Turkey Day and eBay

Well, Turkey Day was actually two days as I have two parents who don't get along. I suppose that even if they did manage to be on speaking terms, they probably wouldn't want to have Thanksgiving together anyway. So, sis M, who graciously offered to cook as Grandma is still out for a few more weeks, cooked 2 dinners! One for each parent. I, of course, attended both. R couldn't make it down, unfortunately. But day 1, actually on Thanksgiving Day, was turkey with Dad. M got a free turkey with the purchase of a ham at our local HEB (they rock, BTW), so she made that. BIL M made his famous mashed potatoes. He's pretty much been cooking since he was 5 years old. Amazing, but true. I didn't start until I was 8 or 9. And there were veggies and dinner rolls. All traditional fare, of course. No dessert as we couldn't eat any more. I was good and stuck to my daily allotment of WW points, as opposed to having more than one plate. So that worked out fine, and we had a good time.

Then, day 2, sis M made ham for Mom as Mom doesn't like turkey that much (fine because Dad doesn't like ham, so it worked out). She also made some mac and cheese and BIL M made his mashed potatoes again. Really, a very carb-ful dinner, but it was tasty. I managed to keep my portions down and stick to my daily points again. Woohoo! I'm so proud of myself for managing that! So, no seconds for me, as hard as that was. Then, on Saturday, Dad and I went to this Chinese restaurant we hadn't been to in years since Bei Fang is still renovating. Actually, the other place, Mencius, turned out to be really good, so now we have an alternative until Bei Fang (our favorite one) opens back up. The place looked someone upscale with marble walls and waiters dressed up like waiters in Paris, but the prices were very similar to Bei Fang. So, yippee!

Not much going on now, of course, as the holidays are over, at least until Christmas. The jury's still out on weather R's fam will make it down for that, but we'll see what happens.

The only thing I've noticed is that eBay isn't very secure. Someone broke into my account and used it to send spam. So they suspended my account and got me to change my password. Great. Fine, I don't use the site very much. Then, just recently, the sent me an e-mail saying my account had been closed, again for unauthorized use or something. I mean, that's twice! I don't even know if I want to get it reinstated as I don't trust them right now. Are they secure? I've bought stuff on there before and hadn't had a problem until just recently. Maybe it's safer for me to leave it closed for now as that means no one can access the account, right? I HOPE. I mean, at least eBay notified me of the problem, but I'd feel better if I didn't have these problems to begin with, you know? These two incidents didn't happen very far apart, either. Why all at once? I mean, I could always get a new account, but then I'd lose what little feedback I already had. I just don't know. Plus, I thought my password was pretty hard to guess, but someone still broke into it, so I don't know that if I changed it that no one could break into it again. Anyway...

I think I'm gonna get going now. Maybe I'll go to the library. I'm almost finished with my last book.

The best anti-racism cartoon ever...

BIL's B-day present

Brother-in-law M's birthday is tomorrow, but my sis M wanted to get him a present early. I don't know the details, but I'm thinking there was some sort of trade involved with the computer as BIL M's parents gave him money for his computer and then bought him a new computer. So sis M had the money for the computer, plus some money from something else recent (don't remember). The Playstation 3s had gone down in price to $399 and she thought she'd surprise him. All leading up to this, BIL M is saying how much he wants the PS3, and sis M is saying it costs too much, etc. and coming up with excuses not to buy it. So BIL is thinking he's not getting one. Then, while he's at work, sis goes with Mom and buys one, then tells BIL on the phone that she got him something at HEB and left it on the bed for him. Well, she's afraid he won't go in the bedroom. Then she goes to work. So BIL is probably thinking it's one of the collectibles he's into or something and looking forward to that. Wish I could have seen his face when he walked into the bedroom!

I think Dad is jealous...

Okay, all day today he seems to be wanting me to talk him into buying himself a car. That's not to say we didn't already have this discussion a few weeks ago, and he talked himself out of it and into buying me a car instead. He said that was what he really wanted to do because he didn't trust his car to be very good for my out of town forays, etc. He didn't think it was reliable with all the miles he has on it. Well, fine. He said he'd fix it up and keep it as it's decent enough for his work. That's what he SAID. Now, he sees all the nice features my car has and I think he's getting car envy. I keep trying to talk him out of it as he just bought a car and I'm not employed yet to take the payment off of him. I said "why don't you wait until I get a job, then?" and he doesn't want to wait. I said that all his car needed was regular maintenance stuff done on it anyway. It just needs new struts. That's something that needs to be replaced eventually. Not something that really went wrong with the car, you know? But now he's acting like it's too much trouble and too much money (?!) to fix it up. WTF? I mean, I may be mistaken, but isn't it more expensive to buy a brand new car, as he wants to do? Unless there's some cheap-y car out there that I don't know about that only costs $240 (the cost of the parts and labor for new struts). He might as well admit that he just wants a new one. He just wants me to say it's a good idea, too. Really, if he was going to do that, why didn't he fix up his car and give it to me, and then buy himself a new car? We discussed it. He rejected the plan. But really, if he wants the new car, it would have made more sense. I tried for a while to convince him that was the better plan, because I knew this would happen. I knew that he'd see the new car and get jealous. It always happens. Ugh. Dad. He's just a big kid.

Not a TOTAL waste of time...

I drove all the way from the west side of San Antonio to the east side of San Antonio to get to the dealership so they could look at the seat belt, only to find out that there was nothing wrong with the seat belt whatsoever. My dad was just doing it wrong. He tried to put the right belt clip thingie into the center buckle, which doesn't work. It only works if you put them in the right buckles, which he should have been able to figure out, but I think he must have been sitting on one of the buckles. Then, I leave and I'm on the way home and the salesman calls me to see if I'm coming over and I say I'm on my way home that I just left. And he says to come back and he'll top off my gas tank. Well, that sounds good to me, so I head back and get a full tank of gas (although I'd only used a quarter tank at that point). He let me know what was going on with the user manual search and said he'd probably have to order one, which is fine by me. Oh well. At least I got to drive my nice car for a while...

And I got a prime parking place when I got back home. : )

Seat Belt repair

As of Saturday, I own a burgundy 2002 Nissan Altima. It's a beautiful car and near spotless. I just discovered that it has keyless entry and an alarm on it, too. I keep discovering new features all the time, like if you push the trip odometer it tells you the gas mileage and the outside temperature, too. Neat-o. I tested the cruise control as the one on the rental car didn't work and I was paranoid, but it worked fine. That's a feature I wish I'd had on the Mercury. I just really love the new car.

One thing about it is that one of the seat belts in the back seat didn't lock when you clicked the silver part into it. So, the dealership promised to fix it. But that means I have to drive over there (we're on opposite sides of town, too, so it's a long drive) for them to look at it. I thought I could just call them with the VIN and the salesman seemed to think so, too, but the service department insists on seeing the car. I'll admit it's gorgeous, but surely they got to look at it already. Well, I'm joking. I know they mean they want to look at the seat belt. Anyway, I guess I'll be doing that today. I meant to be cooking dinner, so we'll see how long it takes. They may have to special order a new one.

We did get the duplicate title and Dad signed it and I signed it and I mailed it off yesterday. Hopefully the rest of the settlement will come soon. It might take a couple of days to process, but hopefully soon. Also, my prescription shipped from the second Canadian pharmacy. I hope they're more reliable than the first one I tried. They'd told me my prescription hadn't arrived because of a postal strike in the UK, and I really didn't believe them because it seemed illogical to ship my prescription from the UK if they knew there was a strike. But Sarah confirmed the story. Still, it was only for a few days and they told me when the package would arrive and it didn't arrive. It STILL hasn't arrived, so I don't think I was going to get it at all. The new one had free shipping, so it turned out to be a little cheaper than the first one, so I'm really hoping this works out as it would save us some money and money will be tight for a while with the car payment.

Recent book recommendation would be Nefertiti by Michelle Moran. I don't know how accurate it is, but it's pretty entertaining and fun to read. If you're at all interested in ancient Egypt, it would be a more detailed look into daily life there, especially for people connected to the royal family as the story isn't told from the perspective of Nefertiti, but from her sister's perspective.

Well, that's it for today. Will probably give an update on the seat belt story as I don't really know what's involved in fixing it. It will probably have to be replaced, but we'll see.

The Car Title was "Altered"

Okay, I always thought that "altering" the title meant trying to change something on the front of the thing and trying to make it look like it said something it didn't. But apparently, they say that if you write on it, that's altering it, even if it's on the back and you just signed it like you were told to. So now that we "voided" the title by "altering" it, we need to get a release of lien, even though it was plain as day on the now-voided title. Of course, the lien was with Security Service CU, which we couldn't find anywhere. We must have passed by 10 or more banks, none of which were a Security Service. Luckily for us, Dad knows where they are as, for some reason, he has a memory for that sort of thing. He has a map in his head and remembers just about every place he ever goes to fix a fax machine. He knew right off the top of his head. I wish I could do that, but usually I'm watching the road and not paying attention to what businesses are around there. Oh well.

So, despite my feeling under-the-weather, we have to go over there and get the paperwork from the bank before we get the duplicate title paperwork over to the DPS. And by the DPS, I don't mean the driver's license office. It's another whole separate building. Could they make this more confusing and complicated? I'm sure this isn't the end of it. I still have to get Dad's signature on the duplicate title form, even though it shouldn't matter because you can't do anything with the title unless you get both of our signatures on it. It's just an extra unnecessary step. But for some reason, everything we've ever done involving a car title has been a big hassle and they're so picky that nothing is ever filled out right. We did it exactly the way they told us to once, and then they said that was wrong. Every time you get a different person, you get a different story. Really, I don't think they're very organized.

Anyway, should you be anxiously awaiting those book recommendations, I have a couple of them. First off, I finally read Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner. I meant to read it much sooner, but couldn't find it at the library. I finally had to have it reserved for myself or else I'd probably have to wait much longer to read it. Needless to say, it was really good, although parts of it were sad. But I'd certainly recommend it. Next up, in a completely different genre, is John Scalzi's The Last Colony. Even if you don't read science-fiction, you should find it entertaining. The writing alone makes it extremely entertaining and beyond that the story is more complicated as it goes along. When you think you get what's going on, there's always something that happens to change that. I'm not done with that one, but it's fun to read and I thought I'd recommend that one, anyway.

Well, that's it for now. Again, I'm not feeling well, so my attention span is a little shorter than usual. It's hard to concentrate and I'm really tired. Hope I'll feel better by tomorrow. Don't worry I'm loading up on antioxidants and taking zinc and drinking lots of water.