Never a good start to the day....

Off to the mechanic I go. I was putting off getting an oil change, so at least that is one more thing off my list. Maybe it will be nothing serious. Or maybe it will be the straw that breaks the camels back and I'll go out and buy myself a fancy new car! My car is getting up there in age ('99). Maybe getting a new car is the sensible thing to do. (anyone that knows me now knows that rest of my day will be spent on researching what car I want)

UPDATE: Oxygen sensor of some sort to the tune of $500 and change. Today is shaping up to be just a wonderful day!

Oh no! The pressure's on!

I was hoping to stay in the bloggers closet a bit longer, but my sister outed me! I had hoped that I could get the hang of this in private, but I guess a publicly accessible blog isn't the best way to do that so I can only blame myself. So now I'm in the dilemma that I need to post something entertaining and not just entertaining to myself (I have an odd sense of humor. It runs in the family. It's why Dub fits in), but something entertaining to the masses (or the 1/2 dozen that may follow my sister's link). So what do I have to share? Hmmm, let me think. Oh yeah, that would be nothing. Zero. Goose-egg.

Well I do have one thing. Others generally find amusement in pain of others. This might work. Although it has potential to be slightly gross. Here's a story about my poorly behaved dog from just this morning.

It's trash day on my street and since I'm going away this weekend for 10 days, I need to get rid of the contents of the refrigerator. Not a big deal -- just toss a bunch of things into the trash bag. I put the trash bag down since I need to find shoes to bring it outside. On my way to find shoes I end up on the couch watching last night's Gilmore Girls. I've already admitted to be addicted to TV. It's my best friend and my downfall. I often get sucked into it in the morning... Time goes by and I notice that it is pretty quiet in the house. Where is Wonder Mutt (my 16 month Brittany)?

I love Wonder Mutt, but if I can't see him, and the house is quiet it's typically bad news. Wonder Mutt? Come here Wonder Mutt! Nothing. Not good at all. Ok. I get off the couch and wander into the kitchen. Yup. He's into the trash bag. He's eating the food I just tossed out of the fridge. He's eaten a big bowl of grilled vegetables brushed with olive oil and garlic. Just to be sure, I smelt his breath. (yes Mrs. Big Dubya, I do things like this) Yeah, that would be green peppers that I smell. Not sure what else he ate, but he sure looked pleased with himself. At some point I'll have to tell the story about how I've spent a small fortune on training this dog. See how well it worked?

Who cares you say? He's a dog. Dog's eat table scraps all the time. Yeah and with my past dogs I would have said the same thing. Wonder Mutt however is a bit delicate. He gets upset stomachs somewhat frequently and now it's time for me to go to work. Into the crate he goes and I just pray that he doesn't get sick.

The bonus is that Mr. Tall Guy will be heading home before me tonight so if Wonder Mutt didn't make it through the day than Mr. Tall Guy will get stuck with the clean-up, but it doesn't make me feel better... poor little guy.

And now for my daily DWTS tidbit. I was wrong. Steve Sanders didn't have enough of a following. Eye-an got booted. And I like Laila less and less every time she speaks. I get your confident, but that doesn't mean you have to be cocky and egotistical. She's in the final 3, and I'm hoping she comes out third. My prediction remains Apolo and then Joey, but Joey may take it. We'll just have to wait and see until next week.

As for Gilmore Girls, due to the interruption from Wonder Mutt I was unable to finish watching it. I'll have to save my teary-eyed recap until tomorrow.

Almost forgot...

Last night the remaining four stars competed with two dances each. I won't bore you with a recap, but I will say that I think eye-an may have pulled it off and make it into the final 3! I must admit that I'm surprised. The judges haven't been very kind to him. Granted he was still in last place last night, but I think he has a stronger fan base from his Steve Sanders day than any of us expected to make up for it. If I had a choice, I would say that Laila Ali should go home. I'm just not a fan and I don't think her Walk like an Egyptian dance was very good and neither was one of her dances from the week before.

I still say Apolo is going to win, but I'm hoping good 'ole Steve stays along for the ride.

I had no idea they could do this with locks...

As I mentioned, we're in the process of doing over our house. And when I say "we're" I mean Mr. Tall Guy because I don't really help out all that much and we didn't hire anyone to do the work. Not yet anyways, but that's another story. Continuing...

So with any home improvement project you find yourself visiting the local home improvement chains quite a bit. In fact you may find yourselves there several times over the same weekend or even the same day. Sometimes it's because you were forgetful and forgot to pick up something critical. Other times it may because you uncovered something during the project that you didn't expect. (Have I mentioned that I now refer to my house as Mr. McRot?) Other times is because that chain store that you've grown to depend on seems like it just wants to screw you.

Today was my third trip to try and purchase locks. As part of our home improvement, we're replacing all our exterior doors and as part of this I thought it would be nice to switch to satin nickel hardware. Mr. Tall Guy and I went and had a reasonably successful trip last week to purchase a new front and screen door. This is where I made the satin nickel decision. The first thing Aunt P learned on this shopping trip was that when you get a screen door (it also comes with glass so why is it a screen door? Or is that what a storm door is and that is what we got? So many questions, so little time) it comes with the hardware. Or at least the one we decided on did. Well the only one they had in stock in the model we liked with satin nickel and not brass was an extra $50. Not for the hardware finish, but for insulated glass. Not a bad idea since we live in New England and since Mr. Tall guy wanted to do the door installation over the weekend we needed to get. NOTE: Doors weren't really installed over the weekend, but other work was done leading up to it, so I can't complain.

So with the door and storm (?) door picked out, we make our way over to the knobs and locks section. After some debate, we picked out what we wanted, but they don't have any sets with the same key number in my finish. What is the point of having the "Buying more than one? Match the key number" sticker on it if they aren't going to carry any matching f'ing sets! Nothing to get stressed out about. Don't worry honey, I'll go to the other home improvement chain tomorrow at lunch. (Having all of your doors keyed the same is great. Highly recommend it).

Attempt number two. Well they had two of the sets with matching key, but they didn't have the extra knob with the same key number. So I purchased the two sets and figured I'd just order a knob with the key number online. That's not as easy as it sounds, but in fairness I didn't search around too long. Anyways it turns out that I need a third doorknob/deadlock set (forgot about the 3-season porch door) so I decide to go back to see if they still have a set with my key number.

That brings us to today. My third attempt. I find a set in my finish with the right key number. Yeah! I grab that and the knob I need, albeit with the wrong key number, and go to customer service. I figure screw it. Make them order it for me. And this is where I learn my second big lesson. Turns out that they can rekey it to match my key number right there! Is this common knowledge? Am I a big loser for not knowing this? And why didn't I know this before?

And watching them do it is fascinating. This is where the geek in me comes out. They pull out this box of metal bits of varying lengths. Take the lock apart.shake out the existing bits of metal. Stick in the key of the lock I want it to match and then put in the appropriate length metal bits in about 8 different slots to make it match up with the key. Voila! And all done is less than 5 minutes or so! I love stuff like this!

Granted my newly rekey'd knob didn't come with any keys, but I guess I can live with only 12 matching keys (4 per set) instead of the 14 it would have come with.

This is an example of why it just can't be done in a single trip.

Introducing the new, but probably lame, Aunt P's Blog!

Well I came up with a title for this post, now what?

Ok, so you can probably guess that I'm new to the blogging arena. I actually setup a blog about two years ago so I could post comments to my sister's and her husband's blog. Two years have past and a number of the comments that I have posted to other blogs started with the phrase "I don't blog, but....". This prompted my brother-in-law to say "why don't you just do one?" So here I am. To anyone that stumbles upon this -- my apologies.

Unlike the dubyas who started their blogs among the sea of mommy and daddy blogs, I have no children. I am however the very proud aunt of 'Lil Dubya and 'Lil Dubyette, hence the title of the blog. I also have a dog. To continue the tradition of code names, we'll refer to him as Wonder Mutt. This is not to imply that he is a mutt, not that there is anything wrong with mutts, but Wonder Mutt is a purebred Brittany (a type of spaniel often referred to as a Brittany Spaniel, but they dropped the spaniel from the Brittany's official breed name a while back). Wonder Mutt is a handful and I'm sure I'll be covering may of his adventures here for all (that would be probably no more than three people) to enjoy.

Along with the adventures of Wonder Mutt, I will be chronicling my life as a newlywed -- at least for the next three months because I think that term expires at your first wedding anniversary, -- my life in a house that is constantly under construction any my life as just being me. This is sometimes very boring, but sometimes very entertaining. Especially when you incorporate pretty much any conversation that takes place between me and my mother, but we'll talk about Granny another day.

To complete the quick bio, since I mentioned that I'm a newlywed, I'll provide a quick mention of my husband who is known in bloggersphere as Mr. Tall Guy. He does not have a blog, but he is tall. Not ridiculously tall or anything, but tall in comparison to me (I'm 5 feet) and the rest of my relatively short Irish family. Mr Tall Guy is 6'3" (6'4" if he is standing up straight).

Mr. Tall Guy and I live in area known as MetroWest which is outside of Boston. We own a modest house (which was lovely when we purchased it) that is currently under construction -- more on that in future posts. We're relatively young and, with the exception of our love for vacations, we're pretty much homebodies. Which leads me to my first confession. I'm addicted to Television. I just love it. I love all types of crappy TV shows. I especially love TiVo because it lets me watch more crappy TV shows more efficiently since I can easily skip commercials. What kind of shows do I watch? Good Question. Well I just dive right in and admit that I watch soap operas. I've been watching General Hospital for over 25 years now and I also watch All My Children. I grew up watching Dallas, Dynasty and Knots Landing. Yes, I know that this all conflicts with the relatively young comment I made earlier, but it's true. I just started this obsession young. Let's just say that I knew it was time to go to the bus stop for kindergarten when the rerun of Love Boat was over.

This has been a hard TV year for me. Tomorrow night is the last episode for Gilmore Girls. The O.C ended earlier this year. This frees me some TV viewing time for me so recommendations are welcome.

And for the record, I am also addicted to Dancing with the Stars. It killed me that Billy Ray stayed on longer than Cliff "our favorite mailman" Claven, but at least he went before Ian, aka Steve Sanders. By the way, anyone know what Broadway show he was supposedly the star of? And your name is Ian, not eye-an. Ian won't make it to the top three, but at least he hung in there long enough for Billy Ray to leave. Predictions you ask? I think I have to go with Apollo with Joey in second. Joey had a bit of an unfair advantage since he had some dancing background. What do you think?

Ok. Enough is enough for the first post. I'm going back to work. Enjoy your day!