Such a crankypants

Again, I apologize for the lack of posts. I just need to get a more interesting life so I have things to talk about. Things other than complaining, I mean.

Had a not-so-enjoyable 4th of July weekend. Our truck had been overheating when pulling the trailer on hills, so we recently had $4,000 worth of work done on it to fix the problem (including new brakes, new radiator, new thermostat, new hoses. . .) Now, bearing that in mind, take a look at today's photo. That, my friends, is the gash the fan belt cut into the new-but-improperly-installed radiator hose, causing the truck to vastly overheat & leave us pretty much stranded in the Mojave desert. I won't go into too many details, but highlights of the nightmare include having to soak all three dogs twice so they didn't get heat stroke as we sat in the trailer waiting for the engine to cool down (something it really couldn't do in the 100+ degree desert weather); finding a place to drop the trailer for the weekend so we could finish driving to Bishop; discovering that we hadn't packed any food (normally the trailer is well-stocked, and we'd planned on picking things up along the way); and basically the 4-1/2 hour drive to Bishop turned into a 12-1/2 hour ordeal. This also meant that the time we'd intended to spend visiting family was greatly curtailed, as we arrived 8 hours later than planned & had to leave at 2:00 am on Monday instead of 1:00 in the afternoon so we could get the truck & trailer through the desert before it got hot. Grumble, grumble, grumble...

And, of course, there was the usual dealing with Halitosis on the 4th of July itself. Last year wasn't too bad, however this year there were a lot more fireworks (and by the sound of it, they were a lot closer to the house) and she was a nervous wreck. Next year we plan to get some sedatives from the vet well in advance & hopefully she will be more relaxed.

Oh, and the pond was low, so Ralph put the hose in it to top it off--then forgot about it. For four hours. Yeah, a 100% water change is NOT a good thing. Every fish in the pond died. Crap.

On the more cheerful side, we've seen two pretty good movies in the past month: "X-Men First Class" and "Green Lantern." I had a little trouble wrapping my brain around Kevin Bacon being a bad guy in "X-Men" even though he *did* do a very good job at it. "Green Lantern" was a lot better than I expected based on the previews. And, of course, we've got some movies that look good coming out soon, such as the last "Harry Potter," so that's something to look forward to. And the Orange County Fair starts in a couple weeks, that should be fun.

Hope to post again soon, and with something not so whiney.