I just finished my Christmas shopping, thank God. I don’t know what I would have done today if I didn’t have my good friend right there with me. I am not much of a shopper and I can’t stand to shop for more than an hour, I get totally uninterested in the task at hand. If she hadn’t been there giving me ideas for people, really good ones at that, I don’t think that I would be done (thanks Aminallady for all your help). Now all I have to do is wrap all the presents, we bought presents for 22 people (this includes buying one present for all the kids that are under 16, which is five children) and some of them got multiples. At least I have a week to wrap all the presents before I leave for North Carolina. We got the Explorer back yesterday. That is another stress that is done with, I didn’t know how we were going to get to NC with all the presents and the two dogs in my truck. Now I don’t have to worry about it because we have the Explorer back. I am so happy that the transmission guy found out that our warranty was still good! The total bill for rebuilding the transmission came to a little over $2,200 and we only had to pay our deductible. I love my truck to death and I wouldn’t trade it for the world but we really need the larger vehicle to get places.

Work this coming week is going to be busy, busy, busy. We try to get as much done before the holiday’s hit because we all know we aren’t going to be motivated the last week of December and first week of January. So, I have something planned for every day next week and that means running around like a chicken with its head cut off. Work yesterday was totally nasty, I came home smelling like fuel oil and I didn’t get what I wanted to get done, done. Which means that all that work has to be put off until next week, hence why my schedule is CRAZY. Anyways, back to what happened yesterday, one of our fuel oil companies that uses us as their environmental consultant had a fuel oil leak in their yard and it was just disgusting. We spent all day using sorbent pads to get the fuel oil out of puddles, keeping the fuel oil from getting to the neighboring creek and getting the leak stopped. When I got home, every time I closed my eyes all I saw were red puddles (fuel oil is dyed red for tracing purposes), it was quite disturbing.

I don’t understand why people have to be so grumpy when they are out shopping, it’s not my fault you waited until the last weekend before Christmas to finsih your shopping. I wasn’t grumpy today because I knew that I did this to myself and the quicker I found what I wanted the quicker I got to go home. I was on my way home today and I was sitting at a light, I happened to be the car that would block the intersection of people turning left into the strip mall on my right. I however did not block the intersection while my light was red, people were turning in and out of the strip mall just fine. When my light turned green I pulled up behind the car in front of me and lo and behold someone came and wanted to turn left into the strip mall and at that point I was in his way, even though I was at that second moving up. He turns to me and says “you know, you aren’t ever supposed to block intersections”. So what does he proceded to do??? He pulls in front of the car behind me, which happened to be my friend, and blocks her from proceding to the light. Would those five extra seconds that he had to wait made that big of a difference? I think not…hello people its the holiday season, you know the season for giving and holiday cheer! Again I just don’t understand.

We have made a decision on what we are going to do about the Explorer. Boo-Boo took it to the transmission place our friends father recommended for him to give us a quote on what it was going to cost. He asked Boo-Boo to bring along all his paperwork from when he bought it because he said sometimes he can find a loophole in warranties. When Boo-Boo bought the Explorer he got a 24 month or 2,400 mile warranty and we have put well over 2,400 miles on it since we bought it. Well the guy called that evening and said to Boo-Boo “do you know that your SUV is still under warranty”. Boo-Boo was like what are you talking about, the guys said you bought it with 47,000 miles on it and you now have 63,000 miles and your warranty is for 24 months or 24,000 miles. Apparently from the get go Boo-Boo just totally missed a zero, I saw the printout it is easily missed. Now we have our answer, we are going to rebuild his transmission. Heck it isn’t going to cost us anything so we might as well. Plus we had looked into the blue book value for it and there was no way we were going to get what we owe on it if we traded it in. Thank goodness for small miracles.I LOVE BEING A WOMAN! I have had this conversation with my boss multiple times. He says that he would never want to be a woman. I ask him why and his response is always “beside the obvious, the world is my urinal, I pee when and where ever I want”. My response to that is always well at least I don’t have a little soldier running my life and pitching his tent whenever he pleases. Well yesterday my boss called me and my female co-worker and said that we needed to get dirt to a site because the contractor we had hired had yet to do it and the homeowner has been waiting for weeks for the hole in the ground to get filled. He told us to go to the construction site across the street and see if they would give us half a dump truck load of dirt and to let them know we would accommodate accordingly. The guys on site made a bunch of calls and we were told to come back at 4 and the truck would be ready for us. When I called my boss to let him know the dirt would be there late afternoon he asked how much it was going to cost. I told him we didn’t discuss that and they didn’t seem concerned with it but I would offer the driver money (normally in these situations you just pay the driver what he would make to haul the load). We came back, took the driver to the site and he dumped the dirt. I asked him what we owed him and he said “nothing honey, following two beautiful ladies was enough for me.” He then proceeded to offer to bring more dirt and gravel for the driveway if we needed it, again at no cost. This morning the boss man asked how much it ended up costing us, I told him NOTHING. He wanted to know how we got away with that, the answer is simple because we are women. I told him OK, you can pee when and where ever you want but I get shit for free, I think my deal is better.The finale of The Amazing Race-Family Edition was on last night. I was overwhelmed with joy because the Weaver’s 

 

 

 

 

 

did not win. However, I found myself torn at the end when the Bransen’s and Linz’s were neck and neck doing the North America puzzle. I thought that I was completely set on the Linz’s winning…just so you know I have compared that family to what it would be like if me, Boo-Boo, child #3 and child #4 decided to run TAR together…but the closer it got to them finishing the puzzle I really just wanted Wally to pull out all the stops and beat the Linz’s. Wally was hindering his daughters at the beginning of the race but in the later legs he really starting pulling his weight, there were some challenges that they would have struggled to finish if it wasn’t for him. I got over it though and ended up very happy for the Linz’s, does the second place team get a lesser prize like in Survivor?

Has anyone else noticed that it is cold as piss outside? I was collecting samples from groundwater monitoring wells today and while I was bailing the twine was freezing and my tools were frozen to the ground.

One Year Update

So, I had my review on Wednesday, one day after my one year anniversary. Everything went very well and it wasn’t something I should have been stressing about. I guess I already knew that but the fact that I had never been through a review was stressful. Thanks for the advice EC. The raise is going to be a welcome site but we already have plenty of things that it is going towards.We both are having car problems, Boo-Boo more than myself. He bought his Explorer less than a year ago and we are having major transmission problems. Apparently the problem with the transmission also causes fuel economy issues, in other words shitty gas mileage. His mpg has been steadily decreasing in the past few weeks. When we first bought the Explorer it was getting 22 mpg, now it is barely getting 15. When the problem first arose we figured that we would just let the transmission go and then rebuild it because at the time it wasn’t causing any other problems. Now that we have taken it to a reliable mechanic, yes there is one out there (a friends father), we know that the problem is worse than we thought and is the direct cause of the poor gas mileage. With gas prices the way they are no one can afford to be pissing gas away. So now we have to decide if it is more beneficial to rebuild the transmission or sell the damn thing. My truck on the other hand just has some minor repairs in comparison to the Explorer. I need to get my accelerator plate cleaned because I have a sticky gas petal that is also causing some idling problems, I need new tires, new rotors and probably new brakes. Other than that I think my truck is fine. Aren’t vehicles a pain the in butt?

All four of our animals also need to go to the vet in the next couple of months. I have heard about a vet here in the area that doesn’t charge an office visit. I am going to go and speak with her in the near future about what she charges and also her knowledge on Boykin Spaniels. I am extremely anal about who I take my animals to because I have worked with every vet they have ever been seen by. I want my vet to be knowledgeable about Boykins so that they know what to expect as they get older, the tend to have hip and back problems. Georgia has started to develop noticeable problems with her hips and I expect my vet to know more about the breed than I do. Anyways, beside that taking four animals to the vet is a pricey situation so that is something else we have to look forward to.

 

 

On top of all that, Christmas is approaching and we have a boat load of people we have to buy for, I guess it doesn’t help Boo-Boo has nine brothers and sisters. Well enough bitching for the day, life is great despite all my complaining.