After I got home from a long day at EFRC, extremely tired and ready to fall over, I put my ice pack back in the freezer, and noticed there was a pool of gunk in the bottom of the freezer. I quickly discovered that all the meat in the freezer is thawed; I have maybe 25 lbs. of meat to throw away. Things don't seem to be cold enough in the regular ( Read more... )

Got the car back at 5 yesterday. In addition to replacing the clutch and slave cylinder, they replaced the transmission which didn't work when connected to the car hydraulics. They also replaced a wheel bearing (which I hadn't realized was out) and did the oil change and tires as scheduled. They couldn't fix the odometer, so it's still pinned at ( Read more... )

My car is not fixed. They had it taken apart, they said everything seemed to be OK. They put it back together with the new clutch and slave cylinder and it would not shift -- the transmission seems to work when they shift it by hand but it doesn't work when connected to the hydraulics ( Read more... )

I went up to Mt. Prospect for the housefilk at chaoticgoodchic's house last night. The trip up was completely uneventful, the dinner was nice, the music and companionship were good. I got back in my car at 1:00, figuring I'd make it to bed about 4, I'd be tired but it should be OK. It rained off and on as I was driving home, but had no problems, until I got to ( Read more... )

As you know if you know me very well, my car is getting kinda long in the tooth as it were. In fact, I was approaching a milestone -- 300000 miles. I was getting all ready to take a cellphone pic of all the zeroes and post it. I was leaving EFRC and it was at 299997, so I'd hit it before I got to the interstate, so I could pull over. All good, ( Read more... )

I have finally managed to get through the process of filing my taxes.  I did them electronically for the first time.  It would have been easy except for all the places where I was trying to carefully check that everything would work before I did it.  And where I beat my head against bugs in the system.  (I simply could not print the electronic ( Read more... )

My phone rang while I was at coffee.  I stepped outside to take the call.  It was Robin.  She told me that Meg had found a way through the fence of the yard she was exercising in, and had gotten hit by a car.  Animal Control found her and took her to the U of I; they tracked Robin down and she got there, but Meg's injuries were too bad to save her ( Read more... )

The furnace, which had been working intermittently, finally died yesterday.  It was down to 52° in the house this morning.  The furnace guy was already scheduled to come out.  He got here about 9:30, poked at the dead furnace for 30 seconds to confirm what he thought, from what I'd said on the phone, was wrong, and spent half an hour replacing the ( Read more... )

If it's not one thing it's three others ( Read more... )

So, this afternoon before I went out, I went around the house baiting all the mousetraps with the peanut butter I bought just for them.  On both the trip plates and the springs, in the case of the old-fashioned spring traps.  Just now, I looked around to check the traps ( Read more... )