A Malibu Experience

So my car finally got into the shop to get the hail damage on my car repaired.  Since I also included a "car rental" allowance on my insurance policy, I got a car rental while my little Subaru is in the shop.  I was given two options: Enterprise or Discount.  I didn't really care, so they chose Discount for me. I should have made my own choice, and choose Enterprise.  This Discount seriously has the worse customer service.  It had a pickup service, and the driver didn't say hi, didn't say bye.  He was this kid who just had the look of "I hate this job."  Then the lady at the pick up desk was so zoned out.  Then I got the car, and the TPM said a tire was low in air.  The 'garage' guy came out and said, "I filled the tires and probably the gauge is not working.  You'll be fine."  Uh ok?  A rental car place giving a car to a customer that might have a flat tire and/or broke tire gauge.  Great.
So what car did I get?  An automatic black Chevy Malibu:

It was nice to drive an automatic again.  No jerking, and you just... park.  I do have to admit, when I first picked up the car, I felt like I needed to shift gears.  As for the car, the Malibu, it sucks.  It's heavy.  It doesn't handle.  The shocks suck; I felt every bump on the Henday.  Gas efficiency is bad; I used half a tank in 4 days.  Flex fuel my ass.
Based on this experience, I learned two things:
1. Chevy Malibu will not be on my "Potential Car" list.
2. Don't rent from the Discount on the west end of Edmonton.

Henday Bitchin'

I meant to blog about this earlier, but have been procrastinating and putting it off.

As some may know, the Anthony Henday is the outer ring road in Edmonton.  It is a very convenient way to travel around Edmonton.  The original design of it had tons of lights and stops (which was retarded), but after last year, overpasses had been constructed and most of the lights and stops had been taken away.  Now the Henday is usually pretty free flowing.

Last year exactly this same time of year, my exit off the Henday was completed.  I posted my bitching of how retarded it was.  This year, I have to bitch about repaving it.

The road is brand new - one year old and for the last two to three months, my turn off had been suffering significant slow downs and line ups because there is repaving going on.  Can we say WTF?!  I can't imagine repaving is required after 1 year.  Maybe I'm just dumb, and don't know the exact details of the road construction and maintenance schedule.  Let's just hope they'll get it done right this time.  I expect a 25 year service life on this.

The signs say the work will be done by mid October.  So for two more weeks, I will have to endure more line ups and more slow downs.  Sigh.  Oh well, at least I get to practice my stop and go in my standard.  Positive thinking.

New Standard Driver

It's been a while since I last posted.  During this time period, we have lost one member in the Unit #83 household, but was quickly replaced by two new "members": a Scion FRS and a Subaru Impreza.

For my new job, having a vehicle is a must.  Therefore, our single car family became a double car family again (sigh... more expenses).  B bought a new asphalt gray Scion FRS, which has a manual transmission.  I'm of course is off limits, and his excuse was "you can't drive a standard, but if you can, you can drive it".

I love my Mini.  Technically, it was the first car I bought and own (well, the Golf was my first car that I drove full time... under a lease in my parents' name).  However, after Luigi's warranty period was over, it was problem after problem: the manifold intake required replacement, the passenger door won't unlock manually (even more weird), the engine shook after starting, and emergency brake light was on when the brake was off.  Just this year alone, I already spent $2000 on fixing the manifold issue.  The others remained unsolved.

So finally I decided to get a new car too: a cherry red Subaru Impreza.  

To be able to drive B's car, I also got a manual transmission.  About 10 years ago, I did take a 3 hour lesson on how to drive a standard.  It was an awful experience because the car was so old.  However, the benefit I got from that 3 hour lesson was that I did learn the 'skills' and retained 80% of it.  Hence, the driving experience for the last month or two was tolerable.  However, worried of stalling and rolling backwards, I put a "New Standard Driver" sign up, just to warn drivers to stay away.  It worked.  Yeah, I got some laughs from other drivers, but in general, many people have stayed away from me.  I should keep this sign up just to avoid being rear ended, but B thinks it's ugly and removed it.  

I thought with B here and with him picking out and buying a new car will end my bad luck with new cars.  WRONG!  Here's a brief history of my new cars:

2003 Golf

• Before leaving the dealership, it got a rock chip in the windshield; however, it was the dealership's fault and so it was replaced.
• About the second day it was on the road, I got hit and it got a 'scar' above one of the back wheels       

2008 Mini

• Either it was the first or second day on the road, I got a rock chip in the windshield.

Although it doesn't seem too bad, it is bad for brand new cars!  So what's wrong with the Impreza?  Here it is:

• Before leaving the dealership, the battery was dead.  They boosted it and the car was ok.
• Less than two weeks old on the road, mother nature decided to send down hail from hell.  The Impreza got a lot of dents on the hood, the roof, and some on the door(s).  I claimed insurance and still waiting for an appraisal.
• Approximately one month old on the road, I got a rock chip.  

Sigh.  I don't think I can get away with the rock chip.  It's frickin' summer and I still got a rock chip.  

A Little "Friend"

Last Thursday, I needed the car to run some errands during the day, and therefore, I had to wake up early in the morning to drive B to work.  Just when he got into the basement to go to the garage, he gasped, "I think I just saw a mouse!"  What?!  Not again?  To confirm, he peeked behind the laundry machine, and lo and behold, there was a mouse.  It then scurried away and hid under the machine.

Since my last mouse incident, I've been occasionally checking the floors for mouse poop (it's something I will have to do until the farm field across my place gets congested with houses).  I swear I haven't seen any for a while, and for sure none in the last few weeks.  So I'm pretty confident this new 'friend' just came in.

So after I picked B up from work, we went to buy some more traps.  B believed that since he is a 'rat' (chinese zodiac), he could also think like a mouse.  So I bestowed the mousetrapping responsibilities to him.  He thought he would trap something, while I thought the mouse might just leave, since I caught nothing the last time.  Well, guess what?  Before he went to work the next morning, he found this:

Poor little one, what mouse could withstand that big wad of peanut butter? 

Of course, B didn't pick it up and throw it out immediately.  He had to leave it there so that I can have a good look at it.  I, of course, stayed away from the basement all day until B got home from work.  Mind you, I'm not really scared of pet mice, since I had one before, but I can't say I'm fond of dead wild ones.  So before we left for Calgary for the long weekend, I went to the basement with B so that he could pick up the dead mouse to show me.  The poor girl (I inspected her) had already stiffened up after laying there dead for more than half the day.  I'm glad we caught her so quickly, and I also hope she didn't have any babies during her short stay here.   

New Kitchen Toy

This past weekend I got myself a new kitchen toy: a food processor.  I never believed in these things.  The main reason was cost: why am I paying so much for a machine to chop my food, when I could just use a knife?  Also, there were other inexpensive solutions too:

Before, I tried to make chopping easier by buying (as in getting B to get me) a Slap Chop.  It was ok, but to clean tiny pieces of minced garlic/ginger was a little tedious.  You also have to be very careful that you don't cut yourself when scrapping the tiny bits off the zig-zag blade.  Washing a knife was much easier.  Also, your to-be-chopped food is limited to softer items (I had a hard time chopping potatoes). It does its job, but it had its limit.  This past year, it stayed in its little box most of its days.

To shred cheese, I have a cheese grater.  It seemed like a great idea at the time when we bought it at Superstore: buying cheese blocks to shred was much cheaper than buying a bag of shredded cheese.  However, after our first grating, washing that damn thing was pretty tedious.  We have avoided a lot of shredded cheese recipes.  The grater also sits inside our drawer for most of its days now.

I was reading some food and recipe blogs this weekend, and this one blogger said that her cooking life was made easier because her food processor did most of the laborious work, which included chopping, dicing, mincing, shredding, mixing, and etc.  Just by this, I was somewhat brainwashed and went to look for one.  There are a lot of food processors out there, but I wanted one that did more than just chop and grind.  And ta da: I found my little onyx black "KitchenAid 7-cup Food Processor with ExactSlice System".

I had two Bay gift certificates: one with $50, and one with a remaining of $6.  When I got to the Bay, it was not on sale.  Oh boo.  However, the nearest Home Outfitters is only a few blocks away, and oh yeah, it was $50 off (33% off).  After ringing in my gift certificates, I only had to pay another $48.  Nice job!

So how does it fare?  Not bad.  So far, we only sliced some mushrooms and shredded cheese for our homemade pizza.  And yes, the cheese shredding was great and the cleaning was not bad at all.  I'll be using it again tonight to make another project (a surprise I'll post later).  We'll see how well it shreds other items!  More food processing to come!