davejenbarnes

David and I are trying to figure out how we will be able to afford a trip to the east coast in a month for a wedding. This will be our first vacation since our honeymoon, so we’re hoping to be able to do some touristy things and drive up to Washington D.C. which will be about a 2.5 hour drive from where we’ll be. Not bad for driving… but we’re from Texas so driving anywhere always involves a matter of hours. If we scrounge, we will be able to afford the trip without getting a penny deeper into debt, but that will mean delaying a payment or two for the debt we already have. I wish it were easier than it is. The cheapest flights we’ve been able to find (June 3-7or8 out of DFW) for both of us roundtrip total $503 but I’m wondering if flights get cheaper or more expensive if you buy them closer to flying time??? Any ideas?

well, I signed on to blog about the geraniums my husband bought me on Wednesday which I planted yesterday (at the cost of three mosquito bites) in mounted planters on the railing of the balcony… but I got distracted by Gmail which is being offered to blogger account holders. Hey, I’m beta testing something! Cool! Usually David is the beta tester… but I guess that is mostly for games… I thought, hey, I can’t pass up a gigabyte of free email storage, so I signed up for jennifer.barnes [at] gmail.com! I doubt I will use it for any communcation purposes… the emails are “read” at some level… at least for now. I am curious, though, about the search features gmail offers.

I had taken about 6 pictures of the patio flowers as well as the wild geraniums (not really wild, but growing in the wild, at least) and the new iPhoto 4 (which came with iLife) erased them rather than importing them… stupid iPhoto. I really do not care much for that program at all… I will probably stop using it soon.

Here are those pictures I was trying to upload. I had Dave go out and take more pictures.

What a wild week… I’m back in the ol’ Saturn L again… “The Blue El” is what I heard a lot of at the dealership while waiting for repairs. It gave the service guys a hard time. They replaced the steering column and gears, the right hub and bearing(s?), did an alignment and cleaned out the fuel-injection system. All-in-all, close to $1,400 of it was covered with the extended warranty and it drives like a new car! No more engine noise! All I hear cruising down the road is wind and road noise.

On the way home last night, after an episode with a broken windshield wiper, I saw my first automobile fire. I had just exited IH-35 at the 1431 exit and was going to go 1431 to Parmer… but there was this white Ford Pick-up engulfed in flames right in the middle of the road. I was the third or so car from the Ford on fire and the RRFD (Round Rock Fire Department) showed up with two trucks and a slew of RRPD (… police) who first attended to the very tall and hot flames then closed the ramp onto the access road and then had all of us who were mesmerized by the scene but still in our cars on a road which would not be cleared for quite some time turn around and head the wrong way on the access road back onto the highway. It was strange driving on the access road with all the reflectors shining red and passing about 10 wrong-way-do-not-enter signs.

Other than car adventures, we seem to be doing much better than last week. Whew… Friday cannot get here soon enough.

The blue 4 door saturn L is hurt… but being fixed! It is sleeping in Waco tonight and Sunday night and maybe even Monday night while a HUGEnormous Chevy TAHOE is transporting me in its place.

The blue car had a bad power-steering column, which they replaced. There was still some humming, though, so the Saturn of Waco (Awesome service department, BTW!) is keeping it longer until they can find, repair, and re-check the car. They said something about a bearing. The bad news is that it is going to be way, very, mucho expensive (the steering column alone is $1,200) but the good news is that almost all of it will fall under warranty. We are now glad that we have the zero-deductible plan!

I’m going to have fun driving around in the Tahoe this weekend, although I’ve already paid $24 for half a tank of gas!!!!!! (a half of tank of gas in either of the Saturns was only about $10, even at these high gas prices!) I don’t know if I will let David drive. :-)

My pictures from Zilker Park on Monday are scanned in. The scanner does a beautiful job… the pictures have not been edited by me yet… those are straight off the scanner! I have about 25 more pictures, but due to the lack of light, most of the ones not scanned in came out blurry. I think my glasses may be getting old, too, because most of what I was manually focusing on was blurry. Guess I need to rely on autofocus or maybe consider a more expensive solution. Well, autofocus did do me good on some of those pictures. Maybe later I’ll edit a few of them, resize them, and add them below this paragraph.

I (this is Jen) have finally diagnosed a pattern in the problem which has progressively gotten worse with my car (the blue one). While driving, the car has this loud vibration kind of noise which seems to be related to speed, but not RPMs. Starting at around 45 mph, becoming surprisingly loud at 47 mph, and easing off around 51 mph, there is this … this noise … a loud humming noise! It is a vibration, as all sounds are, but you can feel it, like it’s in the cars “bones” so to speak (if the car had a skeleton, that is). Somewhere around those speeds, the gears shift and the RPMs go down but the hum stays the exact same. Now here is the really strange part, and a part that I feel has a lot to do with the source or cure of humming, but I cannot know for sure since I don’t know cars inside and out. No matter what speed, anytime I make a right turn, the humming completely disappears and the car sounds … beautiful! The engine runs so quietly in right turns and the steering wheel stops vibrating as well! Ah, I should like to only make right turns all the time in the blue saturn.

If anyone has ANY ideas as to the source of this humming noise which only happens when driving straight or when making left turns, but disappears completely while turning right, please let me know! I would like to have some ideas when I go to the shop to have this looked at. Oh, yeah, it’s a 2000 Saturn LS with 51,000 miles on it.

I’m IM’ing my dad, who thinks

“I noticed the humming while riding saturday, but didn’t say anything. Is it shift gears okay, or do you have to “help it” shift gears? At first, I thought the transmission was hanging up in 2nd gear, but I watched the tachometer, and it was fine, right where it should be for the speed. So the problem is in the transfer from the transmission output to the transaxle in the front end.”

I’m calling Saturn of Waco (yes, Waco… Saturn of Austin IS NO GOOD, don’t ever go there!) tomorrow. I will post an update in a few days.