Trial and Tribulation

Most of last weekend I spent fixing broken stuff...  If you hadn't noticed in my Moblog, I recently assembled our propane grill (loving it btw).  When you buy a propane grill it comes with a propane tank but it is empty, for obvious reasons.  Heather and I wanted to have some family over for dinner Friday night, so we went and filled the propane tank at a Texaco about a mile away.  Here comes the fun part: we got back into the car to go home and it wouldn't start.  Let me describe this scene vividly:  We are in Phoenix so it's like 500 Kelvin outside or something like that, I've got a potential bomb in the trunk (freshly filled propane tank), and my f-ing car decides, "hey, now would be a good time to stop working."  The gas station attendant whole filled the propane tank was a very nice Asian American (although I couldn't understand half of what he said) who we'll call Jet Li to make the story a bit more exciting.  So, we figure there might be a problem with the battery and Jet Li brings his Nissan Frontier over to give us a jump.  As luck would have it, this didn't do crap.  Well, like I said, Jet Li was a very nice guy and he continued to help us troubleshoot the problem.  It turned out that the battery was leaking acid (the damn thing is only a couple years old, too) and the acid ate away the cable to the point that it wasn't making good electrical contact any more.  We were able to jump the car once we actually hooked Jet Li's battery up to my car's electrical system instead of just my battery.  I then drove home and made the repairs.  I ended up replacing the battery and the positive battery cable.  I'm glad I had the motorcycle, but I wouldn't recommend carrying a car battery in a saddlebag to anyone...  Thanks again for the help, Jet Li.  Our dinner plans fell through, but Heather and I enjoyed a nice meal of grilled salmon together. I got up early Saturday to finish work on the car.  I also fixed the sprinkler I broke when I was mowing the previous weekend.  I mowed the lawns, tried to kill some weeds, and spent more money at Home Depot.  We had Heather's aunt Marcia, Ginny, and Holly over for lunch.  Holly stuck around until dinner and got to eat the second meal prepared on our new propane grill.  On Sunday we drove out to Mesa and joined Jenifer and Grandma Howland for lunch at Red Lobster.  Other news: Stephen R. Donaldson is writing another Thomas Covenant series!!  (great books, go read them now if you haven't yet) Today is my Dad Jeff's birthday.  Happy Birthday Dad!  (boy I seem to be making posts on birthdays lately...) There's a new poll, go vote!