Blogwonky

At about 4pm it started raining. It was that kind of rain – with big drops – which often develops into hail. So I decided to dress Suzy up for the first time…

As it turned out there was no hail. I don’t know how much protection Suzy’s clothes would be if it did hail, but it’s probably better than being naked.

Today I took Belinda to the doctor. The driver’s side window has been stuck in the open position.

Belinda at the Window Doctor

The doctor is located at Artarmon, so I then had to walk home along the freeway cycleway. That’s my exercise for the day.

Walking Home

Today I took Belinda to the doctor to get a new tyre to replace the one that Yuko slashed a few days ago. It was very exciting indeed…

Belinda at the Tyre Doctor

As I was sitting at the computer in the evening, I suddenly heard a loud hissing sound coming from outside. At first I thought it was someone hosing. But when I looked outside there was nobody hosing. I then realised the sound was coming from Belinda’s rear tyre.

The air was escaping as I watched! I could also hear and see the spot it was coming from – on the side-wall of the tyre. I was even able to press my finger against the hole and stop the air from escaping.

I quickly realised that keeping my finger pressed against the hole permanently was probably not a practical solution – so I just let the air escape…

Yuko later admitted that she had hit a pointy brick (our neighbour’s step) when driving Belinda into our driveway.

Judy (formerly Mother’s car), has been spruced up…

Judy - Spruced Up

And last night I submitted an ad to CarGuide. I put $5000 on it, which is a tad high for a 1997 model, but she has only travelled 34,000km. Some others of that age were being advertised by dealers at a similar price, but none were under 170,000km!

The ad appeared on the site this morning, and at about 2.30pm I got the first call.

A potential buyer came, drove and offerred me $4500 – and the deal was done! Judy will be picked up by the new owner on Monday. And all this on Mother’s birthday!

Meanwhile, Yuko was photographing books in the garden…

Today Suzy joined the Noswonky family, and we stimulated the Japanese economy. The environment was not so fortunate as Suzy’s existence will accelerate the global descent into disastrous climate change (apologies to greenman)…

Suzy

Because Yuko didn’t want to drive home from Lindfield, we took the train to go and pick up Suzy. At least that saved some greenhouse gas emissions!

Although I had considered buying a more ‘green’ vehicle (such as a hybrid), I was unable to find one big enough for my needs – to carry my optical equipment.

Later, I tried fitting my telescope in the back. Even with Suzy’s large capacity, it was a tight fit…

Going to a car dealer is like having an operation. You don’t like it but you have go there and let them rip your guts out to achieve the desired outcome.

That’s what we did today. To minimise the gut-ripping I took Yuko along to do any necessary haggling. She’s good at haggling.

So I left her in the office haggling with the dealer while I went and sat in the customers’ lounge which had a TV and refreshments. In fact it was 3pm and the TV was showing the media conference at which Windsor and Oakeshott were about to announce who would form government. I saw Windsor announce his support for Labor. Then, as Oakeshott started to speak, Yuko came back with the results of the haggling and I had to leave! So I missed it.

However, Yuko’s haggling proved adequate and I bought the car. It should arrive by the end of the month.

In the evening we went to Taiki to celebrate.

Recently Yuko had taken a bunch of photos of Taiki’s owners’ baby and given them a CD of the images. Tonight, the father (and sushi-chef) showed us one of the pictures which he has had framed…

Today, I sold Mitsy!

The buyer was our gardener’s employee, Kon…

The deal was financed by Joe (our gardener and water man). He can be seen below signing the cheque while Kon looks on…

Then we posed for pictures with Mitsy…

Now, does anyone want to by a Ford Laser?

Mitsy’s battery has been giving me trouble again. This has been an on-going intermittent problem and the last time I took Mitsy to the auto-electrician, he couldn’t find anything wrong! Misty was then fine for a while. But now the problem has returned, so I took Mitsy to the doctor again…

Mitsy waits for the doctor

This time the problem was finally diagnosed. The alternator was graunched due to a slow leak of oil dropping onto it!

The dude replaced the alternator and charged up the battery and Mitsy was restored to health. However, he said that the oil leak may cause the same problem to occur again eventually.

When we came back from Ayers Rock yesterday, Yuko told me that Kazuki would be going home to Japan tomorrow. Kazuki gave me his printed flight information so that I could check the time of his flight. But when I looked at it, I noticed that the departure date was not today but tomorrow (Tuesday).

So Kazuki didn’t leave today. Instead he gave us both a massage…

Then he wanted to mess with Belinda’s engine…

Fortunately, Belinda still seems ok.