Drinking from a firehose

On Friday, as we left for work in the van, the check engine idiot light came on. We took it to Master Auto on the way in, swapping for our other working car. Except that I'm hoping for better luck, the thought has crossed my mind that perhaps we should store the spare car in their back parking lot. Anyway, they called after lunch to say that they think the warning light is being triggered by the lack of a vacuum in the fuel system and/or the sensor for that. It is a very sensitive sensor, so even if the air leak is tiny, it's enough to make the warning light up. It can also be caused by not tightening the fuel cap thoroughly. This particular problem is nothing to get excited about, the worst thing is that by having it lit up if something else triggers it, there is no way to know as it's already on. The best thing to do is get an OBD reader that allows reset of the warning, then we'll know if there's a new problem. We retrieved the van after work and then took it to Ionia on Saturday. Happily, no new problems have appeared.

We have decided not to fix the possessed heating/cooling system in the beige Park Avenue as that's a several hundred dollar repair. Both blowers have gone bad but winter is coming an a vehicle that no longer knows how to cool the air will not be an issue for a while. With some degree of luck we'll be able to dispose of that car before next summer.

Saturday morning we got up early as I had made an appointment with Big D Lock & Key to purchase and program electronic keys for the van. I purchased one through them, two more on Amazon, and they programmed all three for the cost of programming the one I purchased there. Big D is a strange place, it's a locksmith and has all the normal stuff you'd expect (lock sets, keys, safes) but also has a shelf display that made me wonder if an elderly relative asked if he or she could move the items at didn't sell at their yard sale inside. It worked to my benefit though, I now own a real Coach purse ($15.00!) and a 4-episode DVD of Dragnet ($1.00).

With our purchases in hand, we walked out the to car and headed toward Ionia. I wanted to stop at Portland or any other of the little communities on the way to run an Ingress mission or two, but jebra reminded me that there were another six missions in the Ann Arbor Mission Day set that we wanted to do and the only way to keep all the Mission Day badges together was to do them next. I was sad but he was right, so we agreed that we'd wait until this coming Sunday and go to Ann Arbor to finish them up. So we arrived in Ionia around 2 pm and called my mom to see if she wanted to have a late lunch with us. She did; we went and picked her up and went to El Mariachi Mexican Grill. The food was as good as I remembered and we were all stuffed to the gills when we left to go shopping for things to take to the Davis & Jones Family Reunion. We also stopped at the Dollar Tree as my mom wanted to buy a few birthday cards. While there I found a bin of DVDs and picked out a copy of the Julie Andrews movie Star! I had never heard of it but I read the back of the box and thought it sounded interesting. We watched it later that night and holy cats, the costume changes. And the dance routines, my goodness she was strong and flexible to be able to do the moves in the last dance number. jebra told me the movie did not do well in the theaters, and I can see how it would be hard to market but I found it appealing for a variety of reason, it's look back on a time in history, in the evolution of music and musical theater, wonderful costuming, and a fairly engrossing story line.

Sunday morning jebra got up before I did and started cooking. Our contribution to the Family Reunion was meatballs in a BBQ sauce, plus he made our traditional breakfast of steel-cut oats with raisins. My mom brought salad and fried chicken that we'd ordered from Meijers the day before. We stopped to get it on the way to Onondaga and still managed to arrive on time.

The reunion was better attended than the previous two, perhaps because there was a rumor that this would be the last one. That's not exactly true; during the reunion we took a vote and decided that this would be the last potluck in the township hall. In the future we'll meet a restaurant at a location somewhat central to the attendees, probably in Mt Pleasant.

Anyway I had a good time catching up with everyone I spoke with (three hours is not long enough for an in-depth conversation with everyone) and we helped clean up the hall when our rental was over. Which was easy as there were no tiny children (mess-makers) and all we had to do was take home our leftovers, remove the table cloths, and stack the chairs. My mom caught a ride home with my cousin Barbie, so when we got back to the van it wasn't much past 3 pm and jebra realized we had quite a few hours before dark and we could go to Ann Arbor to finish those Ingress missions. We did, and met up with traveller42 and mbumby at the 6th mission to walk around the park before the four of us went to Plymouth for dinner.

Monday was back to work followed by the first band practice of the new season for jebra. I stayed home and biked and did laundry. Tuesday was work followed by dinner at Arby's and then the first guild meeting of the year for me. It was lovely seeing everyone and we had so many knitters attend I was starting to wonder if we'd all fit. Our fearless leader reassured everyone that next month it wouldn't be as crowded as the chairs and tables had been shoved closely together to make room for the silent auction and the video presentation taking place last night. I thought I'd bid on two auctions and knew I'd been outbid on both when I went to check before bidding ended. I wasn't disappointed because I already knew I was going home with a lot of yarn from the free table. But when the winners were announced I was reminded that I'd placed three bids and I'd won the third (for three books, all in the one skein wonders series, and all three for a whopping $5.00).

Scrapbook papers & elements from the kit Bohemian Breeze
For more information about the designers and their work, see
http://mrs-sweetpeach.dreamwidth.org/903338.html.

A week ago today we received the report from our mechanic's about the car we were contemplating buying. It needed a number of repairs, primarily among them a new axle, so we took that information to the dealer and negotiated a better price. So our new car is 2013 Town & Country minivan and we took it to work the very next day so that we could drop off the beige Park Avenue for a few repairs of its own. We exchanged cars at the mechanics the day after that, in no small part because the idea of that axle breaking while underway seemed like a great way to cause additional parts to fail. Well, that and the other car was supposedly all better. It got a brand new fuse box, which solved most of its problems. Only that turned out not to be the only issue, it has taken to feeling like it is going over rumble strips at unpredictable intervals (including on newly laid asphalt) and the heating/cooling system is now possessed. The driver's side blows cool air while the passenger side blows nothing other than air that feels like it came up from the depths of hell.

So, to jump ahead in this story, the Town & Country was returned to us last night after a whole series of repairs, one of which was not on the inspection as it couldn't be seen until the whatever was disassembled. So we once again exchanged cars and drove off in the minivan toward the grocery store. Around four miles later it stalled as we were puttering up Main Street in Royal Oak. Fortunately jebra was driving and coasted the car to a side street and found a safe spot to let it sit. We called AAA, had it towed back to our mechanic's, and exchanged it for the mostly working Park Avenue. I'm beginning to wonder if someone threw an automotive curse upon our vehicles.

Oh, and that Subaru Forester jebra was in love with? It was sold over the weekend and jebra spent most of Monday in mourning when he noticed it was no longer on their webpage. I called to confirm; that's how I know it sold over the weekend.

Scheduled for the weekend were two events, an Ingress XM Anomaly on Saturday and a Mission Day on Sunday, both in Ann Arbor. I'm still not entirely certain what an Anomaly is, but I went and helped my team (the Resistance) gain victory. In practical terms, this meant I went where I was told and did whatever action was requested (generally, keeping portals charged and helping them stay blue). We were instructed to bring as many Level 8 bursters and resonators as we could get our hands on (preferably 600 of each). Friday night after work jebra found a park in Birmingham we could farm for Level 8 gear, so we walked around hacking portals until we burned them out. We had a reasonable supply of both bursters and resonators when we left for Ann Arbor and arrived barely in time for check-in thanks to two serious accidents on the highway. Not even Waze could rescue us from being later than we wanted but we made it and we found our team before the action began. Many hours and five miles later we were done for the day. We grabbed some dinner on the way home, then I ran a load of laundry while I took a shower and waited for my hair to dry.

On Sunday we played a dozen missions; there were supposed to be sixteen available but there was a problem with one of them and it didn't come online during Mission Day. In my case it would not have mattered as I was barely able to complete the 12 we did. I was moving at a snail's pace by the end and alternately being delighted that I wasn't having to consume pain pills the way I did during the Detroit Mission Day and concerned about the state of my knees and lamenting how slow I had to move just to keep going forward. We had dinner in Ann Arbor at Hop Cat, where I learned why their crack fries are called crack fries (they must be made with crack as they are that yummy and addictive), then it was home for more laundry and getting ready for work on Monday.

Not much work got done by me on Monday even though I was there all day. I was so exhausted from all that walking (I did another 5.5 miles on Sunday) that it was a very sleep apnea-y day -- I'd type a few words, fall asleep, rinse, repeat. We drove straight home after work, where I brushed my teeth and fell into bed. My blood sugar was awful when I woke up the next morning (149) but I suppose that's what happens when I eat a ton of pizza for lunch then skip both dinner
and my evening dose of metformin. I did, however, manage to stay awake all day at work on Tuesday and got caught up on what I'd been trying to do on Monday.

Scrapbook papers & elements from the kit Bohemian Breeze
For more information about the designers and their work, see
http://mrs-sweetpeach.dreamwidth.org/903338.html.