Jack ‘n Tracie

Last week Cody and I met Jack and his co-workers for lunch at a Chinese restaurant. Cody was fascinated with the chopsticks and kept trying to eat with them. Unfortunately he sat by me. And I’ve never been successful mastering the art of eating with two small sticks. So I was no help.

For dessert he got a bowl of ice cream. He picked up the chopsticks and proceeded to eat his ice cream by dipping the sticks into it. One of Jack’s co-workers was amused at this and told Cody if he could eat his whole bowl of ice cream with chopsticks, he’d give him $5. Cody, not about to turn down the chance at earning money for doing silly things, proceeded to dip his chopsticks into his ice cream faster. He also figured out how to put the bowl up to his mouth and scoop the ice cream into his mouth. The co-worker said that was cheating. I told him no way. He didn’t specify any rules other than eating his ice cream with chopsticks. Another co-worker threw a dollar into the pot so now Cody could earn $6 for finishing all his ice cream with only chopsticks. Cody won.

Here’s a video of him eating it towards the end and being silly. It was taken with a cell phone video camera. The format is 3G2. QuickTime should play it.

About cars…

We finally got the lil’ Escort into the shop last week. The automatic seatbelt needed to be fixed, the brakes needed to be fixed. We needed to know why the Check Engine light was on, and we wanted to know if the switch for the defroster could be replaced. The defroster worked, but the switch was broken. You had to hold the button in which is quite annoying.

After the Ford Dealership did their checkup, they let us know that: the seatbelt needed to be replaced and it would be OMG expensive, there was no fixing it. the brakes could be re-done, there was no “fixing” the defroster switch — the whole unit had to be replaced and it would be OMG expensive, the Check Engine light was reporting an issue with the PVC (PSP? PCP? - I am not car part smart!) hose and that needed to be replaced, there was a small seepage from the radiator intake, and a few other minor things.

Fortunately, this dealership has a ton of Escort fans. Ford doesn’t make the Escort anymore and one guy they have on their team has been buying them up because he loves them so much. (They really are great cars..) So he happened to have a spare defroster switch he’d give us cheap, and then we’d just have to pay them for labor. We said fine. We also opted to have the seat belt replaced (motor and track), the PVC/PCP/PSP/WHATEVER hose replaced, the brakes fixed, and some other minor stuff that my brain can’t process.

Yesterday they called and said the car was done. Finally after sitting for almost a YEAR (yes almost a YEAR) we can drive the Escort again. I wanted to be the one to drive it home. We paid for it and off I went. Only to get about a 1/4 mile down the road, turn around and go right back.

The seatbelt was doing the EXACT same thing it was doing before it finally died it’s horrible death. It wasn’t locking right. Instead it’d spaz out every 30 seconds. You can’t drive like that. Not to mention the brakes still sounded horrible. (But I guess that’s normal after getting new brakes?). I was PISSED the seatbelt still had an issue. They claimed this was a brand new seat belt motor and track.. yet it’s doing EXACTLY as it did before. Editing this to add that Jack saw the old motor and track.  The mechanic pulled it out of the garbage to compare it to the new one to be there wasn’t wires messed up somewhere. Otherwise I would have been skeptical that they just fixed the old one and didn’t replace it.  They also didn’t fix the defroster switch. (But they didn’t charge us for it..)

So we still don’t have the Escort. Frustrating!