Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Kibbles and Bits, Again

Sorry there was no blog last night; the Mister was "tweaking" my computer, which usually means that I am without access for at least 24 hours, and then it takes me another 18 or so to figure out how it works all over again. This time, he put the latest Windows system in, which looks cool, but seems to work pretty much the same as it always did. Once he "tweaked" my computer and the upshot was that the keyboard was completely discombobulated, and all my question marks came up as exclamation marks, which made it look like I was ridiculously excited about everything ("How are you!") and everything else had French punctuation, with little squiggles under the c's and accents over the e's. It certainly gave my writing a more European flair, but did little to enhance the overall coherence.

Thing 1 got a cell phone on Monday, and has not let it out of her steely grip since. I'm sure you were aware, since it was all over the news, but Thing 1 was the only Grade 8 student in the entire world that was without a cell phone. Grade 8 students in Mogadishu had cell phones, for God's sake, but not her. That was recitfied 48 hours ago, and no doubt it was on the BBC World service. She claims she doesn't sleep with it, but I am tempted to call her at 3 a.m. to test it out. (The only problem is, she is likely to actually still be awake at 3 a.m, whereas I am not.)

It has been a very warm and rainy June here, and everything is lush and green and fertile. It is like living in Brazil. When my parents and I were in Calgary at the beginning of last month, it was brutally hot here, 32°C, with a humidex of 40, or some unholy number like that. (In Calgary, it was about 9°C, with gale force winds and rain in Biblical proportions. When we were sitting in the chuch waiting for the wedding to begin, I was all decked out in my sleeveless linen dress, and turned to my dad and said that I wished I had a sleeping bag to tuckle up in.) It has been so humid and sticky that the doors and jambs have swelled so that Thing 1 has twice been trapped in the bathroom. (It never happens to Thing 2, because she rarely closes the door when she's in the bathroom.)

I have embarked on a new project, my "First of the Month" project, whereby I take a picture of the same bit of the garden on the first day of every month. I plan to make a fabulous scrapbook page out of it, and then I get sad because I realize I am spending my time planning scrapbook pages. How old am I?

The air conditioning stopped working on the van the other day. (Himself spent an entire ride home from work with his hand over the vent asking "does this feel any cooler to you?", like he had lost all powers of thermal detection, and needed my superiour skills to suss it out.) The Mister went to the dealership today, on the off chance that it was still under warrenty. We knew that that was a distant dream, since anybody who takes anything into a dealership is told that, whatever the problem is, it's not covered under the warrenty. (The warrenty, in case you didn't know, is much like the Russian constitution: on paper, everything looks wonderful, but worthless in the real world.) The guy at the dealership assured the Mister that it would be covered under the warrenty, provided, of course, that it was not damaged or tampered with. I figured that meant "used as it was supposed to", but as it turned out, it was covered under the warrently, and we will get it fixed for nothing. Now, we do have to wait for a part to come in, which will likely take about 6 months, and there will probably be some nefarious charge that will be passed on to us. ("Sorry, you have to pay the fifty dollar "Monday Through Friday Surcharge", which we have to charge you because we work on Wednesdays.") The Mister is a bastard, because he purposely lead me to believe that we would have to take out a second morgage to pay for it, and nearly made me have a stroke until he relented and told me otherwise. Hate it when he does that, and I fall for it every freaking time.

And that is the state of the Loudshoes house for another day. How was your day!

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