The Family

Two things. First, the quicky: Does anyone mind if change up the appearance of the website? I’ve been playing with another theme and I’d like to show off the basic modifications that I’ve done with it.

Second, the Doh! around here.

See, a few weeks ago I had an overheat in my car. I didn’t think of it as a really big deal. Except that I had to run the engine HOT for too long to get to a safe place to pull over. I found the top radiator hose popped in a most impressive manner and was able to replace it without much fuss. Then the other day I checked my transmition fluid – car was misbehaving a bit and in the past this was a sign of ‘add fluid’. Well, there was something ‘extra’ on the dip stick. Something that was chocolate milk-ish in color, kinda like hand lotion in consistency. Almost like… oil. A quick call to the car shop and they agreed – that overheat probably busted a seal somewhere, most likely the head gasket. Quick Estimate was 1200 – 1800 to replace and clean out everything that would need it. Then again, if something managed to get really busted – say, a crack from the overheat – well, I’d go north of 2000 pretty fast. He wouldn’t make an estimate of how much north, as it was a ‘well, it depends… ‘ moment. You kinda get an insight to the mechanic’s thoughts on a repair when their other question to you is “so, is the rest of the car in good shape and without problems?… “.

Apparently we’re now in the market for a new car.

I mean really, if I’m going to drop 1500-2000 on a car, I might as well make it a down payment. Not that I have that much saved up right now. All our spare money has gone to killing off these credit cards off. (getting so close too!) At least there is a program (Drive Clean Across Texas) that should get us a nice 3000 or so twards a new car… if we can wait a month (or so) for it to be processed. And before you say “oh, if only you’d used that Clunkers program”… well, my car was 1 (O-N-E) MPG higher than the cutoff range. So it wouldn’t have helped me anyway.

Sigh. It seems every year comes up with *something* to keep us from doing serious saving.