Signed, Sealed, Delivered!

Ah, what a great weekend it was!

You can see, obviously I hope, that we were barely affected by the NEMO blizzard of 2013 that hit New England and NYC over the weekend since I've stated here it was a great weekend.

In this end of Pennsylvania, it WAS a great weekend!

Saturday morning, Mandy, the kids and I went to see the notary public about getting the papers for the jeep transferred over to the car I was buying and planned to go pick up then as soon as the paperwork was completed. We got that done with a minimum of fuss and muss and were on our way out to the garage to meet with Walt, the guy who was selling this car to me. Got there, tags put on, other paper work completed and I hopped in my new little buggy and headed out!

Driving out the lane from Walt's garage, I glanced at the gas gauge and saw it was registering just under a quarter of a tank so decided it would be best if I went then and there up to the local gas station at Kylertown and told the attendant I wanted to "Fill 'er up." Okay -no problem. He took my card, swiped, gave it back to me and less than five minutes later, came and handed me my receipt too. Imagine my surprise when the receipt recorded only $4.20 to fill the tank!!


What? How could that be? I thought maybe the gauge was like the one on my old jeep -flaky -and sometimes recorded okay -sometimes not. But anyway, I knew I had at least a gallon of gas in there so off Maya and Kurt and I went to Philipsburg to a birthday party for their Aunt's boyfriend's little girl. The party was at the local Pizza Hut and as luck would have it, Maya's TSS (Miss Britt) works there part-time and she was our server. The party was set up so the kids could create their own pizza -which was fun for them -and they each ate all of their individual pizzas!

Here's Maya and Kurt, waiting to get their pizzas they would be creating.

Both kids actually behaved very well at the party, and enjoyed themselves immensely too!

After leaving Pizza Hut, we ventured over to Clearfield where I needed to get some staples for the pantry at home and a few other little things too -like spare printer cartridges for my lovely little printer here that ALWAYS runs out of ink when I have no spare cartridges on hand or am broke and don't have enough money to run out and get a refill -of course, right at that time. Be prepared -my motto for that day!

Yeah right -Be Prepared is a good motto, isn't it? I was wondering about my preparedness though when about a mile down the Interstate after we left Walmart, I see a red light flashing on my dash that says "Check gauges! and I see too the needle on the gas gauge is flipping back and forth from down below Empty and back up to under a quarter of a tank! WTH!

Thankfully, I was able to pull off at the Woodland exit and got to a gas station there at the top of that hill and got a pump turned on to put gas in the tank. Apparently, the tank on this car only holds about 11-12 gallons -although that still doesn't explain why the attendant where I stopped earlier to get gas only put in a little over four dollars worth of gas when I had asked for a fill-up! (I'm thinking maybe he misunderstood me and thought I said I only wanted $4.00 of gas when I had asked it to be filled up.)

Anyway, the tank took a little over 10 gallons and the gauge then registered immediately as being full so off we went to the house then!

Sunday morning, I got the kids and myself up and dressed and went to church. Both kids were relatively well-behaved there too so I felt like this was gonna be a super great weekend then for sure. After church, I stopped at the mailboxes on the way home to check if we had received any mail on Saturday, got that and back in the car and went to close the door only to discover that there was another problem now with the car.

The door wouldn't close!

Well, it would close but it wouldn't catch on the latch! Would just bounce back open when you tried to shut it. I'd had a similar problem like this one time with the jeep but on that occasion, there was a bolt that had apparently been stripped out and it wouldn't stay in place so I had to get my brother-in-law to fix that problem for me. This car had no loose bolts though -just that the latch mechanism on the door wouldn't move and slide over the late part in the car.

So, I walked up to a nearby house -where I know the guy who lives there -got him to come out and monkey with the latch with a pen knife and some WD-40 and in a matter of minutes, he had it working fine and dandy again and the kids and I were on our way home. Finally!

Today, I ran up to check the mail as I was expecting a delivery there of some books I ordered from Barnes and Noble for a special birthday present for my "37-year-old-baby" because today is her birthday, and only one of the books I ordered was there. And of course, wouldn't you know it, it was the one book I had purchased for myself -not any of those I had ordered for Mandy's birthday!

I knew the one book wouldn't arrive in time for her birthday though as it is a copy of Jodi Picoult's newest book "The Storyteller" which won't be released until the latter part of February. But I could order it now and have it sent, pre-paid, when it is released so I figured that would be fine. I thought however, that the other books I ordered for her would be delivered now but apparently not as they are tied up until February 26th now too -the date when the Jodi Picoult book is scheduled to ship to me!

You know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and men, don't 'cha? Well, that apparently is what happened with my well laid plans to be able to give Mandy her birthday present right on time for at least 2/3 of the present anyway!

Now that I have a bit of funds in my checking account -for an exciting change of pace -I think I may just peruse a bit more on the Barnes/Noble site and make a couple more books part of my library collection here at home. Something to keep me occupied when I tired of embroidery or knitting or crochet!

Today, I took the dog out for a walk and have to say it is a simply beautiful day here today in central Pennsylvania! The sun is shining so bright and the snow is melting away at a nice good pace (of course, we only got about 3 inches of snow on Friday compared to the 2-3 foot of snow that landed up in the New England area) and it is warm today too! So warm in fact that I didn't even need to wear my gloves today when I took Sammy out for his stroll!

So yes, I will still say it is a good day today, weather-wise, as well as celebration wise too since it is my baby's birthday! Hard to believe it was 37 years ago today that she was my special delivery package that day!

But a new-to-me car, kids having pizza at Pizza Hut, church service where they were quiet and good, part of a book order arrived and Mandy picked up her special Chocolate meringue cream pie she wanted for her birthday too -makes for some good things -all signed, sealed and delivered, doesn't it?