It started last Saturday when the mechanic told me the transmission was dying. I got an oil change, a new battery (the old one was almost dead), a fuel treatment meant to improve my gas mileage and then got a full tank of gas. It was all mine for less than a week. It turns out my parents had been planning on buying a new car and when I told them about the imminent demise of my transmission, offered to give me Mom's old car, which runs like new. I want to say here that I have the best parents in the world. I can't get a new car right now so Mom's old car is a great gift. I am truly a lucky daughter. I drove an hour north to Flint to meet them and switch cars and the transmission was REALLY unhappy shifting at high speeds. I don't think it had much time left. So now I have a new-to-me 2003 Chevy that doesn't make scary noises at highway speeds and has AC that works. Yippee!
In other news, I discovered that my chest freezer had been unplugged (I blame the cats) for about a week. Standing next to it, I kept smelling something nasty and sticking my hand under the lid, found that not only was there no frost, it was warm. Crap! I had two chunks of beef in there that had gone off BIG TIME! As well as a lot of fruit that now has to be thrown out. Like I said, it's been quite an eventful week. I'm looking forward to Friday night when I can sit at home and work on a quilt.
I missed cherry season but blueberry season is coming up soon. I haven't made blueberry jam in ages so that's at the top of the agenda along with freezing as many as I can. I'm hoping the peaches will be good this year, too, so I can make Ginger Peach jam (thanks, Elizabeth!) which sounds very yummy, and maybe Blueberry Peach. I've had this idea for a while of making a bunch of different kinds of jam, making some fresh baked bread and inviting some friends over for a taste testing party. Eating fresh bread and homemade jam with my friends sounds like a piece of heaven to me.
I'm afraid I haven't been doing my part for Team Crankypants in the Tour de Fleece. I wasn't able to spin yesterday, what with the car switching and all, and tonight was pretty much a wash, too. I'm starting a quilt tomorrow of my own design so this weekend I'll have to switch off between spinning and quilting. I don't want to let my team down!
Hurray for the car!!
Don't worry too much about Team Crankypants - we're pretty flexible. Even *thinking* about spinning counts as spinning.
Posted by: gayle | July 15, 2011 at 08:06 AM
Hey, I made ginger peach jam last night and totally changed the recipe. I didn't want to add boxed pectin, so I added 3 T. lemon juice and I cut the sugar down to 2 cups. The 1/4 cup ginger seemed like a lot to me, but I went on faith and measured it loosely packed. The recipe only made 3 half pints! but they are incredibly awesome (based on pot licking) and definitely sweet enough. Took about 30 minutes of hard boiling.
Just in case you make it this weekend. :o) Yay for your parents!
Posted by: elizabeth | July 15, 2011 at 01:02 PM
Glad to hear you got a better car :-) ive been slack on my spinning for TdF too ;-)
Posted by: val | July 20, 2011 at 09:40 AM