EsCuuuuuuuuuuse Me!

(Anybody remember Steve Martin's tagline?  ExCuuuuuuuuuse ME!)

Bill talked to our neighbor the mechanic Monday evening and we also called the repair place we've been using.  All agreed that it sounded like the thermostat might be the problem with Otter's car.  Like maybe it was going out but hadn't gone out completely, because Bill drove it Monday and it was fine.  I took it to the repair shop on Tuesday morning and was expecting to have to get the thermostat replaced.  It turns out that it was a much simpler repair - in fact, it didn't actually need anything repaired.  When Bill replaced the radiator, 3 months ago, he did not get all the air out and the car basically just needed to be burped!  Once they got the last of the air out, they topped it off with more antifreeze and sent me on my way - at no charge.  I went on to work Tuesday and wound up keeping her car through today, because of the hours she worked and the fact that we had to go finish building the booth at the antique mall after work yesterday and I didn't have time to meet her to switch cars.  I watched the temperature gauge and it's been consistently fine.  Bill checked the belt and it's in good shape and he also checked the oil, since we had the car through this evening and he just wanted to make sure everything is ok.

Younger Boss filled the tank yesterday for her, which was nice of him to do.  I took the car back to her this evening, along with a few boxes for her.  She's gotten quite a bit of packing done already but she still has more to do.  I also got her laundry, I told her I'll do it this time for her so she can get as much packing done as she can.  She wants to go with me to a craft fair on Saturday, so I'll take her laundry back to her then.

We are back in the market for insurance again.  We got the renewal notice in the mail and they are raising the premium over $400 per month!  I am not about to pay more than $1,100.00 for insurance.  No blooming way.  Especially with as little as we actually use it.  We have a few options and most of them are a lot better than the "blue" company wants to charge us, I'm finding more than I did last year at this time when we were having to replace the insurance we had at that point.  There is absolutely NO EXCUSE for insurance to cost that much - that's even higher than my mortgage payment.  Way higher!

However, one Good Thing did happen today:

BLUEBELL IS BACK!!  

I have one of these in my freezer now.  It hit store shelves on Monday, I was going to get some then but with the car issue and the fact that there was a possibility I would have had to go get Bill if Otter's car had acted up, it wasn't possible.  I didn't get it yesterday because I had to take the car to the shop in the morning and then I had to run home as soon as I could after work so we could get to the booth place to finish assembling the booth.  As soon as I left Otter's, I went straight to the grocery store and my first stop was the ice cream freezer.  It looked like it was selling pretty fast, but I grabbed one before it was all gone.  The second I got it home and to the kitchen, we had the lid off the carton and the spoons out!  We just had a spoonful (ok, I had two!) and then put it in the freezer.  We each had a bowl after dinner, it was so good!  I had forgotten just how spectacularly good Bluebell ice cream is.  It tasted a lot sweeter than I remember, in fact.

Happy Happy Texans around my house!