Finding time...

Ha! I'm still here!

I would have written sooner but there is more pressure on me now because someone commented on the titles to my posts. Now I can't write anything unless I can come up with a title first.

Actually, like always, things have been busy. There are lots of things going on in church, in my home, and at the fire station. We have been operating without a contract at work for over a year now and it doesn't look like we will have one any time soon. We ended up going to court over the difficulties with negotiations and we are still looking for some clarifications on the court's rulings. One of the things that has been finalized is that I will no longer receive personal leave days. I have also lost 95 hours of annual time per year. (for those of you that don't know, those are vacation days.)

I have been praying about going to Peru again this summer. We have a team that is supposed to go from church but they are looking for more men. I have been asked to lead the trip. One of the problems is that I am scheduled to work 5 days in that 2 week period. I wrote a letter to my chief asking to switch my furlough or use some of my "banked" annual leave hours but he turned me down. I emailed another driver on my shift who has the furlough period that I would need and asked him if he would be willing to trade furloughs. I haven't heard back from him yet.

As I told you all a few weeks ago, I incurred more damage to my little beater truck. I now has no radio, no A/C, no front right brakes, no passenger side mirror, the passenger window will not go down, the passenger side lock does not work, and it is just plain getting tired of all I have put it through over the years. Karen has also been making comments about how embarrassing it is in the parking lot of the church and wherever else I run errands. It is a very handy little truck though and we need it to last so that we can haul our pets to the vet and pick up chicken feed and things of that nature.
In order to extend the life of the truck, I have decided to cut down on the mileage I put on it every week. This led me to go car shopping. I was fortunate to find a 96 Chrysler LHS for $1,000.00
Unfortunately, the car had no brakes and no steering capabilities. I would go into detail but you wouldn't believe how bad it actually was. I installed new front brakes, new front rotors, a new driver's side caliper, and new inner tie rod ends. I also fabricated new rack and pinion bushings in order to stabilize the rack, installed two new carriage bushings, added 4 quarts of oil, changed the air filter, bought a new V-belt, and changed the spark plugs and wires.

Guess what, the car drives great! I now have a total investment of $1,393.00
Yep, I did all that for $393.00! (the shop I took it to wanted to charge me $2409.00 to do all that work. It pays to do it yourself)
I now have a car with leather seats, a great radio and CD player, a sunroof, power steering, all the mirrors that cars are supposed to have, power windows that operate, an auto transmission, digital climate controls, rear seat climate controls, instant and average fuel economy display, miles to empty (I never understood that one because it already has a gas gauge), outside air temperature, a digital compass, and some sort of traction control feature with an on and off switch. In fact, the car is so loaded with features that I haven't even discovered them all yet.

I know you're not that interested in old cars, but at least it gives you an idea of what I have been up too lately. Now I just have to see how long I can drive it before I get hit by another deer.

Well, this post is getting too long. There is still more that I would like to tell you. Maybe I'll have time to write more later. Till then...