happy holidays!

only 1-1/2 more days of work, then i'm off for 13 days!! woo hoo! gary & i will be flying to florida tomorrow night (11:30pm!) and we'll be there until next wednesday. it'll be really great to see family for the holidays and to play with the new babies. :) sucks that i only lost 5 pounds before seeing everyone, but they're family - they don't care what i look like. :P

awesomely bad luck!

sheesh - the unexpected bills have been kicking our asses lately! here's what's happened so far:

• we were putting out halloween lights and something caused all the lights outside to die. in my attempt to spot correct (since kids were going to be showing up any minute), i flipped all the breakers to see if one had tripped. nothing fixed the lights (we figured out the problem 2 weeks later), but i realized later that night that the computer had taken a surge and completely died! it was an old computer (1997), but we hadn't planned on replacing it so soon. we bought a new one from dell for $800.
• gary's car wouldn't defog and smelled like antifreeze. we took it in and they said the heating core (?) was broken so they had to replace it. $650
• on the way to getting his car fixed, he got pulled over for speeding (39 in a 25). $140. there are NEVER any cops in that area. not sure why they picked the first snowy day of the season to stake out our neighborhood.
• we were driving to see the "lights of christmas", and gary's car broke down on the off ramp (35 miles from home). someone tried to help us by jumping the battery, but it wouldn't work. so we had the car towed ($60) to the same place that fixed his heating issue. they said that his fuel injector needed to be replaced. $600. then they told gary that the fuel gauge isn't working - stuck on 1/4 tank. hmmm... it was working perfectly fine before they took the dash out to fix the heating. but they won't admit it's their fault & wanted to charge us $200 to fix it. we have a sneaking suspicion that we may have broken down b/c we actually ran out of fuel instead of an actual problem with the fuel injector. i already had trust issues with car garages - i think they're all crooks and you're lucky to find a good one. well, we'll never go back to the ford harris dealership on aurora ave, and i suggest you don't either!
• bingham's paw has been hurting him for about 1-1/2 weeks. he doesn't cry out but he limps and holds it up so there's no pressure on it. we took him to the vet ($60), and they couldn't find anything wrong with him by looking. they gave us muscle relaxers and told us to keep him off his feet for 2 weeks to see if it gets better. it hasn't gotten better, so now we're making an appt for him to get x-rays ($550) in hopes they can find out what's wrong. it sucks there's another extra expense, but he's our buddy & i hate thinking of him in pain! and i'm nervous about him being put under - some doggies don't wake up afterwards! :(

other than that, it's just been an expensive few months!! $4,000 for a shower in the downstairs bathroom, $660 for the flights to florida, $100 for a 4 hour car rental on christmas day to drive from st.pete's to melbourne, and probably close to $1000 for our anniversary trip to LA.

flying again

i'll be flying again in 2 weeks, but it's for a much longer time. however - it's definitely worth it! we'll be flying to florida to spend 4 days with gary's family (mom, sister, brother-in-law & niece) in st.petersburg, then we'll be driving to the opposite coast to visit my family (mom, brother, sister-in-law, and niece). it's been a while since we've seen family and it'll be really great to see them for the holidays!