The Anniversary According to Hyrum

My parents are trying to find time to finish their blog post about their third anniversary. It'll probably show up as the post before this one, so watch out for it. While you're waiting, though, let me clue you in on what really happened on Day 1111 of their marriage:

11 hours of DRIVING, that's what happened. And there's me in the back seat with nothing to do. Of course I slept nearly the whole trip! It's that or listen to Dad turn on yet another CD of romantic music while they reminisce about mushy stuff and kiss at each red light. C'mon guys, get a partition! It's at least nice they'd stop every 2 hours to feed me. (Mom tells me that if we hadn't had to stop to feed me, it would have taken much less time. Stupid seat belt laws.)



So finally we get to some place called Viagara Falls, ... or something like that. I don't know what the big deal was, but Mom loved it. We went on a boat that goes right up to the falls. I drew an arrow on the picture to show you.



Of course, Dad had to get a picture of me sleeping through one of the world's natural wonders. Give a baby a break! I mean, the falls were, like, the best white noise machine ever. How was a guy supposed to stay awake?

So then Dad gets lost in rush hour traffic and heads the wrong way down the wrong freeway, and I'm starving. Meanwhile Mr. We'll-be-there-in-15-minutes-tops doesn't want to pull over to feed me in case he forgets which wrong way he turned and can't figure out which way is north with the sun setting in the west. It's not that hard, Dad.

Finally we get to the Toronto Temple. Mom and Dad take turns watching over me while the other one gets to have fun in the temple. At least, I think it must be fun in there. Dad came out looking much more alert and calm, and Mom was smiling and happy to see me again. (Note to self: she's happier when I coo than when I cry. Maybe it's me.)

Here's me at the temple. In my car seat, of course, as if I hadn't spent enough time in there. Dad did take me out for a moment and let me touch the temple, though. He says it's the House of the Lord and he hopes that someday it'll touch me too. He's corny that way. He talked to me a bit about why it's such a special place, and he hopes someday I'll be able to go inside too. That might be cool. It must be important if they drove all the way out here just for that. They've been looking forward to going for months.





Dad took me on a tour of the temple grounds while Mom was inside. There were fountains and flowers and shrubs all over the place. Here are a couple pictures of me enjoying the grounds and being with my dad.






Oh yeah, the tour also included the foyer bathroom. (Greeeat time for a picture, Dad. Sheesh. The man is incorrigible.) On the plus side, I'm one of the few people my age who can say the temple has already changed him.



We ended the evening at the Mandarin Restaurant, some fancy schmancy Chinese buffet where Dad took Mom on their first date. Now that was cool. Every one of the waiters and cooks (and they've got something like 3 dozen!) wandered in to see the cute baby, or asked Mom and Dad to open up the baby sling and show them my gorgeous 3-mo. old self. The patrons at the other tables thought I was cute too, and some of the other kids under 1 came over to play with me. Everyone thought I was adorably cute and were amazed to learn I was 3 months old today. One of the teeny little waitresses commented that she has a 2-mo. old baby girl who's 12 pounds. Then another said her 2-mo old was 15 pounds. FIFTEEN? Maybe I am still tiny....

Every room has a different theme. This is Dad trying to make me look interested in the fish. The other aquarium was better: they had a live scuba diver in there scrubbing the place during dinner. They had a bird room and a bamboo room too. I think Mom and Dad will post some pics of it.

We didn't get there until it was almost their closing time, and the buffet disappeared before Mom was all the way done. Bummer. But I think everyone had enough. Then they put me back in my car seat for the 5 hour drive home. I decided to sleep through that too. We got home about 3:30 am. Dad fed me, Mom pumped, and then we went to bed while Dad went to take a friend over to the airport at 4:30.

Well, Mom thinks it's time for me to go to bed. She says I'm sounding just a little bit cranky in this post. I'm glad they enjoyed themselves, but I'm just thankful to be home and able to wiggle and squirm all day. Hey, Dad, where's my midnight feeding, yo?!

Monk and the Peg leg

So, the car saga goes on. We love our car don't get me wrong, we are very glad that we bought Monk. It is just that a couple days after we bought him his front driver's wheel started going flat for no reason (thus the peg leg). So we filled him up with air and 24 hours later there was no pressure in the tire.

Our dealer has been really great about things that aren't working right in our car. For example, the other thing that kinda went wrong from the get go was that when I put in the first tape into the tape deck it go stuck which also stopped that auxilary CD player in the trunk not to work. Therefore we were already planning on going back to the dealership in Vestal..... an hour away to get the radio repaired or replaced.

With the radio repair and the peg leg we figured we would just get them both fixed at the same time. Derrill expertly put our spare tire on the car. The spare is suppose to be Herculian, meaning it can drive at 65 miles an hour and should last 3,000 miles. So I drove Monk down to the dealer, they replaced the radio (it works like a charm now) but the peg leg is not fixed.

The guy at the dealer tried to find the leak, but spent hours on it and didn't find a thing. He even thought maybe our tire gauge was faulty, but it was not and we did have a totally flat tire two day in a row (to the visible eye). So in an effort to fix it without finding the real problem, they reinforced the normal places that the tire would have a leak, replaced the valve and sealed the beads (that is all fancy talk for half of what I don't know). So I went trucking on home. Thankfully the tire was a little better. It took two days to go flat (or at least register below 20 lb s).

We were willing to just buy a new tire here an get it over with, but we did tell the dealer we would call if there were any continuing problems with the tire, so we called and they offered to give us two new tires for the front of our car. Alright we will drive down to Vestal yet again (4 times in the last two weeks) for two new tires for free. It makes the gas seem not too expensive. We are very thankful that the dealer we bought our car through is so determined to make sure that our car is what they said it is.

It's a boy! It's a girl! It's a ... Monk?

When last we left our heroine, Joy was shaken but determined to get a new car to replace Genie. We had been working on the project for a bit over a month. We knew her time would eventually come, but hadn't sensed the urgency of it until last Tuesday. So we stayed up the night of the accident doing research on cars to figure out what kind of car we wanted.

We managed to narrow down the list to our top 9 car makes and models that did not offend our various constraints. (That is, we got rid of the worst gas milage cars, the worst built cars, the ones whose parts cost the most, the highest milage, within our price range, and so on to get a list of cars that were at least mediocre in every category we cared about.) On the top of the list was the Oldsmobile Intrigue, which we estimated we could find from the year 2002 for about six thou. That was primarily my part of the work, the theory, though Joy worked on compiling auto reliability records.

Joy did the empirical part, calling used car shops and so forth. She was rather surprised to find very poor customer service and either unwilling or unknowing sales reps, mostly. There were a couple of good ones. She compiled a list of cars that actually existed in our area that we could compare to our ideal.

Wednesday night, Joy couldn't relax and didn't want to have fun. She just wanted to find a new car. So I decided that the better part of romance was to find her one, and we did some more searching around midnight. We searched the Ithaca Journal classifieds online, and they directed us to cars.com, and they directed us to a car we didn't really believe existed: a 1998 Oldsmo Intrigue with a whopping 21,000 miles on it.

No, there are no missing zeroes.

We contacted the dealer who admitted the car was not a hoax, and we drove down Thursday to have a look. They had only JUST gotten the car on Saturday, a trade in from first-owner Elizabeth Taylor. (Granted, Liz is her middle name, but it's a good story.) They hadn't even had time to do their own repair work on it by the time we got there. They were amazed we had heard about it since they only posted it Tuesday. The dealer confessed that it must have been meant for us. We were inclined to agree.

He agreed to hold the car for us and give us first bid after it was fixed up. We checked out a few other cars, but none were as wonderful as the leather-upholstered, chrome-wheeled, spacious beauty we found at the Binghamton Auto Exchange. So we agreed to purchase it this week, and they called yesterday to say the car was ready for us.

We are in the car, which we have named Monk, returning home under a gorgeous sunset. It's very comfortable, with a smooth ride, a great heating system, and will soon get a replacement radio since the first tape we put in him has been eaten. But once we find a way to get it out, the 12-CD exchange player in the trunk will be pumpin out the tunes. "Tabernacle Choir and Bach" says my wife who is tuned to an 80s station, "And Olivia Newton John!" We're very pleased and hope to get a good 8-10 years out of him, with his sun-bleached green dashboard:

Why Monk? Well, we got the car in Vestal, and it's so little driven that I proposed calling it the Vestal Virgin. But our last car was a girl and we're having a boy, and so Joy wanted a boy name. Virgil was a possibility, but Mom suggested Monk. They're celibate and make good detectives too. Joy confesses she thinks of the detective, and I do too.

Thank you, Ms. Taylor. Thank you, Binghamton Auto Exchange. Thank you, Geico, for taking good care of us in the meantime. Thank you, God, for preparing such a fish to swallow us.

Genie Lost Control

Ok, so I was in Genie when she lost control. Genie is our 1996 Mercury. We had just decided that we had to get new tires. Our auto mechanic told us that the cords in our tires were showing and we came to realize that we just couldn't find a new car before we needed to use this car in the SNOW!

I was not feeling well today anyway, but I had found a place I could get an inexpensive tire and was on my way to get it (by the way I also had an appointment in two days to get all of our tires replaced at our favorite mechanic). The weather was bad, roads possibly slippery and I was nervous about going to get the tire, but I went anyway. Yes, the roads were slippery, very. Infact the roads were so bad that the tow truck that my insurance contacted latter would not come and get my car tonight because they were afraid of getting in a wreck on there way or with my car as it was towed.

I was being very careful in my driving, going under 15 miles an hour when I came up to the aweful hill. My task was to go down it successfully. Ithaca is just a lot of hills, so it can be difficult to decide the best hills to tackle in bad weather. Half way down the hill, I tested my brakes a little because I could see cars at the bottom of the hill and didn't want to hit anyone or anything, Well, my car just started skidding without any slowing, so I put it into a lower gear without any effect either. The hill was just getting steeper, so I knew I wouldn't be able to stop at the bottom.

I decided my only option was to try and get off the road hoping that something else would stop me. I tried turning to the right first. As I turned to the right curb my car immediately found the metal railing that is supposed to keep cars in. (See Derrill showing how tall that thing is.) Luckily it was just beginning, so I went right over it. well part way. It was a little like my car was a skateboard and my car was riding the rail. I am sure it did some damage to the bottom of my car. Although it slowed me down a little my car did not stop, so I decided to try the virtue of the left curb. Amazingly I was able to get off the rail -- still don't know how I managed -- and no one was approaching on coming on the Left (gratefully), so I turned left. I was able to go up the dirt a ways and my car finally stopped.

I was able to start my car again or it was still, so I decided that now that I was stopped I should try to get to the bottom of the hill. People in cars saw my antics and stayed out of my way. By this time thankfully my front two tire were flat, so I had some great traction, got down the hill slowly and pulled into a parking lot at the bottom.

I then was able to get a hold of my husband, who picked me up and I left a note for the church in whos parking lot my car still lies. I am so grateful to be unharmed and that I was able to keep from harming anyone or anything else (the metal railing was not harmed in the making of this film). So insurance is contacted an all is again well in the Watson household. Only God could have made all go so well, we thank him in every prayer

Update: The verdict is in. The appraiser has officially declared our car totaled. The scrape damaged the engine, the transmission, the suspension, the shocks, and who knows what else.