Friday, September 17, 2010

17 years

17 years ago tonight, I couldn't sleep. I was happy, excited and nervous about getting married the next day. What did I have to worry about? I was marrying my best friend. He loved me and I loved him. Best friend or not, I was unable to stop my brain long enough to be able to really get to sleep. It didn't help that I had had my nails done that day and through some crazy grandeous plan, I had asked for them to be longer than I was used to. I thought they would look great for our wedding and everything would be okay. Well I did spend a few hours that evening with a very rough grain emory board trying to make them more manageable. For gosh sakes, they were so long I could hardly do anything for myself. So between tears and giggles over the fact that I had rendered myself completely helpless with my dumb choice for long nails, my mom and I sat and talked while I worked to shorten those nails. Okay so now that you are laughing at me, take a minute to imagine how much my fingers hurt the next day from the attempts to grind these nails to a realistic and functional length. Ugh. At least I wasn't completely and totally helpless any longer but I was still struggling to do the simple things.

Our ceremony was beautiful. Both my pastor from my church and Bob's uncle who was an ordained Episcopal priest were performing the ceremony. It was amazing.

I am amazed at how much my love has grown in just 17 years. Every day I find that I love Bob even more than the day before. It amazes me because I never knew that after this long you can still find new things to love about your spouse.

I am happy to be Mrs. to his Mr. I cannot even venture to say where I would be right now if i had not met and fell head over heels in love with this man. He is my soulmate and best friend. Even when we don't always see eye to eye we cam still find that common ground that has always been so important in our relationship.

I love you my husband! Happy 17th anniversary and here's to the rest of our lives together.

Friday, September 10, 2010

Words of caution from an early hybrid adopter

Let me just say that this is all just my humble opinion and is probably just an irrational, emotional response to the latest update from my Toyota Dealership on what it will cost to fix my car THIS time…

Okay, so I really, really, really loved my Prius from the day we bought it back in May 2002. I even still really loved it the first time a big orange triangle came up. Of course, it was a recall item and they fixed it with no problems. And really, I even still loved it when it was 7 years and 8 months old… (Just shy of the 8 year battery warranty expiring) and I had to have $2800 worth of work done to replace the rack and pinion steering assembly (Which included the electronic control unit that was what failed). And I was still mostly in love with it when I had to have the brakes done for about $800 not too long ago. I was just getting back the love after recovering from the two other control units ($2700) that I just had replaced 6 weeks ago… Today however… I am no longer in love with my prius… I would trade it in without looking back if I could get a reasonable deal on a camry or something like that and never have to experience the frustration that goes with that stupid big orange triangle and all the money that it ends up costing every time that big orange triangle pops up on the screen.

I got the big ugly orange triangle this morning… They’ve had it all day at the dealership and the best they can tell me is that it’s something with the voltage regulator system in the car/hybrid system. They aren’t exactly sure what it is, but if it’s either one of the two things they suggest could be the problem, I will be out at least another $1500 to get it fixed. I will get my car back tomorrow and then they will get my car back on Monday at which point they will take it apart to work through the hybrid system to find the root of the issue. I try really hard to be an optimist about things, but I won’t be surprised if after a couple of days of them combing through the hybrid system and electrical system of the car, they’ll come back and tell me that $1500 was a low estimate and it will be more like double that.

So, here’s my suggestion to any and all Prius owners and you can take it for what it’s worth and with the knowledge that I’m frustrated… Trade those Prii off before the warranty expires…(and before all the savings you’ve had in gas go to repairing an aging hybrid) Everyone worries about the batteries… that’s always been the concern (“What happens if the hybrid batteries fail?” “How much does that cost?”)… It’s not the batteries that are the problem with this car… yet… It’s the electronic control system that is basically the brains of the hybrid system… My hope is that folks with the 2nd and 3rd generation hybrid systems will have better luck than me… Maybe mine is just because it’s the first gen…

Guess now all that's left is to wait and see which appendage I will have to give up for this repair.