I don't seem to blog often anymore. It kind of bothers me, because it usually causes me to forget things, or put stuff in "blocks" (or updates), like this. Then again, I've also been ignoring my todo list... I suppose it's because I'm still getting used to my job. Yes, I know that I don't have to get up that early (I have flexible hours, apparently, but I don't put too much faith in those words.), but while the sleepiness is a little difficult to deal with, there are some perks to getting up early. Not to mention that half the time, the cat wakes me up anyway... After the second day of work - that is, on the 3rd - I went to The Fox And Feather Pub along with my brother and some of his friends (and his boyfriend). The menu was a little bland, but I went for the shrimp linguine - finding out then what the name of "that sauce I kinda don't like" was - which wasn't too bad. Were it not for the sauce, I probably would have enjoyed it much more - the shrimp and pasta were good, so perhaps I'll go for something else next time or ask if I can get another sauce instead. The night went well and I enjoyed myself, but I think it would have been better if my brother hadn't decided to schedule this on a Tuesday on the second day of work; I really don't understand why he decided to make it that day. Perhaps to celebrate me getting a job, but I really want to avoid being late at my job... I did it too much at my last one and I don't want a repeat performance. I know I can do better than that. The reason I mention all this is because after finishing our meals there, most of them decided they'd go to another pub (or was it a bar?), and I decided I'd go back home (given the time left, I didn't have much of a choice if I wanted to get up early).

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Thanksgiving was... interesting. First, I thought that we were going to my sister's new apartment for a dual purpose: For Thanksgiving, naturally, and also to help her move. So, I packed fairly minimally - clothes, a few board games, a this or a that here and there - since I figured that I'd spend most of that weekend helping her move. Turns out that her friends had already helped her move, and that everything she had was out of the old apartment. Well. Have lots of spare time then, don't we? It wasn't so bad, though; I had the sense to bring myself a book, and I also brought my portable media player, and when I wasn't the only one with nothing to do there was the games - I had brought Calypso (didn't get played), Tsuro (played several rounds), Escape Velocity: Nova (didn't get played, but then again, there wasn't a point where only me and my brother weren't doing anything), and Skip-Bo (which, being my mother's favorite, got played quite a bit). We enjoyed ourselves, had fun, yaddi yaddi yadda. Oh, and because Rona was having a sale during that weekend (or at least that Rona did), my brother decided to buy his bathroom tiles at that point. Heh. The way back, however, is another story. On Monday, approximately three hours away from home, the car suddenly decided to switch into what is apparently called safe mode (This is what the taxi driver called it... but I'll get back to that.). Essentially, it was impossible to get a speed higher than ~60 km/h, and being on the highway, this meant going onto the shoulder to be out of the way. We stopped a few minutes to inspect the engine and such to see if we could find any problems, but the only indications of problems we were getting from the dash were the SERVICE and ENGINE OIL PRESSURE lights, which were no help as the engine appeared to have the proper amount of oil. (Neither my mother nor my brother have CAA coverage at this point, by the way.) So we chugged along to the nearest exit (which thankfully wasn't far at all), and stopped at the outskirts of a small city (or town?) in a gas station. There, we phoned around and as we expected, just about no places were open since it was Thanksgiving Monday. A man getting his car filled up at the gas station helped us, telling us about a few places we could try, as well as inspecting the engine and letting us know where the nearest Saturn car dealer was, etc.. We decided to try to drive down to a bus station, I believe, or the car dealership - I don't quite remember. Either way, we decided that since the status of the car wasn't improving that we'd get the car towed to the dealership, and find an alternate way home. In itself, this proved to be a challenge. Now, I did say it was Thanksgiving monday, right? Forget this detail a moment and imagine yourself in this situation. Three hours from home, it's approximately noon, and your car breaks down and needs servicing. So you send your car to the dealership... then what? Call a car rental place, right? But this is Thanksgiving Monday! We had stopped at a funeral home (closest parking lot, and also a fairly large and completely empty one), and a lady there was also helpful to us. The rental places that were actually open had no cars for us to rent. The local busses weren't running, and the intercity ones didn't seem to be terribly interested in this city or weren't answering. (And Greyhound's number, for some reason, had a fax machine picking up both lines.) Thankfully, I noticed the VIA Rail station on the bus route map, and so we walked down to that under the hot sun (What a day for it to be hot! It's a good thing I decided to wear my shorts that day.), and asked there what our chances of getting home were. There were a pair of trains that could get us home by about 22 o'clock, and the tickets would cost us... 400$ total. The only option we had was that once we were at the connecting station, we could try to catch an intercity bus instead, and have the second tickets (the more expensive ones) refunded; This we did. We took a taxi from the train station to the bus station, and during the short five minutes it took to get there, the taxi driver, an ex-Saturn-worker, told us that the car had switched it a safe mode (Just enough power to get you home were some of his words, and really, had we not any other problems, we might have actually been able to drive all the way home in five hours, if I calculated right.) because it detected a major problem; He also told us that during the test drives on Saturn station wagons, 3 out of 5 SAAB transmissions blew on the first day, and therefore this was likely the problem that we were experiencing. While this was grim news, it was nice to have some insight on the situation. When my mother mentioned wanting to sell the car after getting it fixed, he suggested a few brands. Hyundai was one, I believe, and when my mother mentioned she wanted to get a Honda Civic, he said You cannot go wrong with a Civic. (Or did he say Honda? I'm not sure.), which was kind of amusing. Anyhow, we managed to get bus tickets to go home, and had arrived at the station just in time to catch the bus that was about to leave. My brother sat somewhere in the middle, while my mother and I sat in the front and chatted with the bus driver the whole time. He was a pretty nice guy, talkative, frank and easy to get along with. We spoke on several subjects - like GPSs and bus drivers (such as himself) getting lost while trying to go to new locations - but on the subject of the car he said that the transmission was probably on a special warranty (I didn't catch the word he used - mechanical? Manufacturer?), which was the first bit of good news we got that day. The rest of the day (what was left of it, anyway - it was about 22 o'clock when we got home) went fairly smoothly... The good news on that is that it turns out the problem was not the tranmission, but that the catalytic converter got plugged up (Have you ever heard of that?), and the better news is that it was covered by warranty. My mother is going to sell the car because the previous problem she's had (excluding the flickering light/electrical system which hasn't been fixed yet; it's the secondary one and not the important things, so stuff like the inside lights flicker and the beeping sound is intermittent, but the headlights and dash work just fine), was the rack and pinion - covered more or less by warranty (She complained to GM, I believe, and got them to do the work mostly for free - she had only to pay 100$). Have you ever heard of those two problems? Rack and pinion coming apart and the catalytic converter being pluggd up are not car problems I usually hear about. Thus, she's going to get herself a Honda.

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Phew. At work and at home I've been experimenting with wikis - mostly a special type of wiki that is self-contained and only uses one file. Currently, I'm using StickWiki to write my work notes in, and am writing my life notes (life, cooking, observations, information, etc.) in a copy of TiddlyWiki which I am planning on uploading occasionally for others to look at, refer to, etc.. What's nice and special about these Wikis is that while they're uneditable online (which can be considered a feature or a depending on your viewpoint), they use only one file, no database, and do not require you to be online to edit them. Thus, you can use them for a large variety of writing purposes - notes, blogs, journals, etc. - and you don't have to worry about moderating changes to them. Which reminds me, I need to ask my sister if she wants something simpler to blog in, and if comments are something important to her, as she could just use TiddlyWiki (or some variant like StickWiki) if she prefers.