Deuce is running, if a little wild

My bestest ever brother got the Jeep sorted yesterday... the gasket came in late morning and he went to pick it up and got right at it. We certainly appreciate all the effort my brother has put into helping us out with this Jeep, it hasn't been an easy couple of weeks.

It still has a knock so Brad wants to take it to the Jeep dealership and have them take a look. The boys think the knock is in the lower engine area, my brother was doing the top of the engine. Honestly, it sounds the same as it did in Aguanga to me... but boys and their toys...

Not that I was actually in the engine compartment, but I did start it while they listened... it's not a Cadillac it's a Jeep... but we'll take it to Jeep just to make sure.

While my little brother (he's 6'4 and I'm 5'4) was doing the Jeep, I went to Bell.

Turns out that because we are on a special 'loyalty plan' the guy at the local Bell store (Brian) wasn't able to do what I needed done so he called his help desk, who then had to call their help desk, who then called the super duper help desk techy guys and after about 2 hours they called me with my new number.

Because we had 2 phone numbers from our old locale and I only wanted one of them switched right now, and because of the loyalty program... this caused all kinds of kerfuffle. I offered to sit on hold while the Bell guy dealt with a couple of customers - thats how long it was taking.... eventually he suggested that we didn't need to sit and wait, they could just call me when it was finished.

Off I went to Staples where I picked up a cheap wifi printer, Yay! Bell called while I was at Staples to give me my new number, there were 4 different number attempts but because of the kerfuffle everytime they went to grab the chosen number it was already snapped up.

Just as I was leaving Staples, Brad called to ask me to hurry home because his Mother had locked him out about 10 minutes after I left. Poor guy had been stuck outside for a couple of hours, so he raked the lawn again and set the sprinkler to it.

After supper my brother called to say the Jeep was done and we drove out to pick her up. Took her straight to Golf's Car Wash and made her all pretty once again. While Brad washed Deuce, I washed my son's car and vacuumed all the dog hair out of it.

Deuce

Son Carey's car

Remnants of Robbie

We can likely take it back to him today but given that we already did that once, I think I'll wait until we've been to Jeep at least.

The Federal safety inspection only allows 45 days to get it done... we're quickly running out of time and we have to have Daytime Running Lights put into her yet... not to mention the whole lift kit issue that we still have to deal with. I figure I'll take it to CT and ask them outright if we have to go through all that to take the lift out and then put it back in after. Likely we will. Bureaucracy (bureau crazy) at its finest.

But at least the tranny is okay! Thats something, right?!

PS There were a few comments I didn't reply to over the last few days. I apologize, I did read them just couldn't get to replying.

Canadian Internet in the U.S

Thought I'd write about this as it has been an important topic for us and may well be for other Canadians as well.

We received a call this morning from Bell, they were calling to inquire if everything was okay with our service. I advised that it is BUT we needed a data plan we could take with us into the U.S, would there be anything they could do other than the 100mb for $5/day...

Turns out there is. We have now been switched to a Canada/US plan which allows us to take our current phones and data into the states with us. No hassle, no trouble. (at least that the theory, we'll see how it works). When we were researching the different companies - Verizon, AT&T, etc. they all have different coverage. We also looked into some mifi type units. Some work mostly in the Eastern U.S, most have spotty service in the Western U.S., but Bell's coverage map for the U.S. shows almost complete coverage.

My assumption here is that Bell has deals with all the American companies which affords us the most coverage. Fantastic! Sure, its not cheap but it is cheaper than the plan we are currently on which is only covering us for Canada. And did I mention its 20Gigs of data?!! We are on 25G at the moment so it will require some cutting back but it is minute relatively speaking.

Our cell phones will work there as they work here, though we will definitely have to cut down our data usage until we get a handle on it. Back at home we were using 58G/month so you can see there will be some trimming required. Before you all freak on me about our data usage, we are aware it is a lot.

Given we intend to boondock most of the time, our biggest concern now is for keeping everything electrified. Hopefully our solar will be the solution we hope it will be in that regard.