Happy Birthday jasmine_koran!

Many happy returns of the day!

Food, Hawks, Roadkill Cars, and more Food

Tomorrow is the November breakfast, hawk watch, and dinner. I don't expect it to be as cold as I had first anticipated, but we're sticking with the warm, hearty meal concept. The Intripled Potato and Cattleman's ribs are definitely on the menu for the two meals.

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I am extremely hungry, but that is mostly because I cooked up some kielbasa yesterday, drove 45 minutes with it in the backseat calling out directions (mostly things like "pull over" and "aren't you hungry?" and "why, don't I smell good enough to eat?") and now I can smell it warming up for our office Thanksgiving feast. Yum.

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The car was back to life a bit - started right up when Justin and I stopped on the way to the market last night. That means the battery is good but the alternator has probably shed its electrical coil and is in car part heaven. The only bad news with this is Deb spoke a lot about waking up early and driving over and then following me to the garage - unfortunately, when I came down this morning, she was still in bed, and wondered why I didn't tell her what the plan was (funny, it was her idea I thought we were going with...) So now not only will the car likely sit there all day, as she won't want to put a neighbor friend out, I am at fault for this because I didn't wake her up, and I didn't wait when she said she wasn't ready to wake up, and so forth. So.

We'll see what happens.

Recently Read: A Series of Unfortunate Events Book 4: The Miserable Mill

A Series of Unfortunate Events Book 4: The Miserable Mill by Lemony Snicket

Lemony switches things up on you in this fourth outing, and that shows character growth, at least in the orphans. Everyone else is still dependably true to form, and I think that's the point. The world is painted in very static brushes, and everything else behaves to pattern.

As always, Olaf seems - to the other adults - to be doing something wholly different because he is quite obviously, as Mr. Poe will point out, not Olaf. Although the orphans will, also true to form, recognize Olaf instantly through any disguise, they change in other ways, and that leaves the impression of their animated characters against a still life of the rest of the cast and world.

Quite a fun read, as always.

Alternator Realities

$425 $450 worth of reality, actually. And another $89 for a rubber band belt.

It should be ready tonight.

I wonder if they did anything about the Check Engine light? I suppose not - the last time they said they fixed it, they didn't, and it added a few hundred on to the repair bill.

Someday, I might have to buy a '60-'70 era car so that I can actually do the maintenance myself. Oh, the good old days, when I would walk ten miles to get a part to try to keep the Citation on the road... =)

EDIT: The price went up $25. Apparently, the parts place gave them the wrong part. Wash, rinse, repeat. Finally they had to send the alternator to the parts shop. Oh. *That* alternator. And, thus, it now costs $25 more. And won't be ready until Monday.

I just don't know why the garages around here in this gear-head-infested area refuse to live up to the expectations they set on the first few repairs - after that, their quality and competence just seems to take a nosedive. I suppose it's a conspiracy - if They get me to switch over to the BuyANewCarEveryThreeYearsAndAlwaysMakeTheDealerFixIt mode, then They profit - the small car shops I try to support are just puppets for the Dealerships. =)

Water Hazard

So the local news was showing results of the flash flooding from yesterday - lanes split in half, cars swallowed up for parking where the road *used* to be, a story of a girl who was swept under for minutes after clinging for four hours, and then they show a hole on a golf course.

"Local golfers had to keep an eye on this water hazard..."

And they zoom out and the green is the only thing in sight that is not underwater.