an exercise in percussive maintenance
Asides
Wanted to include this in this morning’s post…
While I was taking photos yesterday some other people were also on the bridge overlooking the weir, drinking in the sight of so much water. There was also a guy very visibly praying.
The man standing next to me looked over and asked, “Is he asking for more?”
I burst out laughing before saying no, I think he’s saying thank you. But you never know. Some people always want more, don’t they?
At 7:30 South African time Elizabeth Sophia Kok entered this world, all wrinkly and covered in goo. She’s 51 cm tall and weighs 3,005 kg and has the lungs of an opera singer or a long distance runner; the latter mostly dependant on whether she’s inherited her mother’s back or my knees.
The notification menu informs me that I’ve been with WordPress.com three years today. An auspicious occasion such as this deserves a proper post, but as it is I’m already more than 2000 words behind with NaNoWriMo, so this is all you’re getting 🙂
About an hour ago I became an uncle for the third time. A new baby in the family is always special, but what makes this one extra- special is that it’s my baby sister’s first, it’s the first baby in the family I’m biologically related to, and most importantly, it’s my first nephew! Declan enters the world at a whopping 3.6kg, 51 cm. (If you’ve ever seen my sister you’d understand my use of “whopping”.)
I’d hoped that he would arrive on Tuesday so we could share our birthday, but the doctor had decided not to let nature take its course and yanked him out early. Oh, well. I’ll settle with getting a nephew three days before my birthday and a new season of Doctor Who four days after (I couldn’t let that pass without mention, now could I?)
I don’t believe in putting pictures of children online without their parents’ consent (actually, I’m uncomfortable with putting pictures of children online, period) so you’ll just have to believe me when I say he’s a beautiful little tyke. I can’t wait to go and officially meet him.
Got a call from the insurance adjuster today. According to the initial assessment fixing Tweety will cost R7000 more than we paid for her and R5000 more than the currently insured value, so a write-off appears to be in our future. They’re still looking at alternative quotations, but having found out for myself what the actual parts cost I’m not optimistic (the boot door alone is almost half the car’s total value, unless one can be salvaged from a scrap yard).
As there’s no way we’ll get another car with aircon, CD player and power steering, with Tweety’s mileage and in Tweety’s condition (sans recent damage) for the price we paid for her two years ago, never mind the amount we can expect to be paid out, I’m now hoping the company of the guy who caused the accident will be willing to settle the matter privately as I have no desire to go through the drama of buying back the car form the insurance company and then trying to re-insure a “salvaged” vehicle. Except that all the people at said company are always out of the office when I call and apparently don’t know how to return messages.
I’ll keep you updated.
