December 19, 2006

Well whaddayaknow...

Turns out, I'm not so bad a driver anymore!
Yes, that's right...the time has come to say goodbye to Kingsway Insurance! Yay! Goodbye, high rates, hello, cheapness! And by cheapness I mean...almost exactly the same rates. But at least it comes with comprehensive.
Recap...
Author's note: This was written ~ 2 weeks ago...finally posting it now ;)

Well, it's late, and I can't sleep. So I was perusing a few friend's blogs and figured, what the hey...this is due.
So, to recap my life since the last post:
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Bailey (the cat) has gone back to my sister. Devil cat (her husband's) was put down after it walked across the living room and scratched their daughter for no reason whatsoever, and she missed Bailey, so I brought him back.
I'm alive, which means I haven't taken up base jumping yet. Nor have I built a flame-thrower (though I'd probably survive that, so long as Tim was in no way involved in the project ;) )
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The Jeep...died. While I wish it was in glorious battle against a large puddle of mud, alas, it was not to be. Surprisingly, it wasn't the engine that failed (though it would have in short order--people were pointing and laughing at the insanely loud knock it was making). Nor was it the slowly failing transmission. And I learned to live with the occasional death wobble resulting from the blown front suspension. And the police didn't force me to take it off the road, despite having plates that were then two years overdue (apparantly, you can't get an e-test on a rear-wheel drive vehicle if your rear brakes don't work properly). No, a short in the steering column was what finally did her in. Something about not having brake lights being unsafe or something.
So what glorious chariot carries me into the night today, you ask? What could possibly replace the infamous Red Jeep?
Well, nothing.
But the Honda Civic I now drive is good on gas. So that's a plus, anyway.
(quick side note--I just noticed something on this page that seems to indicate a problem with Blogger. Attempting to save a draft...errored out. Figures. But I don't give up that easily. And I'm still not tired. So I shall bravely forge on in...notepad. Here's hoping it's fixed before I go to bed, or this might not get posted for a bit ;) )
I've moved to a new apartment in downtown Hamilton. Having lived in the middle of nowhere for the last five years, it's a bit of a change (ok, it was two places, so 'the middle of nowhere' and 'the centre of nowhere', then. Picky, picky...). Gone are my quiet evenings, gone are the owls hooting, gone are coyotes howling at night.
And I love it.
My apartment rocks. The grocery store is a two minute walk away. I have internet. At home, even. I can arrive home from work with absolutely no idea what I'm going to have for dinner, go online, find a recipe, walk to the store and pick up supplies, cook a great meal, kick back and relax--all before I would have walked through the front door in Smithville. Downtown is maybe 5 minutes away. My drive to work is half as long. Many of my friends live nearby (though many now live ~ 1 hr away--that blows). And I have mice to remind me of the Smithville house.
OK, that last one's not really a plus.
On the 'not new' side, I'm still working for the same company. Hey, I just finished the last internal audit today (yay, TS-16949 certification! Not.) I had to write NCR's against a couple of co-workers, which never goes over well. But it's my turn to get audited later this week. That'll be fun. Though I'm sure I'll get my own NCR's. (NCR = Non Comformance Report, aka, 'You've-been-a-bad-boy' sheets, resulting in filling out fun things like 'Root Cause Analysis' and the like. And saying 'I didn't do it because I'm lazy' doesn't work. Though blaming it on others can.)
And lastly, on the completely unrelated side, I just noticed that the latest episode of Dexter finished downloading. For those of you that haven't seen it, I strongly suggest you do so (if you've got a torrent program, go to http://www.tvrss.net/ and get it from there). It's no Dead Like Me, but it beats anything showing on primetime. It's even ranked as #2 of the top TV shows right now, which is surprising, considering it's only showing on ShowTime in the States and TMN in Canada (thus the download). Happy vegging.
Anyhow, time for bed. And Blogger still isn't working, so I'll have to try to remember to post this later. Cya.