Finally had Jarret’s IEP meeting the other day. Jarret is still extremely intelligent, yet unable to be consistant with his work/grades. Still no one seems to know why. *facepalm* His teachers also claim they’ve seen no acts of defiance from him, yet admit to his persistence in using pen when he’s not only been asked (repeatedly) not to but has been given plently of pencils to use, instead. This is sounding an awful lot like back when Ben was in preschool. 🙁 Jarret does seem to be taking after me in the creativity department. He wrote a hilariously amazing three page story about what his English teacher does when he’s home for the day. Now if only we could encourage it.

Received our monthly newsletter from our mechanic. This month, under the heading of mechanical rip-offs, Herb tells the story of the severely misfiring car that had only 5 of its spark plugs previously replaced by another garage, and with incorrect plugs. Why does that sound so familiar? *laughs*

Was traveling through Winchester today and saw a Subaru wagon with a snow covered, cut “Xmas” tree strapped to its roof. I kid you not.

After two months without my computer I forgot how much fun the Sims are to play with. I spent the last two days playing with five families, and attempting to create a new Sim for my from scratch town. I wonder what the ramifications of an all-male-except-for-one-female town would be. And should I name that female Madam Orr?

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080129-p2p-users-blast-comcast-in-fcc-proceeding.html

Comcast’s contract with Arlington was supposed to be renewed last year but because they wouldn’t play nice they only got a one year, temporary renewal instead of a multi-year contract. Methinks they are going to have some ‘splaining to do if they want to keep their asses out of the flames when they are up for renewal this year.

The rules are easy, just post 10 things that recently made you happy! Then tag some people and suggest that they post this meme on their LJs/IJs. Because it is good. Everyone needs a little happiness once in a while.

1. Getting back on my exercise routine.

2. Actually losing weight again!

3. I found my own copy of “The Whole Pet Diet”.

4. My girls are getting healthier due to afforementioned book.

5. Cute guys and my vivid imagination.

6. I have my computer back!

7.The MLN now allows you to pay your fines online. Now I don’t have to wait until I can get to the library before I can request more books!

8. Ben and his flipping the bird to the 1812 Overture.

9. Friends are already asking me if I’m going to have my Summer Solstice cookout this year.

10. Rhapsody just keeps adding more and more good stuff to their “music store”.

I’m not tagging anyone, either. Do or do not. Whatever.

Thursday Glenn finally took the car in to be worked on. He naively set aside a paultry $300 for the repairs, thinking it wouldn’t all be used. I laughed. Considering Herb (our mechanic) had already done a once over and couldn’t find the leak the last time he had the car, I knew we were going to get hit with some hefty labor costs. After having the car for a day and a half Herb called us to give us the news.

The leak in the fuel system was found in the PCV valve. It was replaced and now our knocking is past tense. But that’s not all of it. It seems the car shaking like a mofo was completely unrelated. See, back when we bought the car we had some problems with it misfiring. As it was still under warranty the dealer replaced the spark plugs… or so we thought. Of the six plugs, one was an original part. The other five? Yes, they had been replaced, but with plugs for regular Tauruses. Ours is a Flexi-Fuel, which requires special plugs. To add insult to injury, they were crap plugs. So they started acting up far sooner than they should’ve.

After replacing the plugs Herb changed the oil. Given the facts that the engine had been running hotter that normal and that Glenn has this annoying knack to put off routine maintainence (such as oil changes) as much as possible, I didn’t think it was a bad idea. Anyway he took the car for a test drive. A couple blocks away from the garage steam starts shooting up from the passenger’s side. The “hose” from the overflow tank to the radiator had burst. So that also had to be replaced.

The total? $491. Considering the fuel pump that got replaced of the summer cost us $500 that’s a bargain. I have to dig out the owner’s manual to verify this, but I figure that once we get the struts replaced next month all the major repairs should be done. Man, when Fords hit the 100,000 mile mark they fall apart, don’t they?

On a positive note: I got a call from my uncle last night. We are now the proud owners of his old 40″ LCD screen TV. It just barely fit into our cabinet! I know LCD monitors use less electricity than CRTs, but I wonder if LCD TVs work the same. I guess we’ll find out. It even has inputs on the front that I can hook up my computer to. Now if only I can convert the livingroom into the computer room…

Oh! And I lost another pound! Whoo hoo!

Because I love my teenager and really don’t want to kill him because he has been bugging me ever since the computer came home to download the eps of Bleach he’s missed, I headed on over to Mininova. Only it keeps timing out. So I headed over to the Pirate Bay to see if they have episodes. They do, but everytime I try to download them I get a 503 error. Hmmmmm.

Just for shits and grins I decided to load a few new proxies into Firefox and try both sites again. I had a much higher than usual failure rate with my regular source for proxies, but once I finally found one, I had absolutely no problem accessing either site. 🙁

Somebody’s blocking me somewhere.

In other news, Ben is missing another day of school. This time courtesy of the bus driver. Despite the driver passing him on the way to the stop and the fact that one of Ben’s friends pointed out to the driver that Ben was ruinning for the bus, the driver drove offanyway. We’ve had problems with him singling out Ben in the past, so he will be having a new hole reamed in him this afternoon (if the car, which is in the shop, is fixed by then, that is).

BTW, did I miss the memo that LJ’s is now a breeding ground for idiots?