More Scotland pics

How cool, Blogger is letting me upload pics today. I never finished putting up pics from England and Scotland last month because it was having a snit about uploading. So here's Vance at the Willow Tea room and me near the Edinburgh castle and Vance at the castle.

the cats will play

Since we got back, Raap-aye-ey, the gray cat whose name we can’t spell, has been tired. And he’s thinner than usual. This picture on Gwyn’s site might explain what he was doing while we were gone, to get so tired.

elephant ring

A jade elephant, in a gold cage, with a smoky quartz top.

Most. Beautiful. Ring. Ever.

Montreal

We left Wednesday and drove to Western MA, taking the back way up 81 and the Taconic Parkway, which adds over 100 miles to the drive but is so worth it. Around holidays it can actually be faster, there’s so much less traffic, and you don’t get that sense of impending doom that traffic on 95 can cause, and it is actually a pretty drive through PA countryside and rural NY. And you get to stop in Frackville at the Dutch Kitchen, which we found by accident once, looking for something that wasn’t fast food, and when we walked in and saw the write-up by Gourmet calling it some of the country’s best road food, we knew we had scored. So that’s a must do going north, just for the chicken and dumplings, which, if you are taking my advice and stopping there, are called something like “chicken pot pie casserole.” The trip was uneventful, except near Harrisburg there were signs on the highway telling us that 81 was closed, and to use “alt routes,” which always just means “you’re on your own, and boy are you screwed.” But we were fine, having lots of state maps in the car. Anyway, we stayed the night with Pat, and Amy, also heading to Montreal, also stayed there, so it was like old times. We went to eat at Joe’s in Northampton and then got ice cream at Harrel’s and walked around and looked at the very Valley art exhibit in the park.
Left for Montreal in the morning. Amy departed to pick up Brittney; Vance and I got right on the highway. We had decided to go north on 93 and then across VT; we made it about ½ an hour and then traffic stopped at Greenfield. We called Amy to make sure she wasn’t coming behind us but they were using 90 west to NY and were going to go up the—what, throughway? I forget. The one that goes by Plattsburg. And when we called they were actually going back to Brittney’s house bc she had forgotten her passport. So we both lost time up front. Upper MA and lower VT were under construction; that’s what the stoppage was, and the roads were being milled, so we went along for a while at 45-55 mph and then pulled over at a rest area to grab a VT map and various brochures about Ben and Jerry’s and Cabot cheese and a Teddy bear museum (that’s for the nieces) and got back on the road and the moment I caught up to the speed of traffic around me, blammo, I got pulled for speeding in a work zone. So while I was totally polite, I was so pissed off bc I have turned into one of these old lady drivers who doesn’t speed and gets honked at by other drivers, especially in work zones where the fines double, and I had just merged into traffic and caught up, hadn’t even glanced down yet to see what speed traffic was going, and of course with the VA plates I get yanked out of the line of cars with VT plates and given a ticket. So I’m feeling all “the hell with Vermont” bc the ticket is $174 and 2 points on my license. I suppose that I should feel some gratitude bc this is when we discover that my driver’s license expired in May—aren’t they supposed to send you a reminder about that?—and I didn’t get a ticket for it, but no. Screw Vermont.
So we continue, with Vance driving, as he will have to for the entire rest of the trip to Montreal and back, and after a while the car starts to make a funny noise. Maybe it’s bad gas, we think, having gotten water in the tank recently, so we pull over and fill the tank up, and once we start again, it gets even worse. So we go to a garage, and get them to check the car out, and they say the engine is throwing a code that only a dealer can fix. There’s something wrong with the computer that needs either resetting or replacing. There is only 1 Saturn dealership in VT, but it’s in Burlington, which is on our way, and we have AAA plus, which covers tows of up to 100 miles, and the garage we are at actually has a AAA towing service, so this part could’ve been much worse. As it is, after much calling back and forth with Theresa at the dealership, we get towed 60+ miles to Burlington.
The people at the dealership were nice—beating the hell out of the one in Richmond, might I say—and they break it to us that if this part needs replacing, it costs $800+ and then there’s labor and whatnot. I begin to boil a bit, bc this is the low mileage expensive car I bought, thinking I would save money and aggravation if for once I bought a car with 30,000 miles instead of 100,000, and it has been the biggest piece of crap ever, and it’s not going to be paid off for another few years, and meanwhile I’m stuck bc it’s worth less than I owe on it and it sucks up my spare cash with these expensive repairs. Like the timing belt snapping at 70,000 miles, revealing that it had been installed improperly and costing over $1000.
The mechanics test the car, and I am waiting nervously, and I see this communication between a mechanic and our new best friend Theresa, who is handling this, and she says “Well, get me a price on that part too” so I go outside, bc I feel a major meltdown coming on. Unfortunately, I am trying to calm down from my rage against Saturns, and in the parking lot I am surrounded by them, so it doesn’t work. I get back inside and Vance is holding an estimate for $1200 and change bc TWO computers have gone down. And that’s the price after Theresa has called and gotten a discount. This is when I do lose it a little and denounce Saturns in general and this car in particular, and say it is the least reliable car I’ve ever had, and owning it is like indentured servitude, and whatnot. I believe I use the word"sucks" a bit. I believe I feel VERY emotional about this car.
Then Theresa says that the best mechanic will be in in the morning ) that’s the earliest the parts will be there) and she will get him to look at it again before they do anymore work. Either Vance’s charm (she is from Kentucky, and he was born in TN, and he has been discussing this with her) or my meltdown has worked on her. Good customer, bad customer, like good cop, bad cop?
We get them to drive us to the bus station, and eventually catch a bus to Burlington, arriving at 11:00 p.m. It should have been a 4-5 hour drive and took 13 hours. VT becomes the state that it takes $1400 and 10 hours to cross.
Anyway, we were supposed to meet our friend Susan and have dinner that night, and that is obviously long cancelled (thank god for cell phones) but we go to her hotel and close down the hotel bar, and then, feeling unfinished with our reunion (Susan has also had a bad year) we go to her room and raid her mini bar in a big big way. We stagger back to our hotel, which is a Travelodge with great rates but no minibars, and fall in bed around 3 a.m.

More later, including how the car repairs only cost $200 after all, and we saw lots of friends and I went to great sessions and my paper presentation went just fine, and Montreal is cool.