Car Woes times 2!

Well today, I had just settled at my desk at work when I realised I had not one, but four missed calls from my middle daughter Io.
I rang her back straight away, "I was on the way to work and the car has been pranged ," said a tearful voice, "I'm OK but I'm stuck by the side of the road."
Io volunteers at a St Vincent de Paul shop twice a week and drives there because she has just qualified for her licence and the bus trip is nearly three hours. She uses her older sister's former car which has kind of become the "spare car" for the two younger girls to learn to drive. It has 300,000 km on it but has been reliable so we have kept it on the road.

I was in the city at the wrong end of a 90 minute train ride and half hour drive after that to help. So it was obvious I couldn't help much myself. So the first thing was a call around to see if E our eldest or Deb were at least near enough to lend moral support.
E wasn't reachable, she left early for one of her clinical pracs for her speech pathology degree. Deb was still near home having decided to start late.
So Deb headed off in the direction of the scene, while I began phoning around for tow-trucks and the like.

After an hour or so the car was on a tow truck on the way to the shop, the next thing is deciding if it is worth fixing. Deb said it didn't look too bad but the driver's door wouldn't close properly. If we're lucky it will just be a door from a wrecker's.

So all that sorted and I went back to a rather demanding set of tasks at work.

So this afternoon, as I am just about to get ready to head out of work, E, our eldest phones and says, "Dad, I've got a flat tyre and I'm stuck by the side of the road."

So my piccie of the day is a transport themed one - the Bolte Bridge at Port Melbourne.

Bolte Bridge Melbourne

In which one person is 100% right!

When I posted my WIIW piccie last night I thought there might be a few types of answers. I thought the right one might be among them.

Linda G guessed “a bungee--a multi-functional elastic cord used to tie things down easily.”
 We call the same stuff bungee too. But no it isn’t bungee.

Marcy guessed “I was going to say a rope.” Well I guess it is made of rope (not elastic) so that is worth 50% but no it isn’t just “a rope”

Deniz guessed “A rope on a dock somewhere, mooring a boat. Wish I was on a boat!”
Well you fell into my trap Deniz, I thought people would see the rope and the water and guess a painter (mooring rope).  It is securing something, but not a boat. 50%

Normally I would agree with you about the boat Deniz, but we have gale force winds down this way at the moment and it is freezing!

Susan said “Looks like a bungee to me, too.” Nope, not elastic not bungee.

John D was with the consensus with “Bungee Tie or a length of Bungee rope - usually utilised as a 'permanent temporary fixture' until the bungee disintegrates and you then either (a) Effect a more acceptable repair, or (b) Find another Bungee Tie/ length of Bungee rope!”
Nope still not bungee.

Which leaves us with the one last guess

 Jennifer (AKA old Kitty) guessed “It's Lilli's leash!!! LOL!”
Take a bow Jennifer you are 100% right!

Now here is our star (and her leash)

I took this last November, we went fishing so Lu could try out the new rod she got for her birthday.
Of course Lilli came too, and while she is a really well trained girl, we were not quite confident that she wouldn’t take a smelly bait hook and all so she had to stay tied.
The arm on the left belongs to Io (daughter number 2) while the pink painted toes in the background are those of E (our eldest).
Lilli had her annual vet check-up and immunisation booster today and was pronounced tip top A1 health!
If I remember tomorrow I will tell you another tale about Lilli.

What is it Wednesday? Good and bad

It seems to be one thing after the other at the moment.

I am still overwhelmingly busy at work.

Then the other night E our eldest phoned up to say she had just been crashed into by a Taxi in Deb’s car.

The good thing was no one was hurt.

Not so good the Taxi driver decided to try to deny responsibility.

The next good thing was she had her 6’3” 240 lb boyfriend in the car so no one was going to try to intimidate her.

Then the Taxi driver tried to say he was not insured.

E called him on that: Taxi companies are mandated to have insurance.

Next the Taxi driver read out his licence but tried to give the wrong number of digits.

The boyfriend came in handy here (insisting he see the licence himself).

Finally, the Taxi company phoned up yesterday to try and intimidate Deb into withdrawing our claim (bad move there Deb doesn’t intimidate for anybody)

Deb pointed out that E had witnesses and photographs to prove her version of events.

The final nuisance is we are going to be down one car for at least two weeks (parts have to come from Italy to fix the car).

But all in all, we are Ok after all - Nobody got hurt!

Now for the fun: What on Earth do you think this is?

A Proud Dad

I’ve been scanning some of my old photographs to keep for posterity.

I have thousands of prints and negatives that I would like to scan. So it is proving a very slow task.

Here are a few piccies that I have scanned recently. These are quite dusty and damaged because we had them in a frame.

They were taken on a frosty morning about 22 years ago.

This is E our eldest (who is not quite 24 now).

The night before a bowl she had been playing with had been left out on the grass with some water in it.

To E’s amazement there was a layer of ice on the water when she got up in the morning.Look Mum!You can see through it!
It’s crunchy!Dad, will you take it? My fingers are cold!