I think I might have done a simillar fix on my Pontiac that held for 5 or so years. It's a vague anecdote, but somewhat reassuring, I hope.

Absolutely. Thanks!

I have a new bottle of Canadian maple syrup (gift from a coworker), a dvd of The Young Visitors on order, and a possible Wisconsin business trip this fall. Life's looking up.

Poor Toto! And, ugh on car troubles. But, yay on maple syrup! We are quite well equipped now with maple syrup (2 grades) cheese (about 5 different VT local cheeses) and beer (3 cases of Long Trail).

This is why we never go anywhere but VT for vacation!

Maple syrup!

This was the only year since I can't remember when that we didn't come back with maple syrup. Which is just as well, since the only time I'm ever inclinced to make pancakes is when I'm already in Canada.

I've skipped a few thousand messages. Hi!

Jess is back!!! Yay!!!

I still have a more maple syrup than I can readily imagine consuming from my last trip to Vermont over 3 years ago. I should make more pancakes and waffles.

Welcome back, Jess!

I generally wake up to the dulcet tones of NPR newsreaders, often with weird dreams inspired by what I'm hearing. Sunday I had no alarm and had this very involved dream about adolescent boys in suburbia in a small-time drug ring (money and drugs were hidden in the hoses in their backyards) which my pattern loving brain helpfully supplied a book review to "explain" why I was dreaming that. It was a novel by Neal Stephenson, apparently, set in New Orleans 1996 and the radio voice in my head complained that there should have been some reference to the presidential election and the hurricane of that year. So another voice in my head wa suspicious and claimed there was no election or hurricane in '96. Yet another voice confirmed that that was an election year, but it couldn't remember any hurricanes. Then I woke up and decided I have too many voices in my head.

Morning All!

Thanks to all of you, I really want pancakes now. I have no pancakes now. Maybe I'll have to hit IHOP or Denny's for dinner, if the impulse holds.

-t, the Internal Debate is hilarious.

Welcome back, Jess!

Helloooo!

While I highly recommend a week in the Canadian wilderness to anyone, I do NOT recommend running your rental car into a median signpost on Highway 81 on the way home. DH and I were both so frazzled by the accident that we both need another vacation. And we haven't even gotten the bill from Hertz yet.

Eep! You are both okay?

Yikes, Jess. What a crappy way to end a nice vacation.

Everything before then was good, though?

We're both fine, physically. The car was a little banged up, but except for a blown-out tire, it was all cosmetic damage. AAA came and changed the tire for us, but since the spare was a doughnut, we could only drive it to the next town. Fortunately, AAA Guy was able to direct us to an exit that had three hotels and a tire place right off the highway. So we checked into a Holiday Inn for the night, bought a new tire in the morning, and got home yesterday afternoon.

Everything else before that was incredible -- we had the cabin almost entirely to ourselves, we had two great sails, lots of great kayaking, even more great lying on the couch reading...oh I want to go back. NOW.

I posted a link to the pictures in Beep Me, but they're here if anyone wants to see them.

[eta: Oh, and because one of my co-workers wanted to see the vacation pics, I made all the F2F and hair sets friends/family-only. Anyone who wants to see them, just join Flickr (it's free, and they don't spam) and add me as a contact so I can add you back.]