Rate my life

Ash over at Stitched in Holland said I should take this test...
so..

This Is My Life, Rated
Life:	7.9
Mind:	7.3
Body:	8.8
Spirit:	6.4
Friends/Family:	6.3
Love:	5.5
Finance:	8.8
Take the Rate My Life Quiz

How do you rate?

bad news comes in 3s.. no 4s... no 5s..

It's just not my year...

As you know, the engine of my car died. I took it to Volvo, they assessed the damage and said it needs replacing, and found an engine elsewhere that could replace mine. I gave them the go-ahead to install it last week. They just informed me that the engine is invalid, and I'll have to go with a more expensive overhauled engine directly from Volvo. Hrmph!

Saturday evening, I opened our glass cabinet to put away some shiny things for display, and the door fell off... all-glass, bigger than me, and very pretty when it's sprinkled across the whole downstairs floor area in thousands of shards.

Had the day off on Friday. Of course while I was out of reach, our main server died (out of drive space ... weird, but true. Apparently sysadmin isn't monitoring all partitions.).

Haven't cycled in over 2 weeks now ... need to get back into the saddle - cycle tour is in 26 days time ...

-6° in Zurich today. 11 days until vacation-time, summer sunshine, and fine dining.

Where am I going ...?

After work yesterday, I was sent by the Mrs to buy more nappies (diapers)... So off I went in rush-hour traffic to the middle of nowhere, where there happens to be a nappy factory that sells direct to the public.
Good thing I have the company car (stationwagon/estate/kombi - depending on your language), as - even with (or perhaps because of) the satellite navigation system - I managed to make one or two "creative directional choices". Still, I made it there before they closed, and left with a wagon filled with almost 1500 nappies... roughly 8 or 9 months worth. Saved around 300 francs by buying direct, too.

Then this morning I had to make a detour on my way to work to drop something off, and while not concentrating, took a wrong turn ... needed the kind German lady on the navi CD to get me out of my predicament yet again.. For someone who has piloted an aircraft with precision around South Africa... twice... I have a remarkably bad sense of direction.

Car decision

So as mentioned (if I recall), our Volvo decided to die a sudden death. Not all of it, mind you - just the important part - the engine. The garage still cannot explain why it died, and have sent off the engine oil to Castrol for analysis. Meanwhile we had to make a decision about whether to replace the engine and keep our steed, or see what we could get for the Fred Flintstone car..
As it happens, Volvo made me a really disappointing offer on the body, so I elected to pop a replacement engine in and keep on truckin'.
I suppose we'll sell the car later this year and get something a little bigger and better suited to our needs.

For eg - we now - as of Sunday - have a kiddie bicycle trailer that may need schlepping (along with our bikes) down to the Greifensee. It won't fit in our current vehicle, so short of cycling it down and back up our hill, we'll need a larger car.

After buying the trailer (got it from an expat returning to Canada), we went for a walk on the frozen Greifensee... Quite an experience walking on 12cm of ice, knowing that if it should break, you'll be plunged into the middle [literally] of a large body of really really cold water 10s or 100s of metres from the shore. How many out there can say they've walked on water? ;-)
It was a pretty nice atmosphere - many 100s of people, stalls on the shores selling carnival-type stuff, hot foods, glühwein, etc...

Snowing again at the moment ... looking forward to our vacation in Cape Town in 2 weeks time. Haven't had a holiday since .. umm... about May last year... Worked through end of year too.

Food and things

Well, still waiting on news regarding cost of repair of our car. The garage said that cylinder 3, the crankshaft, and some casing is all damaged, resulting in engine replacement as our only option. I'm REALLY hoping Volvo Switzerland gets wind of this, and says "hey, that's not right?!" and provides SOME financial supplementation ... replacing a whole engine is an expensive exercise - even more so in Switzerland where labour is ridiculously expensive. I'll call later today to find out whether there is any news for me.
(For reference, I got a quote from the UK for a remanufactured engine ...GBP1600 including parts, labour, fitting, and warranty! Wonder how far off the mark Switzerland's price will be).

Aron didn't sleep well last night at all - D was up too many times to count [apparently .. I only woke up at about 4am when she was all stressed and moaning at him to go to sleep, but she said he didn't sleep longer than 20min at a time]. I sympathise with her - it's very frustrating indeed.

Food ... on Tuesday I decided it was time we had a fondue again ... a meat fondue, since we'd not had something like that in the last couple of years!
But by the time I got home and got preparing everything, I was too tired to teach each individual block of meat to swim, so I fried them all beforehand and we simply took the pre-cooked goulash chunks off a plate. I made a potato salad (potatoes, finely-diced pickled gherkin, mayonnaise), grilled veggies (slices of aubergine, zucchini, sweet potato, yellow bell pepper drizzled with olive oil and placed under the grill), and four sauces (tomato sauce + mayonnaise; commercial sweet chilli sauce; commercial tartare sauce; mustard+mayo+worcester sauce). It was delicious, and filling.

Wednesday I made baked fish (crumbed with a veggie filling), fried fish (crumbed), spinach, and peas.

Last night I made Quorn stir fry (using Quorn chunks) with asian vegetable mix (sprouts, sliced peppers, mange tout (peas in their pods), etc etc), and a dash of sweet chilli sauce. Served with rice, of course.

It's still cold here - nicely below zero, and extremely foggy.

I'm back!

Well, it seems there *IS* life out there after all ...
So - may as well jump straight back in from where I left off many moons ago.

Family:
Aron is growing bigger and heavier every week. He's 5 months old on Sunday, and weight close on 8kg already. We started him on solids a couple of weeks ago as it appeared that milk was no longer satiating his large frame. So far he's had: Apple, Pear, Banana, Potato, Carrot, Fenchel, Pumpkin.

Travel:
While we've not really been _anywhere_ since Aron was born, we're heading off to Cape Town in 3 weeks time. We'll be there for 17 days, coinciding with a visit by my brother and his family (they live in Calgary, Canada). Will be nice to be all together for about 10 days.

Work:
Things are going well - pretty busy really ... I'm migrating our systems to a new release of software I wrote, and as always, finding interesting never-before-seen bugs in obscure places (ie, a few VPNs suddenly don't work no mo' - I narrowed it down to the ipfw pipe in ipfw2, which isn't an issue in ipfw1 ... go figure).

Life:
Last week our car started making a rattling sound, as if something was loose .. A day later, it sounded worse - like a diesel. I thought perhaps there was a hole in the exhaust. Called the garage, took it in on Monday, and they said it looks like the whole engine needs to be replaced!
The car is only 6 years old, 116000km, original owner, properly serviced, etc....
I took it back today to be opened up, and am awaiting the final verdict as to whether it's salvable. If not, it'll be rather an expensive exercise indeed.

Went cycling on Sunday, but it was around 0°C and I was underdressed ... I'm now sick :-(