Everyday Randomness

Woot! I’m so glad I’m finally feeling better, and I feel like jumping back into my blogs again. I know I haven’t been around much the last few days, but between being sick again and taking the time to clean some old scripts out of my blogs I just haven’t felt much like posting.

That doesn’t mean I’m jumping right back in and giving you 100 posts today or anything. I’m nice, and I wouldn’t even do that on a super sugar high, but I will hopefully find the time to get up a few reviews on Informal Critique later today, and I might even fill you in on some of the things that have been going on around here.

Right now I have to get some laundry started because I haven’t really done anything around the house in the last few days.

So, for now I’m going to leave you with a photo Hubby snapped this morning on his way to work. He glanced over when he got to the lookout and saw the extremely thick fog engulfing the Reservoir, so he had to go back and take a photo. I think it looks super awesome, and I only wish he hadn’t been stuck with just his cell phone cam.

I’m seriously taking advantage of the fact that Hubby was able to return to work today. When he’s home during the week I don’t get anything done around the house. My kitchen is a horrible mess, I’m almost out of clean underwear so laundry has to be done today.

I’ve got the dishwasher and washer going like crazy, and now I’m just taking a short little lunch break before I finish my cleaning. I’m hoping to get everything done before Hubby gets home and still have time to sort through more books to get rid of. I’ve been storing all the ones I haven’t read yet in one of my desk drawers while I make room for them, but my bookshelves don’t want to give anything up.

Today got off to a bad start, but it eventually turned into something good. Hubby’s Dad called 15 minutes before he was supposed to meet Hubby for work to tell us he’d just had a wreck.

He was coming across a bridge when a school bus up ahead slammed on it’s breaks and stopped for no reason, then flipped it’s left turn signal on in an area where there is no where to turn left. The car behind the bus slid to a stop, and my father in law tried to stop, but he was over black ice and couldn’t. He slid into the back of the car in front of him, and his truck will probably be totaled out.

Luckily no one was seriously injured. The guy riding with my FIL hit the dash with his head resulting in a gash and 9 stitches, but that was the only injury. The women in the car was fine, and I’m shockingly surprised she wasn’t all upset about her brand new car being damaged pretty badly. It’s an 09 she’s only had for a couple of weeks, but the woman also told the cops the bus suddenly stopped in front of her, and she almost hit it.

I think what pissed them all off the most was how long it took the police to respond to the accident. We live 40 minutes away from where it happened, yet Hubby had time to talk to his dad on the phone, explain what was going on to me, get dressed, and drive 40 minutes there, then wait on the scene for 10 minutes before the cops showed. It took EMS almost 30 minutes to respond, but at least they made it before Hubby and the cops did.

Hubby stayed there with is Dad until the tow truck finally showed up, and just so happens the tow truck guy is someone Hubby went to high school with. They got to talking about the insurance company and what will happen if the truck is totaled out. The guy mentioned that there’s a new scrap yard around here that’s paying $1 more than everyone else, and that’s something we were happy to hear. We’ve been wanting to scrap the Taurus and Saturn for awhile, but the price we’d get was less than the cost to actually haul them off to the nearest place.

After all the wreck stuff was taken care of they found out they couldn’t work today anyway because of the snow/ice, so Hubby decided to haul those cars off. Finally! I’ve been begging him to do it for TWO YEARS, so I was ready to go when he got home. Between loading the cars, making two trips to the scrap yard, and unloading them ourselves it took all day, but we picked up an extra $350 we didn’t have.

Now we’re going to take that cash and get the part we need and tires for the Rodeo. If my FIL’s truck is totaled out we’re going to give him the Rodeo, and if his truck is fixable he’ll have something to drive until he gets his back. Considering his little work truck is a late 80’s model s10 that’s not worth more than a couple hundred, I don’t think the insurance company is going to want to fix it.

Just great. We’re about to experience our first major repair job on the Blazer. I guess I should consider us lucky that we haven’t had any major issues in the year and 1/2 we’ve owned it.

Now, we’ve got a problem that’s going to be pretty expensive.  The heat went out now when it’s freakin’ cold as hell.  The problem is the temperature control module in the dash, and not only is that apparently a common problem with Blazers, but it’s an expensive and aggravating fix.  I’ve been quoted prices ranging from $400-800 to fix it at a shop.

Thank god Hubby is the backyard mechanic type who does all that himself.  He’s aggravated that he’s got to take the dash apart, but he’s been needing to do that for awhile anyway so he can replace the leaking heater core and fix a speaker that’s loose.  He might as well do it all at once.

The part is a little less than $200 though, so now I’ve got the headache of figuring out where I’m going to find the $200.  I guess I need to go over our budget tonight and figure out where I can find the cash.  I just keep reminding myself it could definitely be much worse, so I should be happy it’s not that bad.