A Little Unexpected Adventure

I'm not even sure where to begin with our weekend recap. On paper we had a pretty simple weekend planned--date night Friday night, visiting friends on Saturday, and preparing our menu and shopping for Thanksgiving on Sunday. And up until Sunday, things were going as planned. Our date night experience was a little sub-par; it's a restaurant we've been to before and enjoyed, so when we had an opportunity to get a coupon there we jumped on it. Well, turns out that since we've last been there they've changed locations, and we just didn't have a good experience at the new location. To begin, our seats were literally in the bar area, even though we'd waited 45 minutes for a table. Now, I fully understand the necessity of needing to utilize all available seating area--but when we went out for a "romantic" dinner, I wasn't expecting to have to compete for my husband's attention with the basketball games that were being televised. We also weren't given a wine list because of our "baby faces" (word to all wait-staff: do not assume we are under-21. If you are going to card us, at the very least assume we are 21 and provide us with what we need to order. And then do not comment on our baby faces like it is a compliment. We are 25 and 26 people. Comparing us to babies is a good way to hurt your tip). But we brushed that aside and ordered a bottle of the house wine--which was served to us in small water glasses. We're not talking stemless wine glasses here, but honest to goodness water glasses, albeit slightly smaller than the ones we had water in. We were less than impressed. Thankfully, we ended the evening by going shopping for our adorable nephew who is turing two this weekend, and by the time we got home we were in much better spirits.


Saturday morning was busy with both of us at work, but by 1:00 we were on the road to go visit our dear friends and their 2-month old little girl. And, alas, I already broke my first goal of blogging by forgetting to take my camera. Not that we had much opportunity for pictures; they are currently in the process of building a new home (which will hopefully be finished early next week!) so we spent most of the time out there loading and unloading boxes and appliances. Always a good time with those two though, manual labor or not. We ended up staying for dinner and staying way later than we anticipated, which was fine except for the fact that by the time we ended up getting on the road it had started to rain. And in South Dakota in November, when it rains, it freezes. So our two-hour drive home took a little longer than normal, but we made it home without issue. Can't quite say the same for the handful of cars we saw in accidents though.


We were actually able to sleep in on Sunday, which never happens, so we took full advantage of it. We even decided to stay home from church (eek!) since we didn't have to teach Sunday School and treat ourselves to a big breakfast--which subsequently forced us to lay down and nap for about half an hour on our full bellies. After planning our Thanksgiving menus for both the meal between the two of us and the meal at my parent's, we set in to town to do some grocery shopping, but not before hitting the gym. Despite having one of the longest grocery lists we've ever had, we were able to get most of our goods on sale so we didn't blow our grocery budget too badly. And then the fun started....


My car had been in town all weekend because we left Saturday straight from work. After picking up our groceries, we drove over to get my car. We had to spend a lovely ten minutes scraping ice off it (have I told you how much I love our garage?), but before long it was warmed up and ready go. Now, I should preface this story with saying that my car is a 2003 with over 100,000 miles, and over the course of the past week it hadn't been running incredibly smoothly, especially when it needed to change gears. I attributed it to the weather getting colder, though, and left it at that. Sunday afternoon was no different, it was shifting noticeably hard as I left the parking lot, and had some difficulty getting into a gear high enough for me to travel at 40 mph. I started to get nervous when the problem didn't go away after a few miles, especially because my RPMs kept jumping way up whenever I tried to accelerate, and started to stay really high. I called Darrell (who was following me, thankfully) and we pulled over in a nearby parking lot. He decided to jump behind the wheel and see for himself how it was driving. We made it a few blocks from the parking lot and he was able to get it up to 55 mph (within the speed limit, of course), so we figured it just needed a lot of time to warm up after sitting outside overnight. But when we turned around to head back to the parking lot, the card stopped moving. No amount of pressure on the gas pedal would cause the car to move; the engine/transmission just spun like we were trying to accelerate in neutral. Never a good thing (but reassuring for me that it wasn't just my driving causing issues). Thankfully I'm still on my dad's AAA plan, so we were able to get a free tow, but not after sitting in the car for thirty minutes. Some good Samaritan was nice enough to drive Darrell the few blocks to his car so he could drive home and put the groceries away, then drive back out to sit and wait with me. At least the car didn't die completely so it would still run and keep me warm, plus I had my atlas there for some leisure reading. And surprisingly, I was mildly amused by the whole situation. Usually I would freak out about stuff like this, but maybe it was because the timing was good (or as good as timing can ever be for your car to break down), or because I wasn't actually the one driving when it stopped working; either way, I thought the whole situation was rather comical. I have a picture on my phone of them towing my car, now I just have to figure out how to upload it.


The not-so-funny part hit home today when Darrell and I realized the difficulty of only having one car when we work in different cities--and when I work a shift at my second job to boot. Not to mention the phone call to let us know that the entire transmission is shot, which means no car for at least a week and a hefty bill. We hope that in the long run fixing the transmission pays off to be cheaper than buying a new car--and in the meantime, I'm going to be bumming rides off of lots of people! Thankfully it's a holiday week, so now I have an excuse to do nothing but sit at home and bake cookies my two and a half days off work :-D