No Pictures Today

Well, I have been trying to upload pictures for the last few days, and every time I try, I get a half hour of "working" messages and then it either times out, or gives me a "bad request" notice.

So I guess I need to refer you to the Flickr badge over there, which will take you to my page where you can see all the photos I would have uploaded as well as lots more. And you'll have to make do with text today, sigh, which will look like a nice long bunch of paragraphs.

It's too bad really, since we've had some great stuff going on here. Camp Grandma happened (with lots of help from the aunties, the cousins, and the cats) including a trip to the beach, a shopping spree at Justice (who knew that was the hottest place for tweens to find their new school clothes?), fun at the park, dinners in and out, learning to decorate cakes with Auntie D4, the Long Beach Aquarium, tea and art and rambling at the Huntington, a very hot trip to the Arboretum, and learning to sew.

The next adventure for me came with reading about the "Cash for Clunkers" program. I'd been so busy it barely registered, even though I'd been kind of thinking in the back of my mind about what my "next car" would be for quite a while. Then I saw a photo on a news website of MY TRUCK with "clunker" painted on its side! A little research quickly showed me that the clunker cash would be quite a bit more than even the high blue-book on the truck, so I called my "favorite" dealership to inquire about availability on my presumed next choice. Ummm, they had one left, and had just sold two, didn't know when more were coming in.

Off I went to talk and test drive. Yes indeed, my poor purple truck did qualify for the top $$$ on the program; and after test-driving my first choice (the Escape hybrid) and a second choice (Mariner, non-hybrid), plus running some numbers, i eventually drove home in... a kiwi green Mariner! It turns out that because I do so much freeway driving, the hybrid wasn't the best choice; the Mariner (and the gas-only Escapes) get about the same highway mileage and have more pep.

I dunno. I've been trying to feel a little bad about condemning the Purple People Mover but I just can't do it. Already I love the new one, even though it's not as big and doesn't have nearly as much hauling capacity as the purple one. I guess I'll find out at the end of the month when it's time to load up and trek to Asilomar again--maybe I need to repack my tools and fabrics anyway, since there are a lot of things I've brought the last couple of times that I wound up not using.

This would have been a much more attractive post with pictures. Didn't realize how spoiled I have been in the past! Here's hoping Blogger gets it together so I can go back to posting pictures!