Our commuter car, Duckie, which is so lovingly named because two separate areas of the car are held together by duct tape, is near death. He had started to idle really rough, and then we noticed that he is spewing MASSIVE amounts of white smoke from the exhaust pipe.

White smoke is a *really* bad sign. That means that antifreeze is mixing into places that it shouldn't be mixing, which 9 times out of 10 means you've blown your head gasket.

Technically, near death may be an exaggerated statement. I could fix him up myself for $200-400 in parts. For a mechanic to do it would probably cost $600-1000. But if you've ever seen my car, you probably know that it would be a bad idea to put $1,000 into it. While the engine is still strong, it is fugly and has rather low re-sale value thanks to east coast rust (not to mention the duct tape). Doing the repairs myself is definitely an option I've considered. I had to do this exact same repair to Bolo (my old car from high school and college), so it is certainly in my automotive repair skill set. The problem is I don't have access to the same tools that I had back then. So I'd need to spend at least $200 in tools, plus all the extra expenses that crop up in these projects, the so-called "While it's off, I may as well..." repair creep. E.g. "... I may as well..." replace the water pump, belts, distributor, hoses, etc. The list grows and grows.

I'm not 100% convinced that this is a blown head gasket. It has the white smoke symptom, which is very telling, but it didn't have one of the other common symptoms (frothy looking oil). I'm having a real mechanic check him out later in the week, at which point I will make a final decision.

But right now, I'm strongly leaning towards not putting any money into repairing Duckie, and instead putting that money towards a newer car that we'll buy sometime in the near future (probably 4-6 months). The good news is that we have a second car to use while Duckie is out of commission. The bad news is that our backup car is an old minivan that gets rather poor gas mileage. But it's better to have that than no car at all.

I should be writing a couple papers, but I'm having trouble focusing. So here are some procrastination videos!

Auto-tune the news. I think the second one is probably better, but I like them both.

#1

#2 (the Katie Couric part is the best)

From the same guy, it's a singing Churchhill!

Having baked potatoes! If anyone wants to bring dessert, let us know.

So, as more and more of the things I've experience on the internet have entered my life through sehti.com, I've been more and more needing a search function. Have they upgraded this software packaged with a rudimentary search function yet? I know you don't have enough to do right now Adam ;) , and this would be great.

Also, you have to get cookies working right at some point. Us CTRL + ENTER users still have to either delete the www or login twice.

Game night is on tomorrow. We'll have crockpot soup for everyone.

Some of you may have already heard, but if not Grayce and I are engaged :) !!! Last Sunday was her birthday and I used that to disguise my plan to propose. If you want more details, I'll be happy to explain. Just wanted to give everyone the update, it has been a very busy last of couple months.

Game night is on this week. Hope you got your taxes done!

But I seriously hate allergies....must sleep...getting crazier...

I miss the comics.

*cough cough*

Last blog entry of the day...

My younger brother got married this weekend.

For those that don't know the whole story... my younger brother and his girlfriend of 2 months found out that she was pregnant a couple weeks ago. They decided they were going to keep the baby and get married in December (around when the baby was due). Then last week they found out she miscarried. :( And so they went to Redmond (near Bend) to see her family this weekend and while they were down there, they got married.

Yes, so Benjamin is now married and I have a new sister-in-law Sarah. I wish them all the best and all I have to say is just... wow.

Everyone remember the game "Telephone" you would play in elementary school? One person whispers to the next person, who whispers to the next person, and so on... until the last person has to tell everyone what the first person said? Well imagine playing that with pictures involved over the Internet! That's what BrokenPictureTelephone is all about.

How is it played? Simply it starts with one person having to write a concept down like, "Adam feints at the sight of a spider and convulses." The next person in the queue will be required to draw a picture from those words. The next person in the queue will be required to describe the picture that was drawn without seeing the original description and so on. It continues like this until we reach the end of the rounds (15 by default although you can set more rounds if you wish). At the end, everyone can see all of the actual pictures, descriptions, etc. It's super-quick to respond to a drawing or description. I believe we don't all have to be on at the same time to play. You just play when it's your turn (which I believe you can be notified by email for). I haven't played a private game, so not 100% sure how it works.

I think it would be fun to play with this group. I want to setup a private game for the people who are interested... so basically I need those who are interested to sign up for an account. Once you have your account created and verified, please post in the comments what your username is and I'll setup a game after a few people have replied. My username is "Ophidiann".

Also, under the Account Settings (after you setup your account)... you can specify a few settings (most notably un-checking the "mature" content category so you don't get phallic drawings in your public games you might play. I'll check back in the comments later today for anyone who wants to join. :)

Also, just a quick couple examples of what completed games look like:
- Game 1
- Game 2
- Game 3

Moving sucks. It just sucks. We're still moving stuff over because we only had the UHaul for 6 hours on Saturday and wasn't able to finish it all. So now it's just car/truck trips to get the rest. Plus, unpacking has proven that we have TOO MUCH STUFF!!! But on a happier note, we love our new place and the weather has been awesome for us to move so far. That's a huge plus. We've taken a couple short walks around the neighborhood and overall I'm just happy about living in our place. I'm so sore and beaten up from all the moving... and I vow next time... WE ARE GETTING MOVERS. Blah.

Either way, tentatively we are planning for a house-warming/engagement party on the weekend April 25 & 26th. It won't be a Magic Fruit party like we originally planned as we need to coordinate more for that. But we'll have a party nonetheless. :) Once it's all done... I'm going to LOVE our new place.

This video is really interesting. They look at apparent "tracing" (or copied choreography, rather) between different disney movies. Most of it is nearly identical! I'm surprised I haven't noticed this before.

I lost my wallet on Saturday at some point. I was pretty sure it wasn't at a store, though we had been to FM and Target that day. I looked a bunch on Sunday, and then today spent like four hours going over my house, organizing everything and looking for it. Couldn't find it.

Tore my office and bedroom apart. Literally took apart my couch (not just cushions, but removed the couch backing to get inside), thinking maybe it had fallen inside. Nope, not there either. Wasn't in any of our laundry, bedding, etc.

I finally found it behind the washer and dryer. How does that even happen?

Sorry guys, but board game night will be canceled this week. Nat and I have an important meeting on Wednesday that we will need to prepare for. See everyone next week!