Tuesday, September 4, 2007

So how was your weekend?

Mine was tolerable, but not what I had planned. But then they never are.

I always have hopes and expectations for weekends, mostly along the lines of making the "house" (aka condo) look like less of a tornado zone. I had higher hopes this weekend, being a three-day break with DH home to help out.

It didn't happen. If anything, the place looks worse today than on Friday, mostly because things got rearranged while we were hunting for the owners manual to my car, which DH wanted to consult before installing the new convertible car seat for the Burrito. Yes, the manual usually lives in the glove box, but I brought it in to check on the 30,000 mile service requirements (which the dealer wants an exorbitant amount of money for, by the way). Still haven't found the manual, but we downloaded one from Ford's website, and need to inquire at the dealership about LATCH refits and tether straps.

As it turned out, we started working on the car seat project at 2:00 (after lunch out and a trip to the grocery store and Toys R Us). Finally got it installed at 7:15. A good part of that time was spent washing the cover and waiting - and waiting and waiting - for it to dry. The manual suggests 10-15 minutes on low heat. Hah! Try an hour, folks. After half an hour, I could still wring water out of the padding. It took an hour before I thought it was dry enough to safely put in the car without fear of mildew.

I also spent part of that time online, trying to get Evenflo's website to cough up some information on ordering replacement parts, like a seat cover (just from curiosity) and the optional strap padding. Their website is insanely worthless, and doesn't play well with Firefox. To see a list of replacement parts, you have to provide the serial number and date of manufacture, which spits back a list of half a dozen parts. The printed manual lists seat covers, strap pads, and cup holders as available purchases, and yet none of those are listed on the website. Dolts. They had a survey popup when I went to the site, so I gave them an earful. We'll see what happens.

Here's another annoying website: Megablocks. DH's sister gave us some toys that her kids outgrew, including a Megablocks piano that the Burrito loves. We've figured most of it out, but there's a switch on the bottom that's stumped us. So I go to their website to see if they have replacement instructions. The "Instructions" page is useless, as they want the name of the toy line, and plain old "Megablocks" isn't an option, although it's on the piano in large letters. So I check out the "Request" page. Sure, they'll send me instructions, if I provide the model number. Which is conveniently located, get this, on the front of the instruction manual. You know, the one I lost which is why I'm requesting a replacement? Yeah, that one. Or, option B, I can give them the last four digits of the UPC on the box. Yeah right.

We won't get into the hunt for the instructions to the Fisher Price aquarium crib music thingy.

Or the fact that we have Lyceum tickets for this weekend (with the parents-in-law, DH's 4th brother, and 4 of the grandkids). And I have nothing to wear, unless I wear my jeans and ignore the looks.

On the other hand, the Spirit and Opportunity rovers are getting enough sunlight to run again, which makes me happier than it should. These things were planned to last 90 days, and there were probably people hoping to get half that, and here they are, almost 4 years later, still chugging away. That's news, people. Not the pointless antics of talent-free celebrities.

And I'm wondering if the Burrito would look cuter as a zebra, penguin, jack-o-lantern, or hot dog for Halloween. Or the tiger costume from Target. And this shirt from Old Navy would be too cute on him. We'll have to hope for post-Halloween clearance prices if they don't sell out.

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