Dollars and sense

Ok so in all fairness I have tried to blog a couple of times and had my posts swallowed by the Internets, but mostly I just haven't felt like, or had time to, post. I've been sick, had a death in the family, all that fun stuff. Also had good stuff, like games nights, movies, an afternoon at fed square listening to the jazz festival, and a night out dancing to Frankie Wants Out at their first weekend gig in ages.

The latest news is that I put my car in for a service and repairs yesterday, and found out today that she could cost in the area of $2500, and will take a week. The work is badly needed, and she's otherwise a good car which once fixed up should last me a good long while. The head gasket has been leaking for a while, which I knew I would eventually have to get fixed but had hoped it would last until I was ready to get a new car. There are some other problems, which the mechanic will suss out and fix up as he comes across them when he rips the engine out. I had to get her in for repairs quickly because in addition to getting more sluggish lately I also had a 100km drop per tank in fuel efficiency between one tank full and the next, despite brand new tyres. We are talking about a small tank so that's a very significant amount. At least my mechanic knows I'm not overly wealthy and has said he will absorb costs where he can.

After Chris and I dropped the car off yesterday we caught a bus to Knox to do some much needed clothes shopping, and I also bought a wheelie suitcase which I need for going to sunny Queensland next month. Thankfully we managed to get a quite good one which should last years, on sale for $80 (loose change compared to other prices we'd seen). After we got home I went to wash the jeans we'd bought (2 pairs each @$100 for 2), only to discover that they had given me 2 pairs the same instead of the 2 different pairs I'd tried on. A shop assistant had gotten me a pair from out the back as my size wasn't on the shelf, and as I'd tried on a different colourway of the same cut I didn't try them on. The woman had gotten me the wrong pair. We caught the bus back to Knox, exchanged the offending pair of jeans, and decided to see what was on at the movies. We ended up seeing 'Iron Man', which was quite good, different from your average comic book movie, then caught a late bus home. Obviously we are going to have to watch the expenses for a while, but apart from the movie we didn't buy anything we didn't need. At least our holiday shouldn't cost excessively much as far as such things go.

That's it for now

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