(Re)Balancing Act

The day seemed like two in one. I worked a half-day, but then jam-packed the rest of it with errands.

First, I had to pick up a wheel from a salvage yard. I'll elaborate more on that in a moment. Then I had to pick up the girls from Summer Camp. It was actually the best timing scenario I could have asked for because the girls were supposed to play in a mud pit today. They do this activity every year, and it's one of my most disliked days of camp, so it was cool that we missed it this year.

While picking up the kids I noticed, getting out of the car, that there was a Lunchable in the back seat. It was Shelby's lunch. Great, I thought. I'm not going to hear the end of this one. When I got inside I immediately asked Shelby what she had for lunch, and she said "My Lunchable." Hmmm. So we went to Darby's classroom, where I asked if she had eaten, and to which she responded in the affirmative. What the heck, these Lunchable things don't just immaculately multiply. Well, after further interrogation, it turns out Shelby stole some other kids' Lunchable "on accident because I thought it was mine." That just really great...

The reason I had to pick up the girls early was so that we could have Shelby fitted with her previously referenced glasses. Naturally, I took some pics. She had some initial trouble getting used to the glasses, so she was walking around very slowly with her hands out in front of her. It was pretty funny. Figures I didn't get a pic of that. I've already had to tell her half-a-dozen times to put her glasses back on and to stop messing with them. I predict near-term breakage. Most likely cause? No, not Shelby. Her "friends". I suspect one of them will coax her into letting them try her glasses on tomorrow and she will succumb. And then kaput. I look forward to being wrong.

I grabbed a bite to eat (the girls had eaten, so they got ice cream) between the optometrist and my next errand, which was routine car maintenance, in particular a 21-point inspection as I'm hoping to finally get that vacation in soon.

While in the waiting area of the dealership, I made a tech support call to my laptop company. I've been having optical drive problems. I feel bad because I was snippy with the girl for having to go through the first-tier hoops (I was mostly upset because I sent an email to support a week ago and never got a response). Turns out one of her first-tier hoops (seems to have) fixed my problem. I feel guilty because we got off the phone so quick I never had a chance to apologize. The truly sucky part is that if the problem isn't fixed, I will have to send MY ENTIRE LAPTOP back to them for drive replacement, which they say will take TWO TO THREE WEEKS total. The won't just send me a drive because it's not modular so the only way to replace the drive is to remove some screws from the case which they say will void the warranty. Darnit. This is my primary personal computer and it's just not even a tiny bit feasible for me to go three weeks without it.

Also while at the dealership I had to send several emails from my cell phone (Saturn had an encrypted wi-fi network that I asked if I could use, but it was for employees only... I have such a rant for this...) concerning some last-minute mortgage finalization issues for my mom's house. And, oh yeah, I had to write my mother a check for $500 so she could pay her half of a fence being put up by the neighbor to keep drug dealers from sitting on their shared step at 3am. That was a neat thing to find out about.

So after car maintenance I had to take the girls to my ex-wife's work, because she had to take Shelby to fencing tonight, plus it's her time of the week to have them, so that was the best way to handle it.

I went immediately from there to the nearest tire center to complain about an after affect of my recent four-tire replacement. I noticed soon after I left the place the last time that I had a balance problem (slight front-end shimmy at highway speeds), but I didn't have time to go back. This time around they confirmed that the tires weren't balanced properly and fixed it.

While I was there, I gave them the wheel I picked up earlier in the day, and the tire I saved in my trunk from my last set of tires, and I had them make me a full-sized spare. Since I've had so much trouble with tires, since my dad had two blow-outs on his recent vacation, and since I'm just not ever going to shake this paranoia, I figure it's best to not have my only-tire-hope resting upon a donut-spare. However, the trouble came with mounting the spare, which wouldn't fit where the donut is presently located. After some research, I had earlier in the week ordered a solution that was delivered to me today, so as soon as I got back from the tire center, I got everything setup.

My solution is not pretty, but it's functional. There are a few problems with it (can't open hatch-back, can't see license plate), but I think that with it in place, my nerves will eat at me less over the course of nearly four thousand miles.