The Sunday Morning Report

I'm not sure if I love or hate daylight savings time. Actually, I don't think love falls into it anywhere at all. I know that I hate changing either to or from daylight savings time. I hate what it does to our circadian rhythm. It takes days if not weeks for us to get used to it. I do, however, like the fact that it stays light longer in the evening. We tend to get more done when it's not dark outside, whether we're actually doing outside activities or not.

I think I'm still going to vote against it. While I don't hate it, it's fair to say that I dislike it a lot.

There are a couple negatives to report today, both of which are in the vehicle department. Suzie had her car take a dump on her a few days ago. She was almost certain that the engine had breathed its last gasp. It has been a bit of an oil leaker, and while she was out and about one day it started squealing and getting hot. She thought for sure she had killed it by running it too low on oil. I was skeptical based on her description of the events, but didn't get to actually check into it until yesterday. Instead, I lent her my truck and let her drive that a few days. Yesterday we found (much to her delight) that it was just a blown upper radiator hose. What deceived her was the fact that it the escaping steam and noise was being directed down the backside of the engine instead of where you could see it. Now we just have to find a replacement hose, and as we've already found, that's not going to be as easy as it should be. We'll get it though.

The other victim? My truck. I don't know what it is--I'm sure it's minor--But it acted up all at once yesterday. It was acting like it had no fuel and was refusing to run unless you kept the gas pedal pushed a certain amount. That meant that when you came up to a stop you had to push on the brake and the gas to keep it from dying. I'm sure it's an easy fix. Probably some crap in the carburetor. The bummer is that it happened when we were actually needing it yesterday, which takes me to the next newsworthy event.

Suzie bought a new stove for her kitchen. Talk about a killer deal: A guy was emptying his condo to move to New Zealand (where he's from) and had to move things quickly. He first tickled her interest by putting it up for sale on Craigslist, which is where she first saw it. When she contacted him, he told her about it and mentioned that he had put it up for sale on Ebay as well. It suffices to say that not many people buy ranges on Ebay. Because of their size and weight, they have to be "local pickup only" or it would cost you a small fortune. To make a long story short, she was the sole bidder and "stole" it for $245! It's a 1 year-old Maytag drop-in with a smooth white glass cook top. It's very deluxe, and from what we've seen on the web, they're going for anywhere from $1200 to $1500. We had to drive to Issaquah to pick it up from his storage unit yesterday, which is exactly when my truck started acting up. Oh well... We got it home and all is well.

I sent Suzie home in my car last night with the hopes that I could get my truck squared away today and find her a replacement radiator hose. I dunno though--It snowed again last night. While it didn't snow that much, it's taking its sweet time melting, so it's obviously still pretty cold out there. Oh well... You gotta do what you gotta do...

In other news, I gave my laptop a new lease on life. It had something going very wrong with the palm rest. That's what they call the whole of top of it where you rest your hands while you're typing. It also contains the touchpad. Something on mine was going bad, and you had to be very cognizant of where your cursor was when you were typing because the slightest pressure in the wrong place would send the cursor somewhere else on screen while you were typing. You could (and would) screw up your document considerably. Because it's a Dell, parts are available all over Ebay, and I bought a brand new palm rest (the complete top with the touchpad in it) for $15. Killer! It took me less than a half hour to strip the whole laptop down to replace it. I was aided by the fact that Dell has manuals for disassembly you can download. I didn't have to wonder at all about the order of disassembly, how to get a certain piece of trim off, or anything else. It went very smoothly, and now the laptop behaves as it should.

Oh crap... I just looked outside and it's snowing again...