Didja see the news that they are opening a Harry Potter theme park? I admit to being a huge Harry Potter fan, but I think this is going just a wee bit overboard. Still, someone is going to make a lot of money off of it, I'm sure.
My mom brought me three books about the Harry Potter series the other day when we had lunch (thanks, Mom!). I was going to list them out here, but they are downstairs and I am too lazy to go get them. So I looked them up in Amazon and found a big ole list of books written about the series. Wow, can people take a good idea and run with it or what?
I do know that I have Mugglenet.com's "What Will Happen in Harry Potter 7". It's a very interesting read.
Only 50 days to go until "Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows" is relased. I'm not sure I can wait until July 21. I can't decide if I'm going to savor the anticipation and make myself read the book front to back with no peeking ahead or not. I'm going to try. It's good to try for restraint in things, isn't it.
Okay, let's take a poll. Those of you who are HP fans, will you read the last chapter first to find out what happens to Harry, or will you wait and savor the book? Vote now!!
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Church of Barbaro
I was doing some maintenance on my blog this evening and ran across this interesting site.
I haven't had a chance to read the whole thing, but it looks kinda interesting.
I haven't had a chance to read the whole thing, but it looks kinda interesting.
Monday, May 28, 2007
Thank You!
Just wanted to say a big thank you to all the soldiers, past and present, that have fought to keep the United States of America free.
I encourage you to do some research and find out what Memorial Day is really all about. It isn't just an extra day off from work, or a three-day weekend. It is a day to remember those that have given their life in service of our country.
I am one American that appreciates your sacrifice.
http://www.usmemorialday.org/backgrnd.html
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Happy Birthday, Sophie!
Yesterday was Sophie's 7th birthday. I just can't believe that she is seven! My baby is growing up. We took the girls to the dog park for her birthday and had a celebratory Greenie.
Here are a couple of Sophie pictures from the beach list past weekend.
I don't have any baby pictures of her scanned. I've got to put that on my to-do list.
Here are a couple of Sophie pictures from the beach list past weekend.
I don't have any baby pictures of her scanned. I've got to put that on my to-do list.
Kris & Greg's Not-So-Excellent Adventure Part III
Continuing on….
So once the idiot at Liberty Mutual road side assistance hotline finally figures out where we are, Greg tries to tell her to contact someone in Astoria. Since it’s a bigger town, they would be more likely to have a tow truck available, and someplace to get it fixed. Does this make sense to you? Somehow, not too surprisingly at this point, this fries the idiots little brain in to a million pieces. She calls someone in Long Beach. Fine, we give up. Send someone from Long Beach, we’ll figure it out later…hopefully with someone with a BRAIN! So we get a confirmation call from the tow company from Long Beach. They tell us that our insurance only covers the first $50 of a tow and that it is going to be an additional $65 for them to tow us in to Long Beach.
Just as an aside here, I want to say that I think we’d all better go out and buy tow trucks and start towing people. $115 to pick up a dead car and tow it less than 10 miles is good money!
At this point we don’t really care. Just send someone. So we wait about 20 minutes. Then we get a call from the road side assistance hotline. This is a new idiot, who is apparently pre-programmed to only utter a few sentences. She tells us that our Long Beach tow has been called off to tow someone else but they (the hotline) have found another tow company and how do we want to pay for the amount over our tow insurance? Greg tries for a while to figure out
a) What happened to the original tow that called and confirmed with us that they were on their way and should have been there in minutes
b) Where this new company is coming from
c) Who this new company is
d) Why they want our form of payment this instant
This pre-programmed drone just keeps telling him she doesn’t know and how does he want to pay for it. Finally, he just tells her it will be a Visa and she goes away happy. We aren’t, but hey, we’re just the customer.
In the mean time, the sun has come out at the beach and it’s starting to get really hot in the car. We can’t open the windows and we have the dogs with us so we can’t open the doors because we are right on (say it with me now!) Hwy 101. So we have to be hot. Since I was bored, I took a picture of us stranded by the side of the road:
About 40 minutes later our tow truck shows up. With two people in the cab. “Where,” we say to ourselves, “are we going to sit?”
Turns out the tow people (Classic Towing) are really, really nice. It’s a husband and wife (Tom & Christina). They think Liberty Mutual road side assistance people are idiots, too. They were told that there were no passengers, that it was just a tow. Christina said if they had known there were people, they had a bigger truck they could have brought. She thought they were a bunch of idiots, too. Christina is nice enough to call a cab company for us while they are hooking up the car. They ooh-ed and ahh-ed over the girls, and got us all hooked up. We didn’t know where to have them take it, so we were just going to have it towed to the Ford dealership in Astoria, but Tom said he knew a guy that would do a really good job and he’d tow it there. I guess he hadn’t had good luck with a truck he bought at that Ford place (it’s amazing what people will share with total strangers). They waited with us until the cab came and then towed our car away.
The cab was a small car that reeked of cigarette smoke. The driver was a middle-aged lady who was very friendly and drove us back to our campsite. She even stopped at the ATM so I could get some cash to pay her with. When we got back to the trailer, we collapsed. Now what?
Carmen & Sophie had been really good through all of this. They just slept on the back seat while we waited, and only got up when they started getting hot. They took the ride in the cab in stride and I think they had a good time sniffing everything in that car. We decided to see if we could get down to the beach and let them run. We could hear the ocean, but hadn’t found a way to it yet. Turned out we were only a few hundred yards away from a really nice beach. So we took the girls down and let them run and play. They loved it.
So Sunday comes. We prepare to hike 2 miles up to the ranger station to use a phone since we can’t get cell service. We get up to the bathrooms right by our campsite and see a pay phone. While it would have been REALLY nice if any of the people we talked to about our car problem had told us there was a phone right there instead of giving us stupid advice about flagging down a park ranger and asking for a lift, we are quite happy. Something is going right for us, finally! So we call the place Tom towed our car. Greg talks to a guy there and finds out that the battery needs to be replaced. The guy said the alternator was fine. That sounded reasonable to us, since the car is a 2000 with the original battery. We tell them to go ahead and change it. The guy has to go to Napa Auto Parts and get one. We arrange for someone to come pick us up and take us back to their shop to get the car. We have to wait a couple of hours, but we take the girls down to the beach for a walk, so it’s time well spent. Greg also fixed a 12-volt outlet in the trailer he’d been meaning to fix for ages.
Levi comes to pick us up in a little Toyota. It is a total mess inside and also smells like cigarette smoke. Levi is a nice enough guy, though. He’s in his 20s, I guess, and kinda has the grunge thing going on. Turns out he does a lot of 4-wheel drive stuff and he and his buddies use this shop where our car was repaired to do work on their cars, which is why they were able to look at ours on a Sunday.
So we pay the kids and get our car. Whee!! We have wheels again! We are FREE!! Greg & I were really excited. The weekend could now progress. We stopped at a couple of stores and got some stuff, refilled the gas tank and headed back to Cape D. to do the sightseeing that we wanted to do there.
All went well until, oh, about mile marker 7 on Hwy. 101. Greg looks down and says “The battery light is on again.” ACK!!!! WTF? By this time we are starving, so we go looking for a place to have lunch. He kept an eye on the gauge, and while the battery light stayed on, the battery level didn’t drop like it was doing before. We went to a really good pizza place for lunch and then drove back to the campground. Since it was Sunday we knew that there was no point in trying to find someplace to take it, so we spent the night at Cape D. and decided to take it in to Ford Monday morning.
Monday morning comes and we hooked up and left camp. We drove to Astoria (nothing happened at mile marker 7 this time), found the Ford place, and drove in. Turns out they have a really light crew on Monday and they aren’t sure they can get us in. They seemed to change their mind when they realized that we had our trailer hitched to the car and we were going to have to set up camp in their parking lot while they looked at the car.
The folks there were quite nice. They diagnosed the alternator problem. They advised us not to drive the trailer home to Vancouver with the alternator like it was. It could go out and then we’d be dead in the water again, this time with the trailer. We agreed that was a chance we’d rather not take and asked them to fix it. Then they had to get the part. That took a while. Then they had to put it in. That took a while. We hung out in the trailer and did stuff. Eventually, the car was fixed.
Okay, that’s a rather anti-climatic ending, I know. It was a long story and I just sorta lost momentum here at the end. So all in all we really had a rotten time at the beach last weekend.
Oh, and this is kind of funny. After we got the problems all taken care of, I realized that there was a sign that actually did tell me a cross road. It was behind me, and I never noticed it.
So once the idiot at Liberty Mutual road side assistance hotline finally figures out where we are, Greg tries to tell her to contact someone in Astoria. Since it’s a bigger town, they would be more likely to have a tow truck available, and someplace to get it fixed. Does this make sense to you? Somehow, not too surprisingly at this point, this fries the idiots little brain in to a million pieces. She calls someone in Long Beach. Fine, we give up. Send someone from Long Beach, we’ll figure it out later…hopefully with someone with a BRAIN! So we get a confirmation call from the tow company from Long Beach. They tell us that our insurance only covers the first $50 of a tow and that it is going to be an additional $65 for them to tow us in to Long Beach.
Just as an aside here, I want to say that I think we’d all better go out and buy tow trucks and start towing people. $115 to pick up a dead car and tow it less than 10 miles is good money!
At this point we don’t really care. Just send someone. So we wait about 20 minutes. Then we get a call from the road side assistance hotline. This is a new idiot, who is apparently pre-programmed to only utter a few sentences. She tells us that our Long Beach tow has been called off to tow someone else but they (the hotline) have found another tow company and how do we want to pay for the amount over our tow insurance? Greg tries for a while to figure out
a) What happened to the original tow that called and confirmed with us that they were on their way and should have been there in minutes
b) Where this new company is coming from
c) Who this new company is
d) Why they want our form of payment this instant
This pre-programmed drone just keeps telling him she doesn’t know and how does he want to pay for it. Finally, he just tells her it will be a Visa and she goes away happy. We aren’t, but hey, we’re just the customer.
In the mean time, the sun has come out at the beach and it’s starting to get really hot in the car. We can’t open the windows and we have the dogs with us so we can’t open the doors because we are right on (say it with me now!) Hwy 101. So we have to be hot. Since I was bored, I took a picture of us stranded by the side of the road:
About 40 minutes later our tow truck shows up. With two people in the cab. “Where,” we say to ourselves, “are we going to sit?”
Turns out the tow people (Classic Towing) are really, really nice. It’s a husband and wife (Tom & Christina). They think Liberty Mutual road side assistance people are idiots, too. They were told that there were no passengers, that it was just a tow. Christina said if they had known there were people, they had a bigger truck they could have brought. She thought they were a bunch of idiots, too. Christina is nice enough to call a cab company for us while they are hooking up the car. They ooh-ed and ahh-ed over the girls, and got us all hooked up. We didn’t know where to have them take it, so we were just going to have it towed to the Ford dealership in Astoria, but Tom said he knew a guy that would do a really good job and he’d tow it there. I guess he hadn’t had good luck with a truck he bought at that Ford place (it’s amazing what people will share with total strangers). They waited with us until the cab came and then towed our car away.
The cab was a small car that reeked of cigarette smoke. The driver was a middle-aged lady who was very friendly and drove us back to our campsite. She even stopped at the ATM so I could get some cash to pay her with. When we got back to the trailer, we collapsed. Now what?
Carmen & Sophie had been really good through all of this. They just slept on the back seat while we waited, and only got up when they started getting hot. They took the ride in the cab in stride and I think they had a good time sniffing everything in that car. We decided to see if we could get down to the beach and let them run. We could hear the ocean, but hadn’t found a way to it yet. Turned out we were only a few hundred yards away from a really nice beach. So we took the girls down and let them run and play. They loved it.
So Sunday comes. We prepare to hike 2 miles up to the ranger station to use a phone since we can’t get cell service. We get up to the bathrooms right by our campsite and see a pay phone. While it would have been REALLY nice if any of the people we talked to about our car problem had told us there was a phone right there instead of giving us stupid advice about flagging down a park ranger and asking for a lift, we are quite happy. Something is going right for us, finally! So we call the place Tom towed our car. Greg talks to a guy there and finds out that the battery needs to be replaced. The guy said the alternator was fine. That sounded reasonable to us, since the car is a 2000 with the original battery. We tell them to go ahead and change it. The guy has to go to Napa Auto Parts and get one. We arrange for someone to come pick us up and take us back to their shop to get the car. We have to wait a couple of hours, but we take the girls down to the beach for a walk, so it’s time well spent. Greg also fixed a 12-volt outlet in the trailer he’d been meaning to fix for ages.
Levi comes to pick us up in a little Toyota. It is a total mess inside and also smells like cigarette smoke. Levi is a nice enough guy, though. He’s in his 20s, I guess, and kinda has the grunge thing going on. Turns out he does a lot of 4-wheel drive stuff and he and his buddies use this shop where our car was repaired to do work on their cars, which is why they were able to look at ours on a Sunday.
So we pay the kids and get our car. Whee!! We have wheels again! We are FREE!! Greg & I were really excited. The weekend could now progress. We stopped at a couple of stores and got some stuff, refilled the gas tank and headed back to Cape D. to do the sightseeing that we wanted to do there.
All went well until, oh, about mile marker 7 on Hwy. 101. Greg looks down and says “The battery light is on again.” ACK!!!! WTF? By this time we are starving, so we go looking for a place to have lunch. He kept an eye on the gauge, and while the battery light stayed on, the battery level didn’t drop like it was doing before. We went to a really good pizza place for lunch and then drove back to the campground. Since it was Sunday we knew that there was no point in trying to find someplace to take it, so we spent the night at Cape D. and decided to take it in to Ford Monday morning.
Monday morning comes and we hooked up and left camp. We drove to Astoria (nothing happened at mile marker 7 this time), found the Ford place, and drove in. Turns out they have a really light crew on Monday and they aren’t sure they can get us in. They seemed to change their mind when they realized that we had our trailer hitched to the car and we were going to have to set up camp in their parking lot while they looked at the car.
The folks there were quite nice. They diagnosed the alternator problem. They advised us not to drive the trailer home to Vancouver with the alternator like it was. It could go out and then we’d be dead in the water again, this time with the trailer. We agreed that was a chance we’d rather not take and asked them to fix it. Then they had to get the part. That took a while. Then they had to put it in. That took a while. We hung out in the trailer and did stuff. Eventually, the car was fixed.
Okay, that’s a rather anti-climatic ending, I know. It was a long story and I just sorta lost momentum here at the end. So all in all we really had a rotten time at the beach last weekend.
Oh, and this is kind of funny. After we got the problems all taken care of, I realized that there was a sign that actually did tell me a cross road. It was behind me, and I never noticed it.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Kris & Greg's Not-So-Excellent Adventure Part II
Okay, so did you figure out where we were? Let me remind you:
Were you able to find:
a) the Planet Earth?
b) North America?
c) the United States of America?
d) Washington State?
e) Long Beach?
How hard was it? Really, be honest here. Could your kindergartener have done it? Yeah, well, the IDIOT at Liberty Mutual Road Side Assistance couldn’t do it. It took her TWENTY (20) minutes just to figure out where we were. Here is an abbreviated excerpt (the repeatable part) of our conversation:
Idiot at Liberty Mutual Road Side Assistance Hotline: “So you’re in Port Ludlow?”
Me: “No, I’m on 101 just outside of Long Beach.”
I.A.L.M.R.S.A.H: “I don’t see Long Beach.”
Me: “Well, the next biggest town near by would be Astoria, Oregon.”
I.A.L.M.R.S.A.H (sounding annoyed): “Oh, you’re in Oregon.”
Me (trying to be patient): “No, I’m in Washington State. On Hwy 101. Outside of Long Beach. And Ilwaco. At mile marker 7.”
I.A.L.M.R.S.A.H: “What’s the cross street?”
Me: “I’m sorry, I don’t see a sign showing me a cross street.”
I.A.L.M.R.S.A.H: “Well, I’m not finding Long Beach and I don’t see that 101 is in Washington.”
Me: “Um, Highway 101 goes all up and down the west coast of the United States. It’s a pretty major interstate highway. You should be able to find it. ”
I.A.L.M.R.S.A.H: (rattles off some cities I can’t remember)
Me: “None of those cities are near where I am. I’m pretty sure those are all in NORTHERN Washington State. I’m in southern Washington. Just over the Oregon/Washington border.”
I.A.L.M.R.S.A.H: “Can you stop a policeman and ask him where you are?”
Like policemen are just flocking by us in droves…we’ve seen one. In 20 minutes.
Me (teeth now gritted): “We did have a policeman stop and ask us if we were okay and he confirmed that we are on Hwy 101 at mile marker 7 in Washington State. That should really get you close enough.”
I.A.L.M.R.S.A.H: “Do you have an address?”
Me: “No, I’m sorry. We are just on an empty stretch of the highway. I don’t see any houses or street signs or anything. I just know that we are at mile maker 7. Are you looking at a computer map? Maybe I can guide you a little closer.”
I.A.L.M.R.S.A.H: “No.”
I.A.L.M.R.S.A.H: “Well, how about a zip code?”
Me (scrabbling around for the map I picked up at the campground earlier in the day): “Um, let me look at the ads on this map. Just a second…okay here’s one that doesn’t just have a phone number…98624.”
I.A.L.M.R.S.A.H (finally finding me): “Well I have all these intersections (she rattles them all off really quickly). Are you near any of them?” (I find out later that she DID find Ilwaco finally and was reading me street names from downtown Ilwaco…about 5 miles away).
Me: “Um, like I said before, I don’t see any street signs, addresses or anything.”
I.A.L.M.R.S.A.H: “I’m going to put you on hold.”
I’m not even kidding. I am not exaggerating for dramatic effect. This woman was totally this stupid. Unbelievable.
And just because all you babies whined about me not posting in so long, I'm going to make you wait another day for Part III. HA!
Were you able to find:
a) the Planet Earth?
b) North America?
c) the United States of America?
d) Washington State?
e) Long Beach?
How hard was it? Really, be honest here. Could your kindergartener have done it? Yeah, well, the IDIOT at Liberty Mutual Road Side Assistance couldn’t do it. It took her TWENTY (20) minutes just to figure out where we were. Here is an abbreviated excerpt (the repeatable part) of our conversation:
Idiot at Liberty Mutual Road Side Assistance Hotline: “So you’re in Port Ludlow?”
Me: “No, I’m on 101 just outside of Long Beach.”
I.A.L.M.R.S.A.H: “I don’t see Long Beach.”
Me: “Well, the next biggest town near by would be Astoria, Oregon.”
I.A.L.M.R.S.A.H (sounding annoyed): “Oh, you’re in Oregon.”
Me (trying to be patient): “No, I’m in Washington State. On Hwy 101. Outside of Long Beach. And Ilwaco. At mile marker 7.”
I.A.L.M.R.S.A.H: “What’s the cross street?”
Me: “I’m sorry, I don’t see a sign showing me a cross street.”
I.A.L.M.R.S.A.H: “Well, I’m not finding Long Beach and I don’t see that 101 is in Washington.”
Me: “Um, Highway 101 goes all up and down the west coast of the United States. It’s a pretty major interstate highway. You should be able to find it. ”
I.A.L.M.R.S.A.H: (rattles off some cities I can’t remember)
Me: “None of those cities are near where I am. I’m pretty sure those are all in NORTHERN Washington State. I’m in southern Washington. Just over the Oregon/Washington border.”
I.A.L.M.R.S.A.H: “Can you stop a policeman and ask him where you are?”
Like policemen are just flocking by us in droves…we’ve seen one. In 20 minutes.
Me (teeth now gritted): “We did have a policeman stop and ask us if we were okay and he confirmed that we are on Hwy 101 at mile marker 7 in Washington State. That should really get you close enough.”
I.A.L.M.R.S.A.H: “Do you have an address?”
Me: “No, I’m sorry. We are just on an empty stretch of the highway. I don’t see any houses or street signs or anything. I just know that we are at mile maker 7. Are you looking at a computer map? Maybe I can guide you a little closer.”
I.A.L.M.R.S.A.H: “No.”
I.A.L.M.R.S.A.H: “Well, how about a zip code?”
Me (scrabbling around for the map I picked up at the campground earlier in the day): “Um, let me look at the ads on this map. Just a second…okay here’s one that doesn’t just have a phone number…98624.”
I.A.L.M.R.S.A.H (finally finding me): “Well I have all these intersections (she rattles them all off really quickly). Are you near any of them?” (I find out later that she DID find Ilwaco finally and was reading me street names from downtown Ilwaco…about 5 miles away).
Me: “Um, like I said before, I don’t see any street signs, addresses or anything.”
I.A.L.M.R.S.A.H: “I’m going to put you on hold.”
I’m not even kidding. I am not exaggerating for dramatic effect. This woman was totally this stupid. Unbelievable.
And just because all you babies whined about me not posting in so long, I'm going to make you wait another day for Part III. HA!
Kris & Greg's Not-So-Excellent Adventure Part I
Okay, for all of you that have been complaining that I haven't written since May 9th, this is for you!
“Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip…”
Important information to know before reading this Series of Unfortunate Events:
Vancouver, WA to Cape Disappointment State Park = 115 miles
Cape D. to Long Beach, WA = 7 miles
Cape D. to Astoria, OR = 20 miles
Astoria, OR to Seaside, OR = 16 miles
Seaside, OR to Curtis Trailer = 88 miles
Ah, it all started out so well. Greg and I made a decision. All of you who know us know that we have a lot of trouble with decision-making. But this time we decided to take the trailer out and actually did it. We prepared the trailer on Friday night, asked the neighbors who park on the street to move their cars for us, and were pulling out of the street at 8:11 Saturday morning. We decided to head for Long Beach and stay at Cape Disappointment, hereafter known as Cape D. (To be accurate this is the State Park formerly known as Fort Canby. They changed the name for the Lewis & Clark centennial for all of you Northwesterner’s who wonder where the heck I’m talking about) on the Long Beach Peninsula in Washington. We had a nice event-free drive down. It rained a little, nothing spectacular. I enjoyed the greenery and flowers. The dogs slept in the back seat. We all had a nice time.
We got to Cape D. State Park around 11:00. They had sites available so we moved in and got all set up. We were very excited to be there and so proud that we had made a decision and made good time getting down there. And we were hungry. So we decided to go in to Long Beach to find some lunch. We found a nice Chinese food place and had a tasty lunch. After lunch we thought we’d check out the beach. Long Beach is one of the few beaches in the area you can drive your car on. We went down to take a look and decided that the sand looked way too soft and if we drove on it, we’d probably get stuck (we don’t have 4WD, you know). There is a paved, one-lane road that takes you down to the beach that we were on while checking out the conditions. Greg very carefully turned the truck around, but managed to get stuck anyway. The driving wheel slipped off the pavement and we had no traction to get out. Sigh. We tried sticking a beach towel under the tire. No luck. Then we tried the Mexico blanket that covers the seat. No luck. Then we tried the vinyl floor mat that covers the back of my Expedition. Still no luck. Greg walked up to see if he could find someone to pull us out and got a lot of unhelpful comments like “Sure, I’ll pull you out…for a hundred bucks!” Snort, snort, snicker, snicker. Oh, yeah. It’s a riot when someone gets stuck in the sand. Ha ha. We should do it more often. Knowing I would be blogging this whole adventure (and not yet knowing what an adventure it would really be) I took a picture of us stuck in the sand:
Please note the blacktop just behind the back wheel, well, kinda behind it. We'd rolled forward a bit by this time. Note too the blanket/towel under the wheel. And do you like how the flag looks like it's coming out of the top of the car? Pretty cool, huh?
Eventually, some nice guys in a little truck (how embarrassing!) came along who had a towing cable thingy and they pulled us out. They didn’t want any money for helping us either. This was actually a good thing since I only had $3.00 in cash. I’m thinking that a $3 thank-you wouldn’t be much of a thank-you. I gathered up my now destroyed towel and floor mat and my intact Mexico blanket (those things are indestructible) and said a prayer of thanks.
Anyway, we thanked the helpful guys, flipped off the ones who weren’t so helpful as we drove by and headed back to the campground. On the way Greg noticed that the battery light was one. Very weird. Greg kept an eye on it on the way back and the battery level kept dropping. When we got back to the trailer and turned the car off, he immediately tried to start the car again and nothing happened. And thus begins the long story.
I tried my cell phone. No service. Oh, of course not! We decided that we better take care of this car problem right away by getting the car jumped and driving in to Astoria to Costco for a new battery. For some stupid reason I don’t have jumper cables in my truck (well, I didn’t then, but I do now). The stupid camp host, who are there to help, was completely unhelpful and left us to fend for ourselves. So Greg went around asking people at the campground if he could borrow some. Apparently I’m not the only one who travels without jumper cables, because he had to ask a lot of people before he found someone. Then I had to ask someone to give us a jump. People seem very reluctant to jump you. Hmm, that sounded weird. Anyway, we finally got the guy next door to jump us. The car started, we loaded up the dogs and headed to Astoria (see above mileage chart).
About halfway to Astoria, you know where we were going to buy the new battery, the car drops dead. Nothing works. No hazard lights, no windows, no nothing. Greg is able to steer to the shoulder before he looses momentum to a spot where we are more or less safe. After some swearing I remember that the new insurance I signed up for has free road side assistance. We’re saved! Yay! I call them and say we are on vacation, our car died and we need a tow. “Where are you located?” the person asks. “Oh,” says I, who was smart enough to check the mile marker right before the car died, “We are in Washington State, south of Long Beach and Ilwaco on Highway 101 at mile marker 7. It’s just over the Oregon border.”
Look, here's proof I knew what I was talking about:
Here we need to pause in the story. I want all of you to go to the computer and see if you can figure out within a 5-mile radius where my car was located at that very moment. Go ahead. I’ll wait. Keep track of how long it takes you now.
Please see Part II for the next installment. No cheating and reading ahead, now!
“Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip…”
Important information to know before reading this Series of Unfortunate Events:
Vancouver, WA to Cape Disappointment State Park = 115 miles
Cape D. to Long Beach, WA = 7 miles
Cape D. to Astoria, OR = 20 miles
Astoria, OR to Seaside, OR = 16 miles
Seaside, OR to Curtis Trailer = 88 miles
Ah, it all started out so well. Greg and I made a decision. All of you who know us know that we have a lot of trouble with decision-making. But this time we decided to take the trailer out and actually did it. We prepared the trailer on Friday night, asked the neighbors who park on the street to move their cars for us, and were pulling out of the street at 8:11 Saturday morning. We decided to head for Long Beach and stay at Cape Disappointment, hereafter known as Cape D. (To be accurate this is the State Park formerly known as Fort Canby. They changed the name for the Lewis & Clark centennial for all of you Northwesterner’s who wonder where the heck I’m talking about) on the Long Beach Peninsula in Washington. We had a nice event-free drive down. It rained a little, nothing spectacular. I enjoyed the greenery and flowers. The dogs slept in the back seat. We all had a nice time.
We got to Cape D. State Park around 11:00. They had sites available so we moved in and got all set up. We were very excited to be there and so proud that we had made a decision and made good time getting down there. And we were hungry. So we decided to go in to Long Beach to find some lunch. We found a nice Chinese food place and had a tasty lunch. After lunch we thought we’d check out the beach. Long Beach is one of the few beaches in the area you can drive your car on. We went down to take a look and decided that the sand looked way too soft and if we drove on it, we’d probably get stuck (we don’t have 4WD, you know). There is a paved, one-lane road that takes you down to the beach that we were on while checking out the conditions. Greg very carefully turned the truck around, but managed to get stuck anyway. The driving wheel slipped off the pavement and we had no traction to get out. Sigh. We tried sticking a beach towel under the tire. No luck. Then we tried the Mexico blanket that covers the seat. No luck. Then we tried the vinyl floor mat that covers the back of my Expedition. Still no luck. Greg walked up to see if he could find someone to pull us out and got a lot of unhelpful comments like “Sure, I’ll pull you out…for a hundred bucks!” Snort, snort, snicker, snicker. Oh, yeah. It’s a riot when someone gets stuck in the sand. Ha ha. We should do it more often. Knowing I would be blogging this whole adventure (and not yet knowing what an adventure it would really be) I took a picture of us stuck in the sand:
Please note the blacktop just behind the back wheel, well, kinda behind it. We'd rolled forward a bit by this time. Note too the blanket/towel under the wheel. And do you like how the flag looks like it's coming out of the top of the car? Pretty cool, huh?
Eventually, some nice guys in a little truck (how embarrassing!) came along who had a towing cable thingy and they pulled us out. They didn’t want any money for helping us either. This was actually a good thing since I only had $3.00 in cash. I’m thinking that a $3 thank-you wouldn’t be much of a thank-you. I gathered up my now destroyed towel and floor mat and my intact Mexico blanket (those things are indestructible) and said a prayer of thanks.
Anyway, we thanked the helpful guys, flipped off the ones who weren’t so helpful as we drove by and headed back to the campground. On the way Greg noticed that the battery light was one. Very weird. Greg kept an eye on it on the way back and the battery level kept dropping. When we got back to the trailer and turned the car off, he immediately tried to start the car again and nothing happened. And thus begins the long story.
I tried my cell phone. No service. Oh, of course not! We decided that we better take care of this car problem right away by getting the car jumped and driving in to Astoria to Costco for a new battery. For some stupid reason I don’t have jumper cables in my truck (well, I didn’t then, but I do now). The stupid camp host, who are there to help, was completely unhelpful and left us to fend for ourselves. So Greg went around asking people at the campground if he could borrow some. Apparently I’m not the only one who travels without jumper cables, because he had to ask a lot of people before he found someone. Then I had to ask someone to give us a jump. People seem very reluctant to jump you. Hmm, that sounded weird. Anyway, we finally got the guy next door to jump us. The car started, we loaded up the dogs and headed to Astoria (see above mileage chart).
About halfway to Astoria, you know where we were going to buy the new battery, the car drops dead. Nothing works. No hazard lights, no windows, no nothing. Greg is able to steer to the shoulder before he looses momentum to a spot where we are more or less safe. After some swearing I remember that the new insurance I signed up for has free road side assistance. We’re saved! Yay! I call them and say we are on vacation, our car died and we need a tow. “Where are you located?” the person asks. “Oh,” says I, who was smart enough to check the mile marker right before the car died, “We are in Washington State, south of Long Beach and Ilwaco on Highway 101 at mile marker 7. It’s just over the Oregon border.”
Look, here's proof I knew what I was talking about:
Here we need to pause in the story. I want all of you to go to the computer and see if you can figure out within a 5-mile radius where my car was located at that very moment. Go ahead. I’ll wait. Keep track of how long it takes you now.
Please see Part II for the next installment. No cheating and reading ahead, now!
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
Quiet
It's been pretty quiet around our place for the past couple of weeks, so I haven't had much to talk about. Here are the highlights:
1. Both Carmen & Sophie have been sick. The pooping, vomiting type of sick. With blood. And vet bills. They are doing better now after a week of antibiotics. The vet thought they might have giardia, but the test came back negative so we have no idea what has set them off. On the plus side I have found that you can buy ground frozen turkey for $1.69 a tube. What a deal!
2. Anniversary. Yesterday was our eigth anniversary. Yay us! I would post some wedding pictures, but I have only scanned the two I used last year. Go see 2006, May, Seven Years post for visuals. I have got to scan some more pictures. I have really great pictures. Honest. I wonder if anyone but me and Greg have seen them?
3. Cleaning. I spent all weekend working on the downstairs. I filed and cleaned and did a bazillion loads of laundry & dishes. It's still a mess. Sigh.
Guess that's it. Not much is new and exciting. Stay tuned!
1. Both Carmen & Sophie have been sick. The pooping, vomiting type of sick. With blood. And vet bills. They are doing better now after a week of antibiotics. The vet thought they might have giardia, but the test came back negative so we have no idea what has set them off. On the plus side I have found that you can buy ground frozen turkey for $1.69 a tube. What a deal!
2. Anniversary. Yesterday was our eigth anniversary. Yay us! I would post some wedding pictures, but I have only scanned the two I used last year. Go see 2006, May, Seven Years post for visuals. I have got to scan some more pictures. I have really great pictures. Honest. I wonder if anyone but me and Greg have seen them?
3. Cleaning. I spent all weekend working on the downstairs. I filed and cleaned and did a bazillion loads of laundry & dishes. It's still a mess. Sigh.
Guess that's it. Not much is new and exciting. Stay tuned!
Friday, May 04, 2007
Things I have learned today:
* If you swirl your tomato soup in a mug, even if you think there is just a little left, it will splash all over, especially on your shirt.
* When cleaning off your desk, don’t put the truffles on your computer.
* Upon realizing that the truffles on your computer are warm and squishy, don’t eat them until they have cooled off. The truffle-y part in the middle of the dark chocolate one will have become a liquid and will squirt all over your chin and your tomato soup-splashed shirt
* After learning that the center of the truffles you left on your computer have a liquid center and wiping the dark chocolate goo off your shirt, don’t compound the problem and eat a white chocolate one right after. The center will STILL be liquid and white chocolate will join the dark chocolate and tomato soup stains.
* When all of the above happens, you will be wearing your favorite shirt.
* Oh, and the dark chocolate stain will look like dog poo on your shirt. And be right in the middle of your chest, nicely framed by the lanyard for your ID card (that you will notice 2 hours later has soup on it too,) where no one can possibly miss it.
Some days it just doesn't pay to get out of bed.
* When cleaning off your desk, don’t put the truffles on your computer.
* Upon realizing that the truffles on your computer are warm and squishy, don’t eat them until they have cooled off. The truffle-y part in the middle of the dark chocolate one will have become a liquid and will squirt all over your chin and your tomato soup-splashed shirt
* After learning that the center of the truffles you left on your computer have a liquid center and wiping the dark chocolate goo off your shirt, don’t compound the problem and eat a white chocolate one right after. The center will STILL be liquid and white chocolate will join the dark chocolate and tomato soup stains.
* When all of the above happens, you will be wearing your favorite shirt.
* Oh, and the dark chocolate stain will look like dog poo on your shirt. And be right in the middle of your chest, nicely framed by the lanyard for your ID card (that you will notice 2 hours later has soup on it too,) where no one can possibly miss it.
Some days it just doesn't pay to get out of bed.
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