This collection of entries is from May 22, 2003.
Carol and I are in the middle of dinner when the phone rings. It's my sister. After her normal opening line of "Whatcha doing?" and my reply, she asks an odd question:
"When was the last time you talked to mom?"
Oh, oh. Where is this going. We both talked to her on Tuesday, and Diane has been trying to call her all day and there's been no answer. Our mother is a major creature of habit. She does things on certain days of the week and she never varies from it. Ever. No matter the reason. It's not like her to be "gone" all day. Diane was on her way up to Michigan for the long weekend and wanted to touch base before she left. Now we're both a little unsettled, and Diane says she's going to try to call her again.
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So, I tell this all to Carol, and now the three of us are a little concerned. Diane calls back - she's on her way over to the house. We finish up dinner, watch some things on TiVo when Diane calls again. She's in front of the house - she's not there. She went through the house ands it looks like she may have gone somewhere. So I ask her if the mail has been picked up and if there's a newspaper and she says she didn't look, so she goes back inside. Sure enough, there's a newspaper from today and the mail's been taken in. That's when Diane remembers that she may have talked to her yesterday. Well, Diane starts writing a note to let mom know what's going on and we'll just see what happens.
About 10 minutes pass when the phone rings - this time it's my mom. She went shopping downtown all morning and went out with some ladies to dinner to celebrate a birthday, so Diane's phone calls were during the times she wasn't there.
So, it's a long story about what turns out to be not a big deal. Our imaginations took us to dark little corners of our minds for no particular reason and we'll all be together on the weekend.
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Snuck out of work a few minutes early to go pickup Carol and get my car back from Midas before they closed at 6. Carol & I had to stop for a moment on the way out of her parking lot to look at a family of geese, parked alongside the road - 2 adults and 9 goslings. Had to move along, though, as we were blocking traffic of people trying to leave the building.
I'm not used to the brakes now. I've been driving so long with brakes that grab and grind, and now these feel... softer? I guess I'm going to have to get used to applying more pressure earlier, as it feels like the car sails past where I want it to stop.
OK, I can't take this anymore. I need brakes. I need them NOW. They sound terrible. We're way past chirping and squeaking. We're way past the start of that terrible audible grinding noise, and now we're into the bad-grinding-noise-with-ineffectual-braking. Off to Midas to get the work done on the Infiniti. I drove Carol to work in her Suzuki Grand Vitara. I'm not used to driving an SUV - the whole drive to work felt different just because I was higher than I normally am (wait... that's not to say I was high... I was just further off the pavement).
Update: $320 was much less than I expected. They only need to do the front - the rear is fine