2 tools you should have (long)

[Tessie McMillan <tessmc@domain.elided>]

Recently I moved from Seattle to Bellevue. Or more appropriately, I should 
say I "started" moving from Seattle to Bellevue. I don't know how one girl 
can accumulate so much STUFF.

Anyway, I've mentioned before how useful it is to have a trickle-charger 
when you've got a Spider. My Spider has one of those elusive charge-eaters 
so if you don't drive her in three weeks, pah! she won't start. Well, last 
week we had a series of gloriously sunny (and cold) days here in Seattle 
and I thought I'd bring my Spider over to my new house. I wanted to do it 
early in the morning when it was still cold, because... well, because I 
still haven't repaired my broken water pump &:-] and I also didn't want 
any traffic in my way because of that. So I bombed over to the old house 
to get the Spider -- a little light-headed with excitement as I crossed a 
pristine blue Lake Washington and looking forward to driving the 
CONVERTIBLE on the way back -- but when I got there, pah! the Spider 
wouldn't start. Cussing that little Olive just a bit, I hooked up the 
trickle charger -- not looking forward to an extra two hours being bunged 
into my plans. Then I noticed my trickle charger had a "start battery" 
mode. So... I let the car charge for 5 minutes, then switched it to 
"start" and fired up the engine. Woo Hoo!

End of the story is I drove Olive Oil back to Bellevue, top down, with the 
heat on full blast. Back over the bridge, snow-capped Olympic mountains in 
the rear-view mirror, snow-capped Cascades in front of us, snow-doused Mt 
Rainier to the south, snow-shrouded Glacier Peak and Mt. Baker to the 
north. Seagulls were flying, ducks were drifting, the water was perfect 
and still, and the sky was a stunning blue... And Olive loved it as much 
as I did! I was grinning, the smile kinda frozen on my face, from ear to 
ear! We drove fairly gingerly, made it into the garage, and about 20 
minutes later she coughed coolant all over the floor. Good little girl!

So if you haven't done it yet, get yourself a Sears trickle charger!! They 
are worth their weight in gold. And you don't have to have a second car to 
jump-start your engine.

My second tool hint. Recently I heard a joke that made me realize I'd 
never tasted Aquavit before. So on a lark, I bought a bottle of Aalborg 
(is that a good Danish brand, Henrik?). Then I started to build a couple 
of kitchen cabinets I'd bought at our local IKEA. And do you know what? 
After the fourth glass of aquavit those cabinets were putting themselves 
together. Honestly. One side put itself together and I toasted with a 
glass of aquavit. The back put itself on, and we toasted with aquavit. The 
drawer looked a bit squirrelly, but after a glass of aquavit, it fit 
perfectly. Aquavit straight, aquavit with eggnog, wow that's useful 
stuff. Anyway, when my friend Greg comes over to help me install a new 
waterpump in the Spider next month, I will make sure we have lots and lots 
of aquavit to get us started. That is SURE to make the job finish itself! 
&:-)

Happy Holidays!

from Tess
who the heck knows where I am anymore, I can't remember

--
to be removed from alfa, see /bin/digest-subs.cgi
or email "unsubscribe alfa" to majordomo@domain.elided