About a week ago the driver's door handle on The Boat failed. We'd been having trouble with it for a while but now it absolutely refused to unlock no matter how many times he turned the key. This was inconvenient, but the front passenger could open the door from the inside so it wasn't much of a problem until the front passenger's door handle also broke. We thought we'd take the car in to the mechanic's on the way to getting my allergy shot on Thursday, only by then the car had also developed a flat tire. The weather was unpleasant and I didn't want
jebra messing around with the spare when he was coming down with a cold, so we decided to put off dealing the car until the weekend when the weather was supposed to be better.By Friday
jebra was feeling quite poorly and coughing a lot. This made his sitting in with the Orchard Lake Philharmonic Society as a guest percussionist more stressful than he needed, as he wasn't feeling at all well and now he was worried he'd cough his way through their concerts. The first one was Friday night, at the First Presbyterian Church of Farmington. I skipped that one in favor of staying home and catching up on laundry.He had Saturday off from concerts, so we slept in and otherwise took it easy, leaving the house only long enough to get in our daily hacks (Ingress) and to buy some food. I spent most of the day on my corner of the couch working on more pet beds for the animal rescue and trying not to come down will a full-blown cold.
Sunday's concert didn't start until 7 or 8 pm so we once again slept in and tried not to get sicker. The concert went off well, but
jebra told me later he wasn't the only one who spent the concert trying not to cough. He said their pianist was really struggling. The concert was pretty good (and probably better than pretty good if you like that sort of thing). I liked some of the pieces a great deal and I enjoyed hearing Matt Watroba speak about folk music, but some of the actual folk pieces left me feeling down. I listen to the words not the melody and if the words are sad, I'm sad -- no matter how joyful the melody. Monday morning we were scheduled to have the furnace repair people out to the house as we were pretty sure the humidifier wasn't working. It wasn't and
jebra wants me to write a letter of complaint to the furnace people as the only people who have messed with the system are their own employees and we know we never turned off the water supply to the humidifier and we certainly didn't crack any of the pipes. That had to have been something that happened the last time the furnace/thermostat broke. I'd planned to come in to work with out jebra and leave him home to deal with the furnace people, but he begged me stay home with him as he just wasn't feeling well at all. The repair was completed shortly before noon, so we volunteered to pick up lunch on our way in.Monday night is rehearsal night for the FCB and even though he wasn't at 100%,
jebra was going to go. He loaded up the 'good' car, turned the key in the ignition, and heard the engine go "vroo..." The instrument panel went black and turning the key didn't result in any sounds. The repair shop was already closed for the night so I figured there was no point in calling Triple-A or trying to do anything with either car. jebra unpacked the car, made a few phone calls to spread the word that he wasn't going to be able to attend practice, and went to bed. Tuesday morning I called Triple-A as soon as I was out of bed and arranged for two service calls, one for the dead car and the other for the flat tire. It seemed sort of a waste as both calls were to the same location but neither of us were in any shape to mess around with changing the flat and we thought we'd have to the maroon car towed in for repairs. Amazingly, the tow truck driver got the maroon car to start (he must be magic as it wasn't even jumped) and he got out his air compressor and simply pumped up the flat tire. Which held long enough for
jebra to get the car to the tire store (we were told the car needed new tires at the beginning of the winter; we just hadn't gotten around to it yet. Not to mention tires are expensive). Meanwhile, I drove the maroon car over to the repair shop and then hunkered down to wait for jebra. The repair people took pity on us and jumped the queue for us, and looked behind the door panel to see if the lock/latch on the driver's side was a quick fix. They took out a rivet, replaced with a more substantial bolt, and sent us on our way knowing we'd be back to deal with the other door once the maroon car is out of the shop.We again picked up lunch on the way to the office, and worked the remainder of the day. After work we went out to the car and discovered that although the door handle works on the driver's side, the unlocking mechanism does not. We stared at each other for a moment, wondering how we'd get into the car if we couldn't unlock it. Then
jebra went around to the passenger side, used his key to unlock the car, went back around to the driver's side and used the repaired door handle to open the door. Today we were closer to on time for work only now I've come down with whatever it is
jebra has. He seems to be feeling much better but now I'm coughing and generally feeling awful. As for today's scrapbook page, this is one of the most recently completed pet beds. I'm convinced it looks like something Luna Lovegood would use as proof one of her possibly imaginary magical creatures actually exist. For a closer look, click on the image below.
 Click to embiggen |
Scrapbook papers & elements from the kit The Best Is Yet To Come.
For more information about the designers and their work, see
http://mrs-sweetpeach.dreamwidth.org/766331.html.
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