card he took from the other car's glove box.

At that point I was given the nod to head back into the store to finish shopping. Too late for dinner tonight. When I came out the car was gone. I don't know if the driver returned or if it was towed.

I can't decide if I think the car rolled on its own or if the driver hit me and then ran away. The car was in nice condition and very clean, so that points toward the car's rolling into me by itself. But where was the driver for so long??

Oh, and I had my bumper replaced ONE WEEK AGO.

We're on foot these days

Last Saturday I had my first "fender bender," although I'm happy to report I didn't actually bend my fender, just scraped up and gouged the heavy plastic cover over it. A pick up truck and I were both backing out of herring-bone parking slots and bumped into each other. Low speed, no injuries, and no damage to the pick up truck. It was such a surprise and amazing what a horrible sound two cars colliding makes.


I got online with my insurance company as soon as I got home and reported the incident and set up an appointment to have my car looked at. I know all this online reporting saves the insurance company time and money, but to be honest, it was easier for me to report things that way as well.

Monday I brought my car in, got the estimate ($789) and made an appointment to return on Wednesday when they got the part in. I was surprised to find out they had to have my car for THREE days to install a plastic bumper cover! Silly me, the cover comes UNpainted and they have to color-match the paint, paint it, let it dry, then install it. Three days.

I figured three days without a car wasn't going to be convenient any time, so I might as well just get it done.

But what about swimming lessons that started this week? The lessons are at a public pool about a mile from home, so the girls and I have been hoofing it to the lessons. The girls have had a good attitude and our walks through the neighborhood have been really pleasant. They enjoy the walks home with wet bathing suits and wet hair in the warm weather.

This is the first time I've had all three girls in lessons at the SAME TIME!! Two years ago I had two in a morning class and one at night. Last year the lessons were contiguous so at least I only had to go to the pool once. This year the two different classes are held at the same time. I've already read A Tale Of Despereaux and I think today I'll finish the current issue of Time magazine. I've been waiting for this.

Oh, why have I been using stock photos? My camera focus is acting up and we are currently out of batteries for any of the cameras. The rechargables don't work and we have only one AA battery left. So no, that isn't my child in the photo above, although she is cute enough to be mine. :-)

Look for the similarities here

What similarities do you see here?



Some people wouldn't see any connection at all, but after my experience this morning, I do. Just a note, the car wash pictured is NOT the one I visited.

First of all, I was advised to spray the car with a low-pressure soap. It came out of a tiny gun thing and took forever to even reasonably cover the car. At least it seemed like forever when I'd just put $2 into the machine and had only 5:20 to wash the car. Being that I drive a small Honda, I really didn't think time was going to be a problem, but I had tossed in a couple of extra quarters anyway for good measure.

Next was the "high pressure" soaping.

Next was the "foam brush." That's the one I have actual faith in.

I had just started rinsing with the "high pressure" rinsing wand when the bell started ringing, so I sighed and tossed in another quarter for another 40 seconds. I want you to look at this picture and then I'll tell you how it differs from my actual experience:

There appear to be actual quantities of water emerging from the spray gun in this picture, unlike the one I had. Oh sure, there was spray all right, but it was about 5% water and 95% air. It was almost impossible to wash the soap off.

At that point I had already figured out I had been taken for a sucker, so I just rinsed the car the best I could and resigned myself to driving it home partly rinsed. When I got home I parked in the driveway and finished rinsing it with the hose, then dried it with some towels from the house. It looked fine.

I hope the $2.25 the car wash got from me makes them feel satisfied, because it will be the last they see from me and I'll be happy to repeat my story to anyone who is thinking of stopping by that particular car wash.

It's a bucket and hose for me from now on!

1 car = a pain in the neck

Dh's Suburban needed a manifold gasket replacement (like I have ANY idea what that means . . . ) so Wednesday we took it to a guy we know who does that kind of thing out of his own family garage. I naively thought we'd pick up the car that night.
(Someone else's Suburban, but dh's looks like this.)

Nope. Looks like Saturday at the earliest. Today that meant driving the girls to the bus stop, then running dh to work so I could have the car to drive Mom to the doctor and pick up some origami paper at the craft store for Activity Day in the early evening. Dh got a ride home with someone.

I called the bus company here in town this morning to see if dh could take a bus home. Possible, but not easy. We live on the eastern outskirts of town and his office is on the northern outskirts. It takes three buses and over an hour, plus some walking.

Tomorrow I'll have dh drop the girls at the bus stop, then drop me at the dentist for an 8:00 appointment. Luckily it's only about a mile from home so I'll walk home afterward.

Saturday one of the girls is having . . . what did the woman call it? . . . not "IQ testing," but something like "cognitive ability testing." Whatever. I also have Stake choir practice for our Stake Christmas program, so I'll get dd settled for the test, run to choir practice, then back to pick her up when it's done, then home.

I'm hoping by then the Suburban will be done and we can get back to two cars again. If not, we're going to have a problem on Sunday because my car holds only five people and our family is six. Two trips to Church?

It's making me realize how lucky we are to have two cars on a regular basis!

In with the new and out with the old

I have a new car! It's a silver 2011 Honda Accord with black leather seats and it's really nice. The old car was a white 2000 Ford Windstar that looked like this except it had a sliding door behind the driver's door:The minivan was sold today, so we had about three weeks of being a three-car household. That's one more than we need, so we were glad to say good bye to the van.

I've driven a minivan for 21 years. Yes, 21. I had a 1989 Dodge Caravan for 14 years and this one for 7. After three weeks I'm getting accustomed to being so much lower on the road and having great maneuverability (sp?), but it was very, very strange at first.

The girls' three booster seats just baaaaaaaaaaaaarely fit in the rear seat. It's a squeeze and it's going to be a hassle until one of them is big enough to not need a booster. That should be about the time they graduate from high school, they are such slender little things. :-)

As you can see by the number of cars I've had in the past 21 years, I'm a buy-and-hold kind of gal and having this new car has thrown me for a loop. A pleasant one, but a loop nevertheless.

Car check

I don't want any (ahem, Canadian) readers to bust a gut laughing, but I did my first under-the-hood car maintenance check on Saturday morning. At my monthly church women's meeting an older guy came and showed us exactly how to do these checks and gave us a list of what to look for and how to do it.

So here is what I checked and the result:

Tires--had to add air to all four, luckily we have an air compressor so it was easy.
Shocks--oops, I guess I forgot this one. I'm not going to do anything about them anyway, so I guess that's okay.
Wipers--replaced the rear wiper blade.
Windshield wiper fluid--added more than a gallon of water with about 3 drops of dish detergent (see picture below). We don't worry about it freezing in the tank.
Brakes--no grinding noise
Brake fluid--proper fluid level
Radiator--proper fluid level
Engine oil--proper level but dirty. I need to take it to a low-end place that only changes the oil since I don't need anything else they do (thanks to this little check).
Transmission--proper fluid level
Power steering--proper fluid level
Air filter--almost clean as it was replaced last winter
Hoses and belts--not mushy, not hard, the belts look pristine
Battery--added a surprising amount of water, cleaned off the contacts with baking soda and water.

I felt really accomplished after the hour or so I spent doing these things. Dh did his car at the same time and he had only one tire to inflate, needed the gallon or so in both his battery and windshield wiper tank, had a dirty air filter and needed all three wiper blades so we replaced those. I think we're supposed to do this every month.

Busy again!

I thought today would be a little slower-paced than yesterday and it sort of was. I did have about 1 1/2 hours to lazily watch TV.

Firestone told me to wait at least a day before taking my car back to the state inspection station so after my mammogram I stopped in and picked up some tamales dh ordered and then went for the inspection. Failed again. I drove directly from there to Firestone because I had a guarantee it would pass at no additional cost to me. I took the guy's offer of a ride home and settled in to watch 18 Kids and Counting featuring the Duggar family. Nice family.

After the girls got home we took the safety net off the pool and I skimmed it and brushed down the walls and the bottom of the shallow end.



I tried to get the pool circulation and filter to start up but only dh knows how to force it to properly start. Sometimes I'm lucky and it starts and sometimes I'm not. Today wasn't one of those lucky days, alas, so I had to leave it for dh.

Then the girls and I walked the mile back to Firestone and had to wait about half an hour for the car. I guess they had to replace the intake manifold gasket. Okay, I'll bet gwp is the only one who knows what that is. I sure don't. Anyway, dh said their not noticing that the first time (and therefore not charging us for it) probably saved us $200-300. Since the car finally passed the on the third try, I guess it was worth my aggravation.

Naturally by the time I got the car back it was too late to take it to the DMV to register it. Next week is crazy busy so I won't get back over there until at least Friday. I thought I was so organized to start on this on December 2 and as it turns out although I'm frustrated, it's a good thing I got started early.

Pizza tonight since it's Friday. I got the dough started when I got home and it's rising now. Since we are working hard to finish off a ten pound ham, it probably isn't a surpise that it will be ham and pineapple tonight. Yum.

Cars

I had my car detailed this week and picked it up today. I've never had that done professionally before, but it was a bonus that came with something, so why not? It's amazing how having the car sparkling clean changed my impression of it. It's a nine year old basic Ford Windstar. Very, very low on the excitement scale. Oh, the two carseats and the booster don't add to the sexiness of it either. :-) Wouldn't trade those for anything though. I'm proud to have them strapped into my car.

Anyway, it looks so nice it almost feels new. And new is something I probably won't ever feel again when it comes to cars. My plan is to drive this van until my youngest is eight years old and can probably get out of a carseat/booster. That is a little over three years. Even though I've been driving a minivan for literally 20 years (well, two of them), the thought of trying to put three children into carseats in a sedan leaves me cold. So I'll keep the van until they are out of those seats. In the meantime, I'm saving for a new-to-me car. I want a Honda or Toyota four door sedan. I know, I know, another car low on the excitement scale, but that's what I want. That '79 Corvette will have to wait until I don't need more than two seats. That will be in, oh, about thirteen years, LOL!

Dh drives a Chevy Suburban, 12 years old. It's good for towing, hauling lots of tools, and lots of children as it is a nine-seater. We bought it used last year. The only bad thing about it, other than the awful mileage, is that the former owner had it in Phoenix and put really dark tinting on the windows. It is actually unsafe as it seriously impedes the view out, especially at night. Downright dangerous then. Dh is going to have the tinting removed from the windows this week. It's kind of depressing to sit in the rear of the car because it is so dark there. The kids won't know what hit them when the sun comes a-shinin' in!

I've driven two vehicles in the last twenty years. Dh has driven seven in the ten years we've been married, including the $100 car. But that's a story for another day.