Give Good Service, And They Will Come

It sure is nice to do business and get good customer service - - especially after all we've been through with our management company (I'm still planning to do an "expose" on them at some point). I think it's only fitting that if you've had an excellent experience somewhere that you should pass it on as a reward to the company. So that is what I'm doing. When I took my car in to the dealer a couple of weeks ago, they gave me a laundry list of things that needed to be done. I got a few of them done there at the dealer but a couple of the things, namely, new brake pads and a brake line flush, I took a pass on. I figured it would be cheaper elsewhere. We finally figured out where "elsewhere" was when Duncan got a referral for a place down the road called "Manic Mechanic." We dropped the car off yesterday around 12:30. At 2 pm, he called me and said "Ma'am, you don't need your brake pads changed. You've got at least another twelve to fifteen thousand miles left on these." That's like two years for the amount of miles I drive. I asked about the brake line flush and he said that should be done after you change the brake pads. He ended by saying there was no charge and I could come and pick my car up any time. I thanked him profusely and said when they did need to be changed, I would definitely come to him. So there you have it. It is so nice to come in contact with a mechanic that is honest. You hear so many stories about dishonest ones - - the dealer certainly comes to mind now.

Things are well on the home front. Yesterday Calleigh and I went over to Ron & Elaine's to look in on the cats and take care of the pool. Fortunately there were no foreign items on the floor this time.

I'm pretty excited because Duncan just bought me a new laptop a few minutes ago. We've been talking about it for about the last month (ever since I had all the problems with the keys on mine) but we just hadn't pulled the trigger. I have my work one too that I can use but that's the pits because I can't use Microsoft Money on it and I don't like to save personal files. Anyway, it's an IBM Thinkpad which Duncan claims is the "Ferrari of PC's." I find the whole black look to be a little depressing but apparently it has all the latest bells and whistles including a fingerprint pad. Your computer will know it's you because you swipe your fingerprint on the pad. Pretty fancy, huh?

Calleigh has a few more cute things she's been doing lately. The first thing is that she started carrying this little bucket around on her arm. We've had it for months (it holds different shape blocks) but she somehow just got the idea that it would make a good purse. She carries it around and put things into it. I think I'm going to go and get her an actual purse she can put over her shoulder.

Secondly, yesterday I was lying on the floor with a blanket over me and I put my legs up under it so that it formed a tent. Calleigh saw it and she decided to get under the blanket with me. So now, she loves to do this. She'll come and sit under it for a minute, then lift up a side and go out, then come back in a minute later and crawl around underneath the blanket and giggle. Her hair stands up on end while she's under there because of the static. When Duncan got home this evening, I had him make a tent so that I could get a picture!

Have I mentioned lately what an awesome Dad Duncan is?? Well, he is. He's so great with her. He's given her just about all of her baths the last week which is a huge help to me. When he gets home from work, Calleigh just lights up when she sees him. It is such a neat thing to see.

Finally, it's been two weeks since we've started our garden. We've had some good progress. We have little tiny plants now as you can see in this picture. Rumor has it that the tomatoes (which we're growing) are a bit of a disappointment but that's okay. We'll try something else next time.