Bonus Post: Cars

Cars.

I know I said no post until after the move. But I thought you might find this readable.

In nine days we are driving three vehicles 1700 miles, ten hours a day for three straight days. This concerns me. Susan's car just turned ten. My car could probably apply for social security benefits, and it just passed 160,000 miles. So in preparation for this trip we have been taking our cars to the shop for the last many months.

Here's a basic summary.

May-Replace the belts in Christopher's car, and not finish all the work because there's more than we can afford.

June-Repair Susan's A/C and get a full tune-up. Also save up money so we can finish fixing Christopher's car. Also Christopher's car starts squealing every time it starts.

July-Finish the work on Christopher's car that suddenly appeared last month, and finish all the stuff we couldn't afford before.

So we take mine back in for July, and they give us the estimate and we breathe a ginormous sigh of relief because it is exactly within our precarious budget.

Then on Thursday, Susan decides to go to work, which seems like a good idea at the time and her car is kaputz. My car is still in the shop, so we get our neighbor to help us jump start the car, and jump and jump and nothing. So we had to tow it into the shop. Now lucky of luckies when we get there and I walk in the gal at the desk says, "Oh, we just finished your car, I haven't even called you yet." Phew! So instead of walking home from the shop, we can take my car, which also means Susan can go directly off to work. The next day, Friday, they call us about 30 minutes before they close for the weekend. The trouble with Susan's car was just a starter relay, a relatively cheap piece. I said they could go ahead and do the repair, and the gal at the shop, who I've gotten to be very close with over the last several months, says she knew I'd say that and they had already gotten the piece in. So they installed it and we rushed off to pick up the car before they closed.

So I'm not sure if I should feel cursed: two new car problems in the two months before we're trying to make an expensive move with said cars, or if I should feel blessed: all our car problems have so far occurred before the trip and none have destroyed our finances yet.

I pick blessed because I don't want to think about the things I would be getting cursed for.

Susan's Birthday

When we were first married I misguessed Susan's birthday on a couple of occasions and learned that this bothered her to no end. So even when I learned the correct date, I would incessantly refer to July 19th as her birthday, one week late. Susan insisted this was the worst thing I could do to her. Then at the end of last summer (a couple months after we celebrated Susan's birthday on the correct date) Susan and I were driving home from Denver after a whirlwind trip to see our dear friend Tasia get married. About as soon as we got home Susan's heart began racing. Literally. And it wouldn't slow down. It was sort of terrifying. So we rushed her to the hospital. We sat Susan down on a chair in the waiting area as I gave her important information to the office staff. Name. Social Security Number. Birthday. And in my fluster and nervousness I said the wrong birthday.

"I told you that joke would bite you in the butt one day," Susan shouted from her chair. And she and the receptionists had a little laugh at my expense.

So this year we celebrated Susan's birthday on her birthday, with no mention of any other dates. But in memory of Susan's not birthday, July 19th. I am posting this blog all about her birthday.

Susan's job has no reliable schedule, and so we had expected Susan to come home about nine o'clock on her birthday, so we were going to do a little cake and ice cream and that was all. But about five we learned she'd be home for dinner. So there went the cake idea (which I had intended to surprise her with). Instead we went down to Olive Garden which is Susan's favorite of all the restaurants.

The highlight of our conversation was convincing Susan that we had been to Olive Garden ten times together. She found this nearly impossible to believe, but we managed to remember every one of the occasions.

In our haste to get down to Olive Garden, though, we forgot to get our movie gift card which we were going to use to see Despicable Me 2. But we decided to return to Rexburg, and go back for the movie on Saturday.

I had every intention of taking this picture in front of a big yellow poster with a fat bald Steve Carrel doppelganger, but even though the movie had been out only one week we could not find a single piece of promotional material for Despicable Me 2. This was shocking. So instead of taking a nice picture with the scenery we could find we took the one above. Despicable Me 2 is an inoffensive movie. This is the nicest compliment I can work up. Although at the end the minions make fun of Boyz II Men which is hilarious . I guess that's a nicer compliment than inoffensive. I stand corrected. But it has only a small portion of it's predecessor's charm.

Then we went home, and I delivered the promised cake. Not wanting to dirty the egg beaters because washing them is a chore, I decided to hand mix the cake. The directions said 450 turns. So I counted. And you know what? The cake was delectable. Very light. Of course I still can't decide if the 450 turns was more of a chore than washing the beaters. I'm still on the side of probably. Cleaning those beaters is really obnoxious. 

This is Susan with her cake, and the flowers her parents sent her for her birthday. Also Susan is not 221, but we didn't feel like buying a number three. Besides this way there were more candles for Susan to blow out. And in the single greatest act of theft I have personally experienced, the dress I bought for Susan was delivered by the Post Office and then swiped off of our porch. At least as best as we can figure, since the Post Office did an investigation and everything and said it was definitely delivered. So no present for her birthday, but it did come the next Tuesday. It looks better on Susan, but here's a picture of it anyway.

I made Susan go dress shopping with me at the mall and I took notes on all the things she liked and then nailed a nearly perfect dress. It doesn't have a princess neckline. We can live with that.

So happy birthday to Susan, who now feels like she is old. (I don't understand this if anyone else can please let me know in the comments.) And we are a week closer to our Houston move. Our house has descended into a series of little more than piles. So probably no post next week, and the next one will be a bunch of pictures from our cross country trip.

Moving to Houston

We're moving. This is kind of sad. Lots of happy. And definitely lots of pain. We are blessed to have a regular moving crew descending on us. Both Susan's mom and brother and my mom and brother are coming up, and we're driving from Rexburg, ID all the way to Houston, TX. Susan is starting school in Houston about halfway through August. The big day is July 31, and so I've added a countdown widget, that should help you glimpse a wee bit of our excitement. The trip will take three days, and we'll get to see gobs of Utah, a corner of Colorado, just about all of New Mexico, and parts of Texas I had so far successfully avoided. It's a little bit like a vacation. A very little bit. We have already packed 10 boxes I think, and it's starting to affect the walls. 

Enjoy the countdown.

The Fourth

Most of Susan's clients are out of town for the fourth of July, and so she mostly had the day off. She managed to squeeze one client in during the morning, and then we were going to go off to Idaho Falls for the day.

This was kind of a relief for us. We are moving at the end of the month, so when I weed whacked our internet connection I decided it wasn't worth getting a new one. Then our entire computer died. So for two computer bums like Susan and I, anything to do this week is great!

Stop one was the Idaho Falls Zoo.

We spent about two hours looking at their exhibits. The weather has finally broken so it was a more Idaho like 85 degrees, so we thoroughly enjoyed our time. If you're curious, behind us there is a demoiselle crane. It looks like this:



Lowlights of the trip included the kookaburra which was not making it's rollicking laughter that you can usually hear all the way across the zoo. Also the otter exhibit was closed. Definitely lame. But mostly  the red squirrels. Why? Because red squirrels look mostly exactly like gray squirrels. Except they look awesome because they're red! So every time I see them I think, man why do we have gray squirrels and not cool squirrels.

Highlights. The goeldi's monkeys.


These little guys jumped like four feet across their cage from one tiny little branch to the next. The coolest is was when it looked like they were doing parkour zapping back and forth across five or six branches. Also there was a red panda that always looked like it was smiling. And a mama and baby lemur. The baby lemur was hanging onto the mother, as baby lemurs do, I learned from the very helpful zoo sign. Well while we watched mama lemur decided it was time for baby lemur to get going. So while baby lemur is hanging on, mama lemur is scraping baby lemur off her fur. Well she finally wins, and then baby lemur all wobbly-and-cute-baby-like takes two or three steps, looking ready to fall off the branch, and then jumps back into the fur of mama lemur who seemed happy to have baby lemur back. Lemur walking lessons. That's totally what I saw at the zoo.

Then we were off to BBQ.

The zoo is actually inside a giant park, so Susan and I drove around until we found an empty grill under some shade and set up camp. Did I forget the paper plates, utensils, spatula, and hot pad. Yes. Did we figure out how to make hot dogs on a grill anyways. Yep. We mostly just sat around and enjoyed the nice day. We started reading Fablehaven, which is okay as a book, but Susan and I went to go see the author on our first date, so we always meant to get around to reading it. About six we moved to an adjacent park where we thought we could see the Idaho Falls firework show.

We found a perfect spot, and enjoyed the rest of the evening reading and playing rummy. Then it was time for the show. Now this is the biggest firework show west of the Mississippi, in terms of most fireworks exploded, so legit. And 150,000 people go to it, which is why we stayed at a park a little ways away. So it got dark and we couldn't really see the show, and we were bummed because we figured our view just stunk. But the church next to the park started setting off their own fireworks. Over the next half hour they must have set off fifty or more. It was a small, but really nice low key show, for our really nice low key day. And we left. Turns out the big show hadn't started yet, because there was a search and rescue on the river delaying it. Oh well.