let the vacation begin!

For I am officially off until January 2!! My joy was a little tempered this morning by Baker B, who kept saying "Wooohooo, we’re off for two weeks!!!" while I kept thinking, well, it’s more like a week and a half, but whatever! Then we figured out that he’s off the whole week of New Years, while I’m going back to work Wednesday. Stupid computer system – we’re so behind that I’ve really got to go back on the 2nd, and I’m lucky I’m not working next week. Still, I’ve got a lot of days off, and that’s the important thing.

Today we spent around five hours in Lowes Hardware, and we really DID walk a mile and a half in there – I was wearing a pedometer. We went from one end to the other about fifteen times. I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned that we’re refinancing our house – we’re doing it to roll the home equity line into the mortgage since the equity line has a variable rate and we used it to pay for the horrendously expensive foundation work, although we’re getting a better rate with the refinance too. We’re closing sometime next week, and before we can close we have to finish the french drain that Baker B started in, oh, June, and also throw some cement into the cracks on the side of the house. The cracks were how we discovered that we had a Major Foundation Problem, but (ironically) the Foundation Fix did nothing for the cracks so we have to fix that ourselves.

Anyhow, we’ve got most of the ingrediants for the french drain lying in the front yard (including three tons of gravel which looks more ten pounds of gravel to me but I’m no construction expert), and Baker B mostly finished digging the ditch months ago, but we certainly aren’t ones to finish a project until we’re forced. So we went to Lowes to get this fabric stuff you have to put in there (there’s perforated pipe, gravel, thick pond-liner-type plastic, and this landscaping fabric) and some cement stuff for the cracks and a trowel and gloves because we never know where our gloves are and a hoe because apparently we don’t own a hoe although I sure thought we did and some insulation to stuff in the crack and a surge protector for the NEW COMPUTER!!! and a number of other things. Which were scattered all over our fifty-mile wide Lowes. So we’d walk all the way to one end hunting landscaping fabric and all the way to the other end for cement and all the way back to the first end for a hoe and all the way back to the other end for a trowel and to every aisle in the store for gloves that didn’t cost $30, and all the way back to the other end for insulation…. at least we got some exercise.

Naturally it’s rained all day so we couldn’t actually do the work. But we’re prepared. Hopefully tomorrow it will clear up. Or we’ll do it in the rain.

Then I went shopping for the few things we have left for Christmas. Baker B waited until Friday to ask his mother what she wants (procrastination IS our first, middle, AND last name) and what she said she wants is a jar opener. An "As Seen On TV!" jar opener. There were several problems with that, one being we don’t watch enough TV to have a clue what she was talking about; another being we certainly don’t have time to order something off TV and get it by Tuesday even if we DID know what she was talking about. I decided to try the Kitchen Store at the outlet shops and see if I could find a not-seen-on-TV jar opener that would serve the same purpose. To my surprise, they actually do carry "As Seen On TV!!" stuff. One was even a can opener, but she’d specifically said a jar opener. That made me think that maybe I’d seen that … brand?? is it actually a brand?? in Walgreens. So I checked Walgreens – and bingo! I found an "As Seen On TV!!!" jar opener. Of all things. So my MIL will get what she wants for Christmas. At least it’s not a box of motor oil, like last year. Which Baker B didn’t even wrap, but left sitting on the front porch. 

No DSL yet, but it’s on its way! I was kind of surprised to find that it takes 3-5 business days for them to set us up. So I’ll have to endure dial-up a few more days, but that’s a lot easier to do now I know its days are numbered. And it’s not kicking me off lately, for some reason. Or at least not every few minutes. So it’s not quite as maddening.

And I finally finally have my Civic back, and it’s running well for the first time in months. New axle (the axle was leaking transmission fluid, probably caused by the shop who put the new engine in in Charleston) and a new muffler, after being mufflerless since Baker B knocked it off on a dirt road months ago. When we’d tried to get the muffler put back on, the muffler guy said that a) it needed a new manifold and we’d have to get our mechanic to do that first, and b) the old one was too rusty to put back on. Oddly it really didn’t need a new manifold, but whatever! We’d also been driving around for weeks on the spare tire, and got brand new snow tires yesterday as soon as we picked it up from the mechanic. I REALLY hope that’s it for car repairs.