Life in the not so fast lane

Our weekend was very busy and for the most part fun-filled. Saturday morning I had a eye doctor appointment and was surprised to learn that I have "dry eye syndrome". The only symptom I had was my contacts sometimes bothering me. Normally eye doctor appointments don't bother me but she really messed around with my eyes (including turning my eyelid inside out!) so by the time I was done my eyes were really bothering me. But there was no rest for my weary eyes and it was off to a friends house for a Southern Living At Home party combined with products from my friends monogramming business. It's mainly baby items (bibs, burp cloths, diaper bags) but she also has home items (monogrammed napkins and fingertip towels) and stylish tote bags. I ended up getting a bib & burp cloth set for a shower present and also decided to treat myself to a monogrammed tote. :-) Next we went home for lunch and then off again for a baby shower. I won't go into too much detail since the main audience of my blog was there but needless to say we had fun. Liz scored the best table at Macaroni Grill (the bar rocks!) It was much quieter and we had no wait. As a bonus smoking isn't allowed in restaurants so we didn't have to put up with that either.

Sunday started off as normal with church and sunday dinner. Jack and Julie left around 3 to shop in Commerce before heading back to Greenville. Graham and I followed around 4 and also decided to stop in Commerce. After a quick shopping excursion to Bass we continued on our way only to get about 10 miles up the road before we start hearing a funny noise. I asked Graham what it was and he said it was the road but it seemed too loud for that so he pulled over to check it out. Let me interject here that we were driving my 1989 Volvo which has seen better days but still runs fairly well (or at least she did). He carefully got out of the car (people were speeding by at 70+ miles an hour) and looked under the car. Mini-V (as she is affectionately called) had decided to break a weld and the exhaust system before the catalytic converter had come disconnected. Other than a harley-esque sound and major vibrations she was fine to drive so we started back up. Jack and Julie had since passed us and were waiting up ahead at a weigh station to follow in case we had any other issues. Well no sooner had we come to the weigh station did we start hearing a scraping noise. We pulled over at the weigh station and Graham and Jack once again dove under the car to see that Mini-V had decided she no longer needed an exhuast system and we were now dragging the pipe. They tried to get the pipe attached back to the car so we could drive home with it (with a coat hanger no less!) but that was a no-go so they decided to pull out the entire thing and then take it with us. After much tugging, tooling, and beating everything came out although we decided to take only the catalytic converter and the pipe connected to it since nothing else would fit (and since Jack said the catalytic converter had platinum in it.) I was hoping there might be enough metal for a ring.

Jack and Graham sacrificed themselves by riding in Mini-V back to Greenville with Julie and I following in their Maxima with the dogs. Mini-V is now residing at a local garage awaiting an all new exhaust system. Fortunately the mechanic can reuse what we saved so it won't be near as much as it could have been. We're hoping she'll hold out at least until Christmas and then maybe we'll get a new car. At this time this is what I'm hoping for although I haven't test driven it so who knows what I will think once I do. If I do get this car I can say with all assurance it will not be silver. I am tired of that color and would like a nice red.