Friday afternoon

Right. Forgot to add the update on the car situation. I had called the service dept and was assured that it would need a new transmission, remember? Right. My dad took it to a guy he knew, who reset the computer and fixed the problem. It's been a week since then, and it's been driving just fine--except for the sudden hole in the exhaust, which then fell off and had to be fixed. Total cost.. $55. Soo.. if we saved $2,445.. hey, shouldn't that mean we can use that money to buy something fun? ;)

Well, yes, actually. Another car. Sounds much less fun when you put it that way. I was thinking of a trip to Aruba. Where the heck is Aruba, anyway?

I'm a little less than impressed with how they're explaining the baby switch on Days. Really, people, magically changing ID bracelets? On the other hand, that's much better than the current aliens.. *giggle* Magnus gets so annoyed with me for my sudden renewed interest with this soap opera. He completely doesn't see the point. I like to have a routine and background noise during the day, so I've been keeping up with it again. I've pointed out that it's at least as realistic as the old and stupid scifi movies he likes to watch, but he still doesn't get it. ;)

I've actually been working on this journal entry for nine hours.. rofl. I got distracted. Rae stopped by and returned a book and borrowed a couple more. I think she's the only one who appreciates the absolute bizarreness of the range of books we own. We made her take the 10th Kingdom dvd as well, although she was relunctant, due to the whole six hour thing. I'm positive that she'll like it, though, so we insisted. It's also the first time she's been here since last summer or so, and of course, the livingroom was a mess. The irony is that I've been cleaning most of the day, but started in the back and hadn't made it to the livingroom yet. Go figure.

I think I mentioned that I bought a novel in Swedish to attempt to read while we were there in May. Vocabulary exercise, and all. I never really got into it, though, because the language was more complicated and poetic than we thought. Magnus was in a reading mood last week, and read the book his sister sent for his birthday, which was in Swedish, and was talking about how he hadn't realized how much faster he read in Swedish than English, still, so I reminded him that he could read my book as well, since he was enjoying the experience. Anyway, turned out to be the most depressing thing he'd ever read, so I guess it's just as well that I didn't get into it. *giggle* ... "And you're standing at the bus stop in February, waiting for the bus that seems never to come, snow and slush melting into your shoes, which are falling apart and you can't afford to replace them, with only the leaden realization that the cold, grey, miserable weather will last for months more. An old lady down the street falls on the slippery ice. Her hip breaks. It's her last winter on earth, her heart is getting weaker, and before the winter comes again she'll die, and her hip will never heal..." I put it away and won't be reading that one for a while. But! I bought a magazine at the airport for the same purpose, and it came with a free book! A free book that's been translated from English (which I was originally trying to avoid, as.. what's the point?), as it turns out, and therefore the writer isn't going out of her way to use hard words and phrases. So..I still have a Swedish lesson. :)

That also reminds me of a question my cousin asked a few weeks ago. "Haven't you two had a fight yet?" she asks. Magnus blinks and says, "We never really saw the point." *grin*

Oh, and.. Hi, denyeverything. :)