Christmas at Last

On the 22nd, I was invited to play in our annual alumni basketball game at the high school. Here is a shot of all the old players. I made two or three 3 pt. shots, a short jumper, and missed quite a few lay-ups. I guess old age is catching up with me. I think I was having a hard time seeing the basket up close, haha.

Also, here is a picture of the Christmas tree with all of the ornaments. It was very beautiful with all of the pretty glass icicles me and mom found. We also put around 20 gigantic shiny diamond ornaments on the tree. They are pretty hard to see in the picture but the tree was a spectacle!

Dom and I had a lot of plans for Christmas Day, so we decided to open our presents for each other at home on Christmas Eve. The plan was to drive up the hill early that afternoon so we would not be getting up super early the next day, as well as to miss traffic. Unfortunately Cougie thought otherwise. A sound I had been describing for months that no one believed me was occurring ended up being the belt to my water pump shredding.

This is how it all went down. We stopped at Kragen autoparts just before we left town to make sure Cougie had oil etc. I noticed the coolant was practically empty out of the reservoir... that's weird I thought. So I bought some 50/50 stuff and filled'er up.

We headed North until we were enveloped by a cloud of smoke just as I missed the 210 interchange (which had dead stopped traffic) because I was listening intently to a horrible sound come from my engine, 3 lanes too far to the left, watching traffic, and on the phone with Grandma Nancy. Maybe I was doing too much at once but none the less, I pulled over at the next, unfamiliar exit that I could. As I sat just off the off ramp, I opened the hood. Smoke.... I couldn't tell where it was coming from...everywhere... grrr. Now I'm in trouble. 1st thoughts: check the oil= Dom advises me the engine looks too hot to touch at the moment. Okay, wait for it to cool off....waiting.. still waiting... okay I am calling MDM before my phone dies.

The first time I started it up, it sounded pretty bad. I shut off the engine and had Dom try it again as I held the phone as close to the engine as possible so MDM could hear. Thoughts: hand burning=ouch, smoke in my eyes= more ouch...cars streaming by me.. eek!

MDM advised me well and we sat at shell (doors locked) ate pizza, watched part of a movie on my laptop, and waited for rescue to arrive.

We hung out on the back of MDM's truck as he contemplated his next line of action eating pizza and shivering in the cold (we were without proper jackets for desert nights.) We ended up hanging out in a 24hr Walmart that was closing at 8pm (that makes sense?)... and then found what we needed was in the truck all along. It was a long drive up the hill going 40 sometimes 30 mph on the freeway so I entertained myself by keeping Aunt Michelle and Uncle Randy awake with play by play details of our adventure. For details on the amazing repair job, check out MDM's latest blog!