Happy Day!

Well! It's been a while, hasn't it? But, today is my birthday and I love my birthday like a little kid, so I thought it would be a good time to say hello and tell you all what I've been up to!

So, let's pick up where we left off, shall we? I chose not to go to the high school reunion. There really weren't many people I would like to see, and I don't feel any need to show them how I'm doing. Plus, I haven't seen, heard from, talked to, heard about, ANYTHING, the Awful Ex, so I decided to leave that situation exactly as it was. I'm a little afraid that he'd "want to be friends" or something ridiculous like that. As Ebeneezer Scrooge so aptly put it, "I wish to be left alone." So I skipped it. (I did look at the pictures on FB though, and there were some people I would not have recognized. And I don't mean that in a good way.)

Did I tell you that my car died? Yes, sadly, my beloved 10 year old Honda Civic passed to that great parking lot in the sky back in July. It quit in about 15 minutes, too, which is kinda scary and kinda good. I told one of my friends that it was the car equivalent of having a massive heart attack and being dead before you hit the floor. It was kind of good, in that we didn't spend tons of money fixing a million little things before the big one hit, and it was also good that I was close to home when the service engine soon light came on, because by the time I got to our driveway, there was steam pouring out from underneath the hood. We changed the oil and hoped it was fixed, so I drove it a little to make sure it was alright before work the next day, and I didn't even make it the three miles out to the highway. The engine temperature pegged out at the hottest point and stayed there, so I turned around and went home. A few days later, we tried to move it from that parking spot and it wouldn't even shift into gear, so the transmission and motor are both shot. We've been taking our time to decide what to buy next (and save up some money, since we were hoping that the Civic would last a couple more years until some other things were paid off), but we've pretty well settled on the Volkswagon diesel Jetta. It's a really cute little car and the gas mileage is unbelievable. Now it's just a matter of time while we get our finances in order to buy one. I can't wait because right now I'm commuting in a Ford Excursion, which is basically the biggest SUV EVAH, and you can imagine how maneuverable that thing is on city streets and parking lots.

One thing delaying the car purchase is the fact that our house is falling apart in large chunks. Remember back in May when the stove caught on fire and the well pump quit ON THE SAME DAY? Would you believe that the well pump died again, this time quickly followed by the hot water heater? And that this time, it rained the entire week after the well pump died so that we couldn't fix it (electric pump + rain = bad idea), so that we spent an ENTIRE WEEK without water in our house? Yep, THAT was a fun week. Fortunately, Rock's mom and stepdad live right in front of us, so I could go to their house to shower in the mornings, so at least I could still go to work. (I refered to my office as The Land of Running Water that week and I wasn't at all unhappy about working some overtime!) This time, we replaced the well pump, the pressure tank and the hot water heater, so hopefully it will be more than 5 months before we have to replace anything again. Aren't you dying to visit my house?

So tell me, what's new with you?