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cathyr19355 at 05:04pm on 04/01/2014
cathyr19355 at 05:04pm on 04/01/2014To all who read these greetings; Happy New Year!
So now it's 2014. In February it will be two years since I was laid off from my old firm.
Where do things stand with me? Not too bad. Between what paying legal work I have been able to find, Eric's royalties, and a nice consulting gig he's done, we haven't had to dip substantially into his savings.
On the other hand, we have been very careful about expeditures--more than is good. I need to have some tasks done on the house, but it would require dipping into savings to do them, and until one of us gets the equivalent of a full-time salary, I'm trying to avoid that.
And the plagues seem to be continuing. My car's "check engine" light went on a few weeks ago--yes, right before Christmas. I took it to my mechanic, who said that the information he'd need to fully diagnose is proprietary to Toyota the manufacturer. As a result, he couldn't diagnose it and thus couldn't fix it, and recommended I see a Toyota dealer.
So the car is at the dealer's. The dealer's service guy called me about an hour ago to tell me he thinks they have the problem pinned down. Something he called a "BVTI oil control valve" has gone bad and must be replaced. He'll replace it and test drive the car to make sure there are no other problems. Cost: $477 ($275 of which is the charge for diagnosing the array of computerized error codes that they needed to review to figure out the problem).
Gah. In other news,esrblog has come to the conclusion that I'm suffering from seasonal affective disorder and need grow lights full-spectrum lights. He may be right. At any event, that would treat one reason I have to be depressed. :-)
So now it's 2014. In February it will be two years since I was laid off from my old firm.
Where do things stand with me? Not too bad. Between what paying legal work I have been able to find, Eric's royalties, and a nice consulting gig he's done, we haven't had to dip substantially into his savings.
On the other hand, we have been very careful about expeditures--more than is good. I need to have some tasks done on the house, but it would require dipping into savings to do them, and until one of us gets the equivalent of a full-time salary, I'm trying to avoid that.
And the plagues seem to be continuing. My car's "check engine" light went on a few weeks ago--yes, right before Christmas. I took it to my mechanic, who said that the information he'd need to fully diagnose is proprietary to Toyota the manufacturer. As a result, he couldn't diagnose it and thus couldn't fix it, and recommended I see a Toyota dealer.
So the car is at the dealer's. The dealer's service guy called me about an hour ago to tell me he thinks they have the problem pinned down. Something he called a "BVTI oil control valve" has gone bad and must be replaced. He'll replace it and test drive the car to make sure there are no other problems. Cost: $477 ($275 of which is the charge for diagnosing the array of computerized error codes that they needed to review to figure out the problem).
Gah. In other news,
esrblog has come to the conclusion that I'm suffering from seasonal affective disorder and need