she who keeps this diary


15 September 2004 - 9:51 AM

Catching a Break

As I mentioned briefly yesterday, Buttercup, my beloved '88 Jeep Cherokee, started acting up this weekend. Friday night, driving to fighter practice, she overheated. Violently. As in, the we could hear the coolant boiling in the overflow tank before we even popped the hood. Bad times.

The hoses all seemed OK. Was it the thermostat? The fan? The water pump? We didn't know. All we knew was that we were looking at another auto repair. The Viking is still unemployed. There was not great happiness at Chateau-sur-Magothie this weekend.

Monday, the Viking took Buttercup down to the local shop (we are blessed with a good one) and the guys said that they've got a bit of a waiting list, but they should get to it by Thursday. So we reverted to Viking Taxi Service mode for getting me to and from work, and waited, and faxed out more resumes.

This morning, I had been at work perhaps an hour (just about long enough for the Viking to get back home after dropping me off) when the phone rang. It was the Viking. The shop had just phoned him, and Buttercup is all better. There was a tiny leak in the overflow tank itself. They replaced it and ran her for three hours yesterday without incident. It looks like, just for once, we may have caught a break.

And, he has an interview on Friday at a local Alzheimer's care facility. The woman he spoke to wasn't sure about which shift they were trying to hire, so he will have to see about that. He'd prefer a day shift. Standard evening shift in hospitals and nursing homes is 3 to 11 p.m., plus some weekends and the occasional double shift when there aren't enough nurses to cover the night shift. He worked that for a while when we were engaged and getting married, and frankly it blew dead bear. I saw him about 6 days a month -- the three weekends he wasn't working, and then really only in the afternoons and evenings. Neither of us really want to go back to that. But we'll see.

verso - recto

The WeatherPixie

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