Did I Really Just Run Out of Gas?

If you've read my blog regularly (or even not that regularly) you know I've had some shall we say car issues over the years. Well...a couple of weeks ago, my fiance and I were heading to meet his family for lunch at a restaurant that is about halfway in between us.  We were about 10 minutes away from the restaurant when the car died.  As if that isn't bad enough, we were getting off one highway and onto another one and we were on the left side and could not get to the breakdown lane.  People could still get by us, but they were a little annoyed because it forced them to merge a car length earlier than usual. We thought we were out of gas because as the car died, the gas light came on.  I'd never run out of gas before and felt like a fool, but what can you do.  My gas needle had been a little off lately so I was just going by miles.  So I called AAA and they said they'd send someone within a half hour.  Sure enough a half hour later, AAA came with the gas.  I told him what happened and he said he didn't think it was the gas.  He opened the hood, did some stuff, and said it was NOT the gas, but rather looked like it was something electrical.  So he called another AAA truck who towed the car (after a state police officer came by and hit our car to the break down lane--yes, hit it with his car, who knew?  Last time my car died, the police officers PUSHED me out of the way) and then my fiance's parents came to pick us up and bring us to lunch.  A broken car is a good form of weight loss because I was so nervous about whether the car could be fixed and how much it would cost that I didn't eat much.  I managed to eat a little and later went out with my fiance to his friend's house where we had a good time.  His friend thought it was probably something wrong with my fuel pump and wouldn't make me completely broke.  The mechanic called me at 7:15am (GRR) the next day (a Sunday as in a day to sleep late) to tell me they wouldn't be able to get to my car that day (you couldn't tell me this at 9?  you don't even open 'til 8 on Sundays?!).  Monday morning I found out I had a broken fuel pump, a dead battery, and did I want a transmission flush since I was due for that now too. Tuesday after work, I had my car back and the mechanic assured me the fuel pump would work for years to come as would the battery.  Approximately, 6-6 1/2 hours after I got my car back, my washing machine died.  We'll save that for another blog though.    On a happy note, for the first time in a few years, my car passed inspection without needing anything fixed (as it should have since I'd just spent over two weeks' pay on car repairs the week prior). 

I'm Thankful

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I really should have posted a Thanksgiving-themed blog so here it is a little late.  Despite my many complaints that you can often read about in blogland (hopefully with some humor thrown in) I do have a lot to be thankful for:
-My friends who make me laugh, are fun to hang out with, and of course keep me busy.  :-)  I am forever appreciatve of your love and support (though I could do w/o some of the nicknames and bad jokes)
-My family, who yes, they drive me crazy at times, but isn't that what family is for?  If our families didn't drive us crazy, what would we whine to our friends about?
-My fiance, kind of like the family, he drives me crazy sometimes, but I don't know what I'd without him. 

A belated Happy Thanksgiving to you all.  I hope it was a good one. 

Dish 12

My oven was still not working when week 12 came around so I perused the crock pot cook book and found a dish called Company Seafood pasta.  The pasta cooked as it normally would on the stove and the seafood part all went in the crock pot.  I made way too much (it was just for me) and I don't think I finished all the left overs, though I did try.  It came out pretty good.  It had shrimp and crabmeat, two seafoods I like mixed with a few other things (don't have the recipe in front of me at the moment and it was the end of September when I made it) and then you mix it in with the cooked pasta and enjoy. 

Let Us Give Thanks...No, REALLY Let us.

I like Thanksgiving.  I also like shopping.  And like many other people, I go out on Black Friday in search of good deals, unfortunately, I tend to buy stuff for myself in addition to other people.  Some years I find more good deals for me than Christmas gifts, but I digress...I've noticed more and more stores opening on Thanksgiving.  What is the deal with that?  I mean I know sometimes we can only take so much "family time," but Thanksgiving is a holiday.  I worked retail once upon a time and they only days you were guranteed to have off where I worked were: Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter.  Now those poor employees can't even have Thanksgiving off?  Really?  I was at a store a few weeks ago and the woman who was ringing up my fiance said she wasn't celebrating Thanksgiving this year because she had to be at the store that night.  Now, that is depressing.  I know doctors, nurses, police officers, fire fighters, soldiers, etc have to work on holidays, but really do you have to make all the store employees go in on one of their few days off?  I hope they pay them well.  And I hope even those working folks managed to enjoy at least some portion of their Thanksgiving.   

Dish 11 Raspberry Drumsticks

Don't let the name fool you, raspberry drumsticks don't really taste like raspberry.  The recipe was fairly simple as it only had a few ingredients and one of them was raspberry jam, but it didn't taste much like raspberry.  I'd rate this recipe as okay.  My fiance and I ate them, but I haven't made them since and he hasn't requested them.  I wouldn't say I'd never make them again, but I think it'd be something I'd only make two or three times a year. 

And then one day I decided I liked candles

I didn't used to like candles.  Okay, it's not that I didn't like them, it's more that I never used them.  People often gave me candles as gifts for various things and I put them in a closet, cabinet and there they stayed.  And then one day I became a home-owner and I discovered a use for candles.  You'll still never see me put candles on my Amazon wish list or any Christmas or birthday lists, but I actually like them now and I use them.  Maybe that's not such a good thing because recently Mom and I made a trip to the Yankee Candle factory.  I'd been there several years ago with my now-fiance, but she'd never been and mentioned wanting to go.  So we took the several hours drive out there.  It was a nice, pretty ride.  We joked that we looked crazy walking around lifting up all kinds of candles and smelling them, but everyone else was doing it too.  Where else can you go and just randomly smell all kinds of things like that?  Well, I liked a bunch of them and I had a coupon for either $15 or $20 off a $35 purchase so I bought too many votives, as in 24.  As in I shouldn't need to buy candles again for years.  Oh, well, at least my house will smell nice.  If you had told me three or four years ago that I'd buy 24 votive candles in a day, I'd probably ask you if you were on drugs or were just crazy.  Who knew! 

How Long Does it Take to Fix an Oven?

On Sept. 20th (yep, I'm a little behind) I started to make a dessert dish for a bachelorette weekend to be held that weekend at a friend's lake house.  I pre-heated the oven, mixed in all the ingredients, and put the Chocolate Crunch Brownies in the oven to bake.  I cleaned up and a few minutes later I was sitting in another room when I heard a loud popping sound.  My fiance and I tried to figure out what the noise was and after a few minutes realized it was the oven.  Strange we thought.  We tried to turn it back on, but no luck.  Yikes!  I'd heard stories of people's oven not working and fires resulting.  So I took a deep breath, remained calm, and hoped for the best--YEAH RIGHT.  I texted my mother who was all ready asleep (it was a little late to be baking) and got no response.  So I texted my uncle who as he puts it, rarely sleeps.  He told me to try the fuse box.  I did that, no luck.  He also assured me that since I had an electric oven and NOT a gas one, my oven was not likely to blow up, etc.  My fiance and I looked on-line at oven prices, I tried not to cry, and eventually we went to bed and I decided to do a crockpot appetizer instead of a dessert for the bachelorette party (which was a success).  Fast forward to a few days later:  my fiance talked to the guy who installed my dishwasher and had me set-up a time for him to come check out my oven.  In the mean time, he told us some things to try to see if the stove worked.  It did so bring on the pasta!  A few days later, the aforementioned man came over and said since the stove worked and the oven wasn't too old, I probably just needed a new part not a whole new oven.  So he agreed to order that and come by a few days later to install it.  In the mean time, the crockpot, quesadilla maker, toaster oven (who knew you could do chicken in a toaster oven?  Okay, maybe you did, but it was the first time I ever cooked chicken that way), and stove got some good use.  We did go out to eat a few times too.  And since I had promised to make some people apple bread, my parents were kind enough to let me use their oven one evening to make the bread. As planned, Mr. A showed up to install the new oven part as scheduled one Wednesday evening in early October.  Yay--or not.  The part wouldn't fit.  What?!  The man who ordered the part accidentally ordered him (and thus me) a part for a GAS stove, I have ELECTRIC.  So much for making that pumpkin bread that weekend.  He promised to put in a new order the next day, but he was going to be away for the holiday weekend.  Not a big deal, after I'd been ovenless for two weeks, what was another week at this point?  I wasn't going to be around that Tuesday so he said he could probably come by on Wednesday.  Unfortunately, Wednesday came and he wasn't there.  A few minutes past the time whe I thought he'd be there, I got a phone call informing me that the part hadn't come in yet.  He tracked it and it was in MA, but not at the store yet and was supposed to arrive in another day or so.  So he said he could install it Saturday after work.  I said that was fine, but at this point I was a little annoyed as 1.  I'd promised to make a birthday cake for a friend for Friday night and 2. Another friend was coming over on Saturday and I was going to make a nice meal and tell her all about Iceland because she was going there in a few weeks.  So it was back to Mom and Dad's on Thursday night where I baked whoopie pies and a birthday cake.  They weren't going to be home on Saturday so they said I could come by then and cook the chicken crescent roll casserole I was planning to make.  A normal person would have just done sandwiches or ordered out for pizza, but not me, I have to make things difficult.  The whoopie pies were good as was the cake (even though I dropped it on the way in to my friend's apt, but I saved most of  it), and so was the chicken (and then I had leftovers for a few days since I STILL had no oven).  Yep, Saturday evening came and no phone call, no oven, nothing so I called him.  No answer.  Weird.  I texted him a little later and oops, he'd left the part at the store.  Oh dear.  Get that crockpot back out.  Thankfully, on Wednesday evening, Mr. A came by after work (he got there before I did) and at last I had the correct part and a functional oven (and he even gave me a discount for the delay). Woohoo!  I was a baking queen that night:  brownies, pumpkin bread, baked shrimp.  So to answer the blog title: just under a month (about 27-28 days).

A Decision is (Finally) Made

Well, 11 venues, 1 not quite a spreadsheet table, and many conversations later, we had it narrowed down to 6 venues=2 hotels and 2 function halls.  We decided we liked one of the hotels better than the other so we eliminated that one. Then we were down to 4 places.  One place we REALLY liked.  It was so pretty, the prices seemed reasonable, and they only did one wedding at a time.  Our two biggeset concerns were they didn't seem too willing to do vegetarian meals and the place was a long ride from the church where we were hoping to marry so we sadly eliminated that one.  Another place we liked, but we'd recently been to two weddings there.  We enjoyed the venue both times, but didn't want to look like copycats, we figured we should mix it up a bit.  So we eliminated that place too.  Another place we liked, but it was out of our price range.  We did get invited to a wedding at that venue so we did get to enjoy it at someone else's expense.  :)  So at long last we had it narrowed down to two places.  We liked them both. I ended up e-mailing them both and asking for an estimate.  Essentially, it came down to price and somewhat location.  One place was 1/2 hour away from the church, another place was 15 minutes so we went with the slightly less expensive and closer place.  Yay!  One decision made, 99 more to go lol. 

BLOG 200

So I realized this was post 200.  At first, I felt like I should make a big deal and do something special with this post, but then I remembered what I normally blog about and let's face it, why start doing special blogs now.  So instead here's a jumble of my usual blog topics:  vacation, complaints, wedding plans, and a new dish.
I still need to write about my broken oven.  That will be Blog 201
I'm hoping to go on a cruise this spring.  If I do, it will be a short one, so perhaps it won't take me 2 months to write about. 
The wedding plans are coming along nicely.  Translation:  I have nothing new to report since the previous wedding blog.
Dish #11=Raspberried Drumsticks, despite the name, you couldn't really taste the raspberry

And just for fun, here are a couple of letters...

Dear Mother Nature,
   What is the deal with these October storms?

Dear Washing Machine,
   Please behave.  I can't afford to replace you right now.

Dear Game Night,
  Despite me stinking at certain games, you are good, cheap fun.  :-) 

Dear Yankee Candles,
  Thanks to you and your factory store, I've gone from hating candles to owning way too many of them. 

Dear Pumpkin Bread,
  You are delicious.  Why did I never make you before this year? 

Dear J and J,
   Your Halloween themed wedding was a delight.  Loved everyone's costumes. 

Dear Political Ads,
  I am SO HAPPY you will be done soon.  Can't wait for the annoying phone calls, mail, and commercials to END.

 Dear Readers,
  Thanks for following me for 200 posts! 

The Last Few Venues

As we were looking at the places I'd mentioned previously, I'd also been in contact with some other places via e-mail. One place NEVER responded, even after several attempts, so I just assumed they didn't want my business and stopped trying. At another place, the woman was lovely, we e-mailed back and forth a few times to set up a date, and finally I thought we were getting somewhere and I never heard from her again. I don't know if one of our e-mails got lost in cyber-space or what, but I can't really afford that place anyway so maybe it's for the best. Another place sent me the info I requested, but when I e-mailed them twice re: questions/seeing the venue, NO response. So I gave up on them too. Too bad because their food is good, maybe they'd be good for a rehersal dinner--if I can actually get ahold of them. I did ask one other place for info per the suggestion of my Dad, but the place is too far away. They did send me info in a timely manner though. During the late spring, we looked at four more places.  Honestly, we liked them all.  Two were hotels, and one was a beautiful place that hosted weddings, functions, etc.  Another was a function hall that was also quite scenic.  A few people did suggest some other places to us and I peeked on-line, but by this time we'd seen 11 places in person, researched a few more on-line and it was time to narrow down the location not look at more places (plus some of the suggested places were out of our price range, honestly, everything is out of our price range, but these were extra out of our price range, one place I saw on-line looked more affordable, but I wasn't a huge fan of the set up, plus it might be a little tight if  all of our guests actually made it--and yes, I know that rarely happens)).  So now it was time to bring out the chart and start weighing pros, cons, and costs.