Non-Progress on the New Home

Back in April, we thought we might be moving into a new home around the end of August or beginning of September. HA! Fat chance of that. The road isn't even built yet. Gayla wasn't satisfied with the answers she got from our sales representative, so she started making calls to different people. Eventually, she got in touch with the contractor in charge of the road. He said they had plans to start this week and that the road should be completed by the end of August.

Well, if they complete the road in August, they might be able to start the home around the beginning of September. It takes 100 days to build the home. Add to that the time it takes to complete the closing and any other days and we've decided we probably won't be moving into a home this year. If we're lucky, it'll be done the start of next year some time.

Homes are selling pretty fast during this part of the summer, so we hated to miss out on the opportunity to sell ours too. We've had lots of people look at our home but no offers yet. We don't know what we'll do if someone actually wants to buy it though. I guess we'll cross that bridge if we come to it. Most likely, we'll end up renting somewhere for a while.

Free Maze

We're always searching for something fun and constructive for the kids to do. I drew this maze. I think it'll take'em a while. Feel free to try yourself.

If it's worth doing, it must be worth doing a few times.

I'm beginning to wonder what it takes to get the tires on my vehicles to function property. After we bought our van, the rear brakes started to squeak. Thinking that brakes aren't that hard to get to function property, I simply had a mechanic put new brake pads on for us.

Total so far: $108


It wasn't a few more days before we started to hear a little squeak in the rear brakes again. Hmn. In the mean time, we had a check engine light that was bothering us. I decided I'd take the van in to the dealer and have them check the light and also tell us why the brakes still squeaked. The answer we got back was that there was a recall on a part in the van that was causing the engine light and that the brakes squeaked because the brake shoes installed were "After-Market" and not the "Honda Genuine Part". (Whatever.)

Total so far: $108


The good news is that we didn't have to pay for the recall part but the bad news is that we still had squeaky brakes. They were squeaking more and more.

Well, It came time to go to Monticello for the weekend and we decided that we really didn't want to have horrible squeaky brakes the whole way. I hadn't been able to get a hold of the mechanic that originally did the brakes, so I decided I'd just do it myself. I called the Honda dealer and they we're out of "Genuine Honda" brake pads. I had to call the next closest Honda dealer. Luckily they had the part coming in that morning but I'd have to drive 40 minutes to get it. The "Genuine Honda" brake pads cost $60.

Total so far: $168


So I came back home and set out to put new brake pads on the van myself. I'd done that job in the past so it wasn't terribly difficult to install the new pads. Unfortunately, they were adjusted too tight on one side and I didn't think to loosen the adjuster before putting the drum back on. (I was in a big hurry to get on the road.) In the process of this all, somehow I got big blisters on the palms of my hands. I think it was when I was wiggling the screwdriver to get the drums off.

We started down the trail and promptly noticed that the left rear tire was vibrating a bit. I thought we better go fix it before driving far. When we got back home I also noticed that it was HOT. We sprayed it down with the hose and I took the wheel off but I couldn't get the drum back off. It was just too hot and on too tight.

We got in the truck, repacked all the stuff and the boys and left the van in the driveway. Gayla and I were an hour and a half late for my class reunion but that turned out to be ok because everyone else was slow starting anyway.

When we got back home Sunday night, the truck got a flat front tire as we turned into our driveway. Hmn.

Monday morning I got up and worked real hard and got that drum off. It was a pain. After I loosened the brake adjuster thingy It went back on easy as pie. The brakes on the van don't squeak now but if they do I'm making the Honda people fix it.

We took the flat tire on the truck to Big-O-Tires Monday night because they fix flats for free. They were closed because of the Holiday.

Looks like we have to do that job twice too!