The Beginning of the End

Hello Everyone.

I daresay, it has been quite a while since I have posted anything. Well, anything exciting. I want to post some pictures of our last few days of summer, but right now I'm at school and that is not an option.

(There are a couple of guys sitting at the computers across from me making comments about how fast I type. It could be worse. They could be making fun of my hair.)

I digress. I'm in the library right now, enjoying a free moment, which doesn't happen very often and probably won't happen again in a long while. I've started school, obviously, without much fanfare. It's my senior year! My last semester on campus!

It sucks to have all of the students back in town though, because everything is busy again. Not as busy as Provo. But still.

On Saturday Chad and I went up to the new school cafeteria that they've been working on for about a year now. It is HUGE. And it is way better than the CougarEat. Finally something we're better at. Eating. Anyways, I would post pictures but they don't even do it justice. You just have to come see it for yourself! ;o)

Sometime in the last little bit of summer, Chad and I went to the Titanic Exhibit at the Museum of Idaho in Idaho Falls. We each got a passenger ticket at the beginning of the exhibit with the name of a real passenger. We were both rich hoity-toity people, but I survived while Chad did not. Chad's name was William Butts. Hehe. Mine was Molly Brown. Yup! Can you believe that?! I can't remember now what her real name was, but I was feeling pretty uppity. They said a cheap ticket on the Titanic would be the equivalent of $600(+) today. How did even the poorest people afford that? I guess they were using their life savings to get to America and when they got there wouldn't have very much more than the clothes on their backs. It was really fun. They had replicas of a state room and a third class bunk room, and lots of artifacts and stories.

On Labor Day, Chad and I went to the East Idaho State Fair in Blackfoot. Blackfoot is sketchier than either of us thought, but we made it out alive. The fair was everything a fair ought to be. Except it didn't have Footsie Wootsies and I was sad about that. I made sure to bring quarters just in case. We ate lots of deep-fried fair food and looked at giant vegetables. It wasn't as good as the Big E, but it was the closest I've gotten so far. One of the vendors was even selling a back support item for $10(+) that we bought at the Dollar Tree earlier that day. And people were buying them! I bet they felt stupid the next time they went to the Dollar Tree.

However, on the way to the East Idaho State Fair, we were cruising along on the highway when some guy cut us off and Chad had to hit the brakes pretty hard. From that moment forward there was this awful hissing air-leak noise whenever Chad pressed the brake pedal. As scary as that was, it didn't seem to be affecting the brakes, so we decided to continue on to Blackfoot (10 miles). Not to mention there is nothing between Idaho Falls and Blackfoot and we were closer to Blackfoot at this point. Chad called his dad when we got there and spent a good 20 minutes under the hood, on the phone, trying to diagnose the problem. He couldn't hear the noise under the hood though, and we discovered that it was coming from inside the car, right behind the brake pedal. Greeeeeat.

We enjoyed our time at the fair and didn't worry about it. We got in the car to go home, and all was well, except the noise. It seemed to get louder the faster we accelerated and the harder we braked. But still, no affect on the brakes themselves. When we got home we looked up some stuff on the internet and found that it sounded like our Brake Booster went out. Don't ask me what that is, because I'm not entirely sure. We talked to a guy at Les Schwab who told us the same thing but that they don't do Brake Boosters there. He directed us to a mechanic in town who probably would, so we went over there and they were closed. 0 for 2. We stopped at Checker to see if they could help us. They had the part (with trade-in) for $75. Not too bad, assuming we'd install it ourselves. They don't do installation. And the guy said it was probably a 2-3 hour job for a mechanic. Then I remembered that a girl in Relief Society was talking about how her husband was trying to start his own mechanics shop and had been working on cars all summer. So Chad called him but he never called back. The automotive department on campus sent out an e-mail looking for cars to work on in their classes, and one of the topics they were studying was brakes. So we e-mailed them yesterday, but haven't heard anything back yet. The students decide what projects they want to do, so it may not get picked. But they might also not get to it for a month or two, and we can't wait that long. Here's why:

As we were driving around town trying to figure out how much this is going to cost us, we were on our way to WalMart when the brakes decided to start acting up. Now when you press the brake pedal you get the incessant hissing noise, followed by a quick jerk of the pedal, bringing the car to an abrupt stop, and then letting it roll forward. It was like riding in a car with someone learning how to drive stick shift. I didn't like that very much, so we decided that we would get home and not go anywhere until we got it fixed. But last night we needed to do laundry. Chad kept telling me he'd rather live than wear clean underwear, but I could not be convinced. We made it safely to the laundromat. The trip, which should take less than 5 minutes, took probably 15. We drove the whole way with our flashers on, hoping people would keep their distance and not cut us off or follow too closely. Once our laundry got done, we knew we were out of milk, so we ventured a trip to Broulim's as well. If it wasn't 10:00 pm, we might have asked someone to take us or let us borrow their car. But we thought it was a little late for that. We drove to Broulim's, choosing our route to take right turns the whole way there so we wouldn't have to stop abruptly at a stoplight or stop sign. As I said, the car was fine as long as we were not using the brakes.

Anyways, that's what's going on with us. It looks like it's gonna cost a couple hundred bucks at least to fix the car, so it's a good thing that my Pell Grant money came in. Until then, we're without a car. I won't drive it at all but Chad might brave it for emergencies. As long as we're never going downhill. He won't even drive it downhill. We won't be able to do anything with it until at least Friday, Chad's day off. Hopefully we can get someone to call us back and take a look at it.

I guess I should do homework, or something more productive than blogging. Pish Posh.

- Rideless in Rexburg