Remember when I was told about the timeframe for getting the van back, the guy on the phone said "a couple of weeks"? I was told I can get the van today. I can always appreciate when things take less time than expected. This also means I can get to work on the other car problem. My car exhaust is broken somewhere. It's still drivable, I just can't sit idle for awhile otherwise I get gassed out.
And it's loud. Go figure it's always a daisy chain of problems all hitting at once.
Last year when I had my van inspected, the rear springs needed to be replaced for it to pass. I could see the back end was hanging down, it was a no brainer. But the dealer that was doing the inspection didn't have a set of springs. They couldn't *find* a set of springs. A couple of weeks later, they had found and purchased a full rear assembly to get the springs out of it to put in my van so they could get their loaner back.
Well I finally got a call about the van door. The good news is that everything is covered by the warrantee. The bad news is that they have to replace the door motor (which I believe should be easily bypassed so you can just, you know, open the door on your own), but the motor is on back order and will take a couple of weeks.
Everything with these people is either on back order or unobtanium. The next time I need to buy a car, I'm going to look at where they're built and where parts are sourced, making sure it's domestic. That way when they say they can't find one, I'll just go get it myself.
I avoid energy drinks. A mere cursory glance at the ingredient list suggest half the can should be a controlled substance, but here we are. This past weekend a friend of mine left one, unopened, in my car. I elected to ignore it, but then we lost an hour.
Normally I just wing it. This morning, however, I was not having it. I forced myself out of bed and slogged through getting up. I was not going to let some bureaucrat that won't end this silly practice to get the best of me. I was going to the gym no matter what.
Then I got in my car and thought "Can't hurt". I had a very good workout.
Work turned out to be very busy. I was the only one that could do shipping, so I did everything. It was just over 400 pounds of stuff that needed to get moved around and packed, then moved around again. Done, ezpz. Then a truck with a literal ton of product arrived, and I'm the only one that can unload it. Again, done. I have been buzzing around like a hummingbird all day. The most caffeine I'll have in a day is a sugar free 53mg. I looked at this can and it has 200mg.
oh
At least I had it on such a busy day. I'd have been bouncing in my office otherwise. I still kinda am.
You read the title correctly. My van has those doors that have a motor. You can't just grab the latch and pull it open. You pull the latch, then back off and wait while it slowly opens by itself. You can't bypass this, you just have to wait. You can use the remote to open the door when you're approaching, which is handy if it's raining and you don't want to get any wetter. It was also handy when dropping off the kids and they, for some reason, just open the door and run completely forgetting to close the door.
They don't do that anymore.
The downside is that it's just another thing that can break, and guess what. It did. First time, I was able to just pull it shut. Same with the second time. After that, we told the kids to stop using that door until we could get the issue settled. I should have seen it coming, because every single time we would use the van I had to stop a kid from opening that door.
Until I missed one.
Then of course it was wide open, only this time, the roller broke free of the track and broke the adjacent window. Now the door won't close at all. Sure you can still drive the van, but nobody likes cosplaying as a Jeep Wrangler in March.
It's cold.
There's also the weather to deal with. Fortunately, I was able to move it into my grandfather's garage next door to avoid any issues, like the three inches of snow that fell that very night. The service center at the dealership can't see it until the 12th. Meanwhile my parents had a spare car kicking around they're letting my wife borrow so she doesn't have to listen to the van scream about how the door is open while the cold wind freezes her out.
Honestly she would hate that.
No, not United Nations birthday. A Mad-Hatter / March Hare UN-Birthday as in it's not your birthday but whatever we're gonna party anyway.
That's what my wife gets three out of four times. Her birthday isn't today, and it isn't tomorrow. For a brief instant, her birthday will exist and immediately end as the clock strikes midnight. She keeps it pretty tame (not like the previously mentioned lunatics), but it gets suppressed right until the real thing comes around, then she gets four years worth of party all at once.
So yea, this year is low-key.
It's been snowing a lot. This weekend it dropped a foot, then rained ice on top of it. I got that cleared off Sunday morning, but it was still bad enough that they cancelled church.
God says stay home.
But then it kept snowing. I got up early this morning to clear off the snow so I could go to the gym. (I NEED MY ENDORPHINS) With my hood up and my tall boots on... my snow brush broke. The brush head snapped right off, leaving me with a looooooong stick. Undaunted, I turned around and raided the van for that snow brush, and cleared them both right off.
Don't worry, I put it back.
My street wasn't plowed, but if it was there would have been a huge mountain of snow at the end of my driveway that I couldn't have simply driven over. So thank you, Town of Salina, for slacking this morning. The streets were covered with hard packed snow, and it took me longer to get there than I care for. Three of us were outside the gym when the lights flickered on. Steve, the guy at the front desk, was applauding us as we walked in.
Of course, he deserves the same. He got there before we did.
It was empty at the gym. There are some people that I see every single time I go there, and one of them wasn't. I was about to send a dog sled team until they got in late. I have seen this person almost every time and we've spoken maybe three times, and it's all been a variant of the phrase "are you using that". I don't even know her name, it's great.
