Sunday, July 4, 2010

Another Crazy-Packed Day--July 3, 2010

Woke up at 8:00.  Grabbed cereal, took a shower, then waited for my mom and aunt to come by and pick me up for garage sales.  There really weren't too many due to the holiday weekend (we assumed?), but that didn't deter us.  But I'm not goin' to lie, I didn't make out so well.  The only thing I bought was an electric lawn edger for my brother.  Nothing for me.

We ended up heading home mostly empty-handed around 10:00.  Once back at Mom and Dad's house, I tried out the edger.  It did NOTHING.  Agh!!!  I tried a few cords, but it was dead.  D-E-A-D.  No way around it.  So before the rest of the activities for the day (I had decided to go up with my parents to visit my grandma), we had to drive clear across town and return the worthless edger.  Thankfully, there wasn't really any problems, so I got my $10 back.  Good.

From there we headed up to Morton to pick up a used swimming pool for Mom.  The trip wasn't too bad.  I was driving, and it went by fairly fast.  But we did have a problem.  The van's front tires were just GRINDING when we braked.  I determined that the pads were worn down and needed to be fixed.  As in TODAY.  They just kept getting worse and worse.  Well, we ended up in Morton at 12:15 and Dad paid the guy for the pool.  He loaded it into the van, and I helped to push it in.  That's when my eye caught something...a HOLE.  Sure enough, in the bottom of the pool, there was a decent-sized hole.  After showing Dad, he wisely determined that it wasn't worth buying (would there be more holes?!), so we hauled the pool BACK out of the van and said good-bye.  Dad got his money back...but what a mess!  A wasted trip.

We ate at KFC there in Morton, then headed down to Lincoln.  We stopped in Hartsburg for a few minutes, and I drove around so that Dad could re-live some old memories.  What a dead town!  I don't remember it being so small.  But wow!

We headed to Lincoln, arriving there at 1:45.  Grandma had a wiring project for Dad to tackle, so I helped out with that.  We determined that there was faulty wiring at one of the receptacles, and we had the goods to prove it. Wires had literally become charred from arcing so much.  It's a wonder a fire didn't start.  So we spent some time fixing that.  I installed a flag holder for Grandma, as well, and that was pretty much the day there!  It was good to see her, though.  I hadn't seen her since I had been back.  She offered to take us out to eat at Bonanza, so we took her up on the offer, though I don't think ANY of us were hungry at all.  I ended up ordering a steak and getting overly stuffed.  Ugh.  I hate that feeling.

We left Bonanza around 6:00 to head for home.  Dad and I had stopped at Auto Zone to pick up some brake pads, though, and I suggested we go ahead and tackle that project tonight.  I was kind of wanting a free night, but at the same time, I knew that if we finished the project tonight, then we wouldn't have to do it tomorrow or Monday!  More free time then!  So we went at it.

After taking one of the wheels off, we realized we had been given the wrong pads.  So we had to go in to Auto Zone to get the right ones.  The first one didn't have them, so we had to go to another one!  More time wasted.  Always somethin'.  Well, we came back, and the pads fit right in.  Not a terrible project.  It was certainly messy (brakes always are), and I was pretty much the guy with the knowledge, but I was hopin' to share it with Dad and Casey (who had shown up).  It took about 2 hours altogether to get both sides installed.  I only had a bleeding hand for a few minutes, so I would say that it was a success.  We took it for a test-drive, and it worked perfectly.  The brakes are quiet, there is no more pulsating in the pedal, and it stopped quickly.

It felt pretty good.  A nice fix for $23.75.

Casey, Boogs, Baby, and I all ended up coming over to my house to watch a movie around 9:30.  We watched Kite Runner.  A decent flick.  I was pretty tired, though.  Another long day!  But all in all, very productive.  My grandma is safe, AND my mom is safe.  I suppose that's a really good day if you look at it that way.

Was in bed at a too-late 12:45 A.M.

Alarm is set for 8:30 for church.

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