Car Shopping

Since hearing the bad news about the Saturn last week, we have been dreading looking for a replacement. But it is time… So Kris and I got on cars.com and started looking at our options when it comes to price on a new used car for Sarah. I think that this time around we are going to stay with a newer model, hopefully only 3 years old or so, rather than 12 (like the Saturn). I think we are going to focus on a Hyundai Elantra. We had driven one earlier this year when we were in Florida for Ali’s cheer Nationals, and we have a couple of friends that have them and I think they are a pretty good value. The mileage that they get is superb, which is a big thing for a poor, college student, and I don’t think we have had to do anything with any of our Hyundais other than the normal maintenance schedule. So I think that if we went with one, she would be able to drive it for a long time without issue, assuming she takes care of it (and that is a big assumption). So now we just need to find one that fits our criteria (age, mileage, price safety features, etc). The good thing is that unless Sarah’s car completely dies, we’ll have a couple of months to find something.

The Saturn Is Done

Sarah's car needed an oil change, so I had her schedule the appointment. There were a couple other concerns that she had that I asked our car guy to look over. Boy, when I got the call, I was a little shocked. First, the good news. The oil got changed without incident. Now the bad news.

First, the Check Engine light was on. Sarah said it came on when she floored it on the highway, trying to get around a car on the interstate. I figured something just needed to be reset. Nope! Turns out there are (2) errors to come up when they run the diagnostic. First is a lean fuel condition. Most likely the mass air flow sensor that needs replacing. Cost of $300. I bought one online and replace it myself a little over a year ago for about $40 or $50, but that is something I figured that I could do. The next error was a misfire code. He didn’t feel it when he test drove it, but that is what the error said. The problem most likely is the ignition coil, and since her car has two, it of course would be the one in the harder to get at location. Cost for having that replaced, $400.

Sarah said she was also feeling a shake when driving on the highway, so I asked him to look at the tires. I figured the air pressure was low in one tire, or something along those lines. Wrong. Turns out that there is a problem with the right front strut. It moved about ¾”, which is what he things is causing the vibration at high speeds. He told me that he could also feel it move when turning slowly and hitting a bump. In order to replace the strut, the mount will also need to be replaced. Total cost for strut and mount replacement, $700. So while we’re at it, there was a bounce/squeak coming from the rear of the car that I knew from a previous service trip due to a rear sway bar bushing that was worn out. So as long as we would be in there doing all the other work, he said he would go in and have that bushing replaced as well. Cost of that is $500-$600. Also, the tires were 75% worn in the rear, and 80% worn in the front. I’m not quite sure how that happened, because there are only about 20,000 miles on those tires (probably less). I do know that they are only about three years old. They would make it thru the summer, but they would definitely need to be replaced before winter. Cost of a new set of tires… $500-$600. Finally, as long as all the other work is being done… the air conditioner compressor has needed to be replaced for three years. So toss in $970 for a new one of those and redoing all the belts to get the A/C working again. All totaled… on the low end we are looking at $3300 if we did it all. Time to look for a replacement for Goldie and put her out to pasture.

Working More Hours

Now that Sarah is home, she is getting her work schedule in place for the summer. The problem though, is that she is not getting many hours at Bath and Body Works. She took the job figuring that with better hours and a higher wage, she’d be in a better situation than having to work at Steins. Unfortunately, she has only worked two days since she has been home for a total of about 8 hours. She asked her manager about it and the schedule is made up a week in advance, and there are only a certain number of hours available. She mentioned that if possible, she is willing to work more hours and will take as many as she can get. So we’ll see what happens in the next couple of weeks. Hopefully they bump her up a little bit, because if not, she is going to be strapped for funds at school next year.

New Furniture Has Arrived

Kris sent me a message today that our new furniture has arrived! WOOHOO!!! It is going to be nice to be able to sit down and watch TV without sinking practically to the floor. Although, no sooner was the furniture here than the cats decided to stake their claim to it. That is one thing I haven’t quite figured out yet. With the old leather furniture, you just wiped it down and got rid of all the cat hair. With a fabric upholstery, it’ll need to be vacuumed regularly, or covered. We’ll figure it out. At least we finally have new furniture.

No More Furniture

At long last, our new furniture is being delivered tomorrow. So last night the old recliner was moved out into the garage, I think we’ll save it since Sarah’s boyfriend might want it for his apartment next year at college. That left only the old couch, and that was removed today. Last year during the Independence Day Parade, there was a J-Dog Junk Removal truck, and when I looked up what that was, I saw that it is a veteran owned franchise that employs veterans. As someone who does what I can to support veterans, I thought I would call them rather than some other junk removal service (1800GOTJUNK) to haul it away.


WOW! What an ordeal that was! I don’t know how the movers ever got that thing INTO the house. It took 20-25 minutes to get it out the door. First, the thing was heavy, and I mean HEAVY! To make things worse, there was no good place to grab onto it to move. This meant that they had to grab it by the base. Oh, and since it was a sofa/sleeper, they had to tie the bed portion down to keep it from folding out while it was being moved.


Because if it’s size it had to go out thru the front door. This means that once it got out of the living room and into the entryway, it needed to pivot 90 degrees to get out the door. So they needed to tip it up on its side, and even then it wouldn’t fit. The next thing they did was remove the legs, and then they had to force it thru the door. They actually ended up scraping a couple of my freshly painted walls! Oh well, I can touch up those spots, at least the couch is gone.



Overall, the guys from J-Dog were great. Very friendly and professional, even in the face of trying to get that beast out of the house. I would definitely use them again if it came to it. But the long and short of things is that we now have no furniture in the house until mid-day tomorrow. WOOHOO!

Happy Mother's Day

For the first time in a long time, I did not get a picture of the girls with Kris on Mother’s Day. Maybe they are to the point where it is too much of a hassle, I don’t know. Alison didn’t get out of bed until 10:30 and Sarah didn’t drag her butt out of bed until noon or so. If this is what summer vacation is going to be like, that is going to stop quickly! Granted, I didn’t get moving until about 9:00 AM, but that was mainly because I didn’t want to start waking people up.

It was a very busy day aside from being Mother’s Day. I had to finish sanding down all the spackled spots for the baseboards, vacuum all the dust, wipe down the sanded spots and paint over them so the baseboards and registers can be put back in place, hopefully before the new furniture arrives this week. 

Home For The Summer

The semester is over and Sarah is now home for the summer. It is going to be tough getting used to having another child in the house again, especially Sarah (nothing against her, but she is a bit of a slob).

Clean Install

I finally got all my files transferred to an external HD so I could begin the resetting process. They sure don’t make it easy. I have gone thru re-installs before in order to wipe out and reset hard drives, so I was planning on it taking a little while. When I started, I discovered that you can reset the hard drive without removing any personal files. However, I have learned that things are not always as they seem, so I spent the better part of a week backing up onto the external drive anyway.

I decided to let it run while I was preparing to finish the living room updates, and by updates I mean ripping out the baseboards and touching up the paint around where the edges of the molding was. Eventually, after about 90 minutes to two hours, it was ready. Things worked pretty well. All the junk was removed except “my files”, so I thought I was good to go and I would begin reinstalling the essential software (MS Office, iTunes, etc) and this time I would skip any of the unnecessary apps. Well that was not to be.

I soon found out that everything was working, EXCEPT my start menu. Even the Windows key on the keyboard wouldn’t open it. After a little digging around online, I discovered that there is some known issue with losing the functionality of the start menu when resetting the computer. The first suggestion was to redo the reset and that should take care of the problem. However I wondered if it was a known issue, does Microsoft have an update that would take care of the problem, so I ran my update wizard. Sure enough, there was an update that would handle that. But after three failed attempts to download and install the update (and another 90 minutes of waiting for those failures) I decided another clean install/reset would be just as good. This time however, I had wiped everything out. I figured that I had everything already saved to the external drive so wiping everything out just might work better. About two hours later (it might have been a little longer since I was busy patching holes and sanding) I was good to go.

So now I just need to put my programs back on. Hopefully this will take care of any lagging problems

Reset?

Last night I was doing some updating to my family tree program. I finished up what I had been doing and then closed up my laptop for the evening. This morning when I opened it to check email (actually delete all the mass marketing messages) I was unable to get it to boot up. I tried a couple of times and got a message about not starting correctly. So it looks as if I will need to try a reset and reinstall windows. I have never done this before by myself without trying to save all my files first. I am supposed to be able to do a clean install without deleting any personal files, I assume that means the contents of the “My Documents” folder, or whatever Windows calls it now. I’ll do a little more digging, and maybe try again to reboot tonight, but I sure hope I can salvage it, because I really don’t want to have to buy a new laptop.