Just when things calmed down enough for the posting to get slightly more regular, all of the Christmas madness finally hit :-). This past weekend Melissa and I had an evening thing at church, this coming weekend is both the Plexus Winter Retreat and my sister’s return from England, then Wes flies in next week, then Melissa and I head to SoVa. . . . So much to do, so little time.
And we still have shopping to do.
This weekend should be fun. The Plexus Winter Retreat is a Saturday-afternoon-then-overnight deal which we’re doing in Williamsburg this year. We’ll have to pack up and leave early on Sunday, however, because my sister will be arriving back from her semester in England and we’re planning to meet her at the airport.
In other news, the Cingular GoPhone we’re testing has passed so far in Northern Virginia (working pretty much everywhere we go, except in Metro tunnels [Verizon has an exclusive deal with WMATA for in-tunnel wireless service]). Whether we switch will largely boil down to how well it works on our trips to other parts of the state over the coming weeks. Our Verizon contracts run out mid-January, so if we do switch we’ll do it then.
The Chrysler went back into the shop last week (other things going on, so no time to blog it). I started getting a sporadic buzzing noise that seemed to be related to the power steering. It didn’t seem serious. Then, a week-ago-Sunday, we started off to church and it didn’t want to steer at all. It went to the dealership on Wednesday (on a AAA flatbed) and was quickly diagnosed with a wonky power steering pump.
$570 later (~sigh~) and all is well. I also got my front air dam fixed for an additional $60; it had been somewhat mangled by a badly-placed deer carcass on a rural highway a few months ago.
We’re still on-track for getting a new car in the coming months, and the completely redesigned 2006 Honda Civic sedan remains the distant frontrunner (especially now that we’ve seen a few ‘in the wild’ and still think they look great). By the end of the month we’ll have a target date for purchase, and once we know that we can start the test drives and getting the Oldsmobile sold.
Exciting :-)