November 22, 2008

View of the day-Al has been telling everyone he talks to, "I want to buy a new truck, but Marilyn won't let me"...so...Merry Christmas Al!

It seems strange not to blog it up daily, but there really isn't a lot going on now that we are back at home and back in the groove. At the very least we will try to get something up every week, or if it has been a particularly rotten day, a good rant might be in order...or perhaps just a skewed observation or two.

We were up early and eager to get on the road to Nipawin, 200 miles to the north of us, to take possession of our new Dodge pickup. We have had our present one for 10 years, bought it new and if you have been following the blog the last couple of seasons, you know it is getting kind of tired. We have been looking for quite a while and really did try to buy local, but there was no budging from the dealer here and we will leave it at that for now.

We were going to take "Frank", our 1986 Grand Marquis, for it's last trip before hitting the government salvage yard, but decided the pickup was a little more road worthy, even though it promised to be a nice day.

We got up to Nipawin, got the deed done, stopped for lunch, then headed back to Yorkton...Marilyn driving the old truck and Al the new one. Marilyn had her XM shows to listen to on the way back and the new truck only has Sirius, so she was more than happy to be "slumming it".

Al was able to check out a few of the options, but being "technologially challenged" and refusing to be taught any new tricks, didn't even attempt to try anything but the radio. Marilyn got her turn at driving the new truck when we switched off at the halfway mark and then...the floodgates of "all things tech" broke loose.

First thing was to get the hands free uConnect working with her bluetooth phone and call Al to see how it sounded...then listen to the tutorials for all the hands free options...oh, joy, oh joy! Program the presets on the radio and figure out the extra controls on the steering wheel...but most of all...for Al...set the time on the radio.

We got back to Yorkton and Al fueled up "Hips"...the old 98er...then came back out to the yard to see if the new truck would fit in the garage...yeah...about that...

Well it almost got in the door where Hips used to fit, but because the door is a one piece unit it wouldn't go up far enough. Backup plan...leave Frank out and try to get it in the other side of the garage. That door went up all the way once it was unlocked from the motor and we did have to fold the mirrors in to get through the door, but it did finally get a parking spot out of the cold...Frank won't be so lucky.

Marilyn decided to move one of the shelving units so Al could get the door open to get out of the cab...did you know cold plastic is brittle and breaks easy? The top two shelves came over with a big crash...no one hurt, not much broken and now there is more incentive to clean the garage. Marilyn has been reading "Clutter's Last Stand" by Don Aslett...an excellent book on decluttering your life and getting rid of unnecessary junk that has been collected over the years.

Looks like there is a good start if we use a shovel on the garage floor...