Car is in pieces, obsessive UPS tracking, and we have a buck!

It’s Friday morning in foggy, dewey Lochaber.

Jeff opened the bedroom curtain this morning to see 3 deer in our front middle flower garden! They were eating my plants (don’t they feel the thorns on the rose bushes?) and drinking out of the bird bath.

When I had enough of watching my plants become breakfast, I cracked open the window. The noise startled them, and then I noticed there was a fourth deer nearby on the lawn. 4 does!

Jeff put a pile of apples and a salt lick near his shed with a trail cam a few days ago so we could see how many deer were around. We have lots of photos of these 4 does.

But also, we have a buck! See?

We’ve never seen a buck on our property, but I guess he’s just sneaky!

Jeff’s cam took about 450 photos in a few days as his pile of apples and a salt lick disappeared (although we think all the rain the other night took care of the salt lick).

They are so much cuter when they aren’t eating my gardens.

Day off, Car is in pieces

I’m off today because I volunteered to put a day in over the weekend. I’ve been carless for a few days, so I will catch up on some house and office work.

Carless you ask? Yes, blue beauty has been dismantled at the mechanic’s. She is due for her bi-annual safety inspection. Remember last time when I drove around with a failed inspection sticker and was fuming over the cost of replacing so many parts and swore I was going to sell the car before the next inspection? Well if you remember that so well, why didn’t you remind ME!?

We’re about to pay probably more in repairs than the car is worth. It is a 2007 Dodge Caliber. It is all so ridiculous.

This time most of the problem stems from our decision not to undercoat the car (because we weren’t going to keep it this long, remember?) Argh! Now everything under the car is rotted out from the winter’s road salt. Sigh.

So we coped with this news by test driving a 2014 Subaru Forester. Nice ride.

I really just want a car that isn’t built of cheap parts that are meant to last 3 years before failure. And I want that rock solid car to cost me about $50 a month. Why is this so hard to find?!?!

The attractive part of a Subaru is their renowned ability to climb icy hills in winter with their all wheel drive feature. I won’t have to drive to work this winter, since I work from home, but it would be nice if Jeff could save gas by taking the car, but he approaches the driveway from the opposite direction and it will be impossible for him to hit the driveway at highway speeds in order to make it all the way up in the Caliber. Unfortunately the driveway is angled perfectly for the high speed approach from the north only.

I considered going back to being a 1 car family, but our internet service is so glitchy out here, I really need access to a car to get into town to use a more stable internet connection when ours is sucky (yes, that is a technical term).

Tracking my new iPhone’s arrival

My iPhone 4 and I have been near inseparable best friends for 3 years now, but the time is coming for us to move on.

Her home button isn’t as responsive as it used to be, she’s slow, and she’s locked up by Bell.

I decided to jump all in and buy the iPhone 5s outright from Apple so I can use other sim cards when I travel. I’m really eager for the fingerprint button (no more lock screen password typing!

My new iPhone is already far more travelled than I am! Here is its path to me:

I love refreshing the tracking page for a package!

Because Apple’s accessories ship out of the US, I already have the new iPhone 5s case that I ordered at the same time. It’s kind of a tease, having it sitting here empty!

Can’t wait to see UPS pull up the driveway! Any moment now! Or hour. Who am I kidding, you know he’ll arrive when I have to go with Jeff to pick up the reassembled car!