Remember Halloween?

If you were to walk into any store these days, you would probably think that the next holiday to be celebrated was Christmas.  Contrary to retailer belief though, we actually have two holidays, including one pretty major one, between now and Christmas.

In just a few short weeks, we will celebrate the end of the harvest by stuffing our faces.  This holiday is know as Hallowe’en or, if you’re not into traditional spellings, Halloween.  Ironically, we will not be partaking of the fruits of said harvest but will be gorging ourselves on sugary confections originating in Hershey, Pennsylvania and McLean, Virginia (home of M&M’s).

On Saturday, our ward held their annual trunk or treat. This is a safe environment where neighborhood kids can run around a parking lot and get candy from people sitting in and around their vehicles.  Normally, I try to encourage my kids to not take candy from people that are sitting in their car but for this, I made an exception.  We have about 4.3 million kids living within our ward boundaries so, as you can probably imagine, there were a lot of kids running around in costumes.

I Hate Buying Cars

After the ordeal last week with our Dodge Colt, we decided to go out and buy a new car so that I don’t need to freeze as I ride my scooter in colder weather.  I hate buying cars.  Every car that I’ve ever bought from a private party has had problems within the first month that took hundreds of dollars to repair and going to dealerships usually involves a feeling of being severely ripped off.

I started looking at cars on a few different websites Wednesday morning and found one that I thought would work for us.  Holly picked me up from work that night and we drove to check it out at a place called Totally Awesome Cars.  That name in and of itself is very funny because there was absolutely nothing that was “totally awesome” about any of their cars.

Our Trip: A Retrospective Part I

Since Holly finished up her first year of nursing school on Wednesday, she thought that it would be fun to go on a little vacation during her week and a half break. You see, she starts her RN year next week and wanted to do more than just sit at home doing nothing during her time off. I agreed with her and so the planning began.

Since neither of us had ever been to Zions National Park or Bryce Canyon National Park, we decided that we should take a road trip through Utah and enjoy some of the beautiful scenery that this state has to offer. We booked our hotels and I told my boss I was leaving for a few days, then we loaded up the van and started driving.

Car Buying In A Galaxy Far, Far Away

My boss told me to watch this video. I thought that it was so funny that I decided to share it with you, my esteemed reader.

Me The Greasemonkey

Holly and I have been considering buying a new car. Not because we need one but because our 1994 Dodge Colt is a steaming turd. Well, actually it’s a frozen turd since the heater doesn’t work but that’s beside the point. We discussed our options and decided that it would be best if we can squeeze another year out of it. If it can run until December when Holly is out of nursing school, we can get the type of car we want instead of a piece of junk.

Since it’s like 10 degrees here at night when I leave work, I figured that I better start trying to fix the car so that I don’t end up freezing to death on I-15. I stopped by AutoZone and picked up a new thermostat hoping that it would fix my no heat issues. While I was there, I also picked up a new air filter since I know it hasn’t been changed in a while.

Time For A New Car?

Today was a great day. Things were going just peachy for me. That is, until I left work and discovered that the battery in my car was dead. OK, I’m partially to blame for this. I forgot and left my headlights on. But the battery was dead anyways. I couldn’t charge it and once it got started, it kept dying.

I figured that since I couldn’t go more than two blocks without the car dying on me, that I would need to buy a new battery. I took it to get tested before buying a new one and the guy told me that it had less than one volt of power. It needs twelve. He said that there was no way that I would be able to get the battery to hold a charge. I assume that he wanted to sell me a new battery but still, he had a point. I ended up buying a new battery and driving home.

Dang Car… Again

I have a lot of bad luck when it comes to tires on my cars. Usually when people get a flat, it’s something that is nice and easy to get fixed. There’s no spending hours in the tire store waiting for some obscure part to arrive. There’s no buying of new tires. It’s just easy. The hole gets patched and then, 20 minutes later, the person is on their merry way again. This is apparently a fairy tale. I don’t believe in cheap flat tires any more than I believe in witches that live in gingerbread houses and eat German children. Mmmmm… gingerbread.

You may remember the tale of the last time that I had a flat tire. It was a simple fix that turned into a mult-hour, multi-dollar ordeal. My car is a target for debris of the puncturing kind. It’s been about three months so I guess that it’s time to go through it all again. Fortunately, this time it wasn’t as bad as last time.

Dang Car

We have a 1994 Dodge Colt that was given to us by Holly’s sister. (Technically I paid around $1.32 but for all intents and purposes, the car was given to us.) It’s been a really good car for us.

In the 5 years that we’ve had it, we’ve had to replace all of the tires but that was due to normal wear. Last year, the transmission went out so we replaced that. While we were had the transmission out, we replaced the clutch too so it won’t have to be done later. Lucky for us, we’re friends with a really good mechanic and he practically gives us the labor for free. The transmission and clutch were only $600. If we took it someplace else, we would have spent over $1,500! It’s good to know guys like this.