Nov 30
MAGIC SLIM AND THE TEARDROPS
I know! I know! I haven’t posted in a while. It’s the holidays, my daughter had surgery, I’m extremely busy. It’s starting to mellow out though and I’m going to post tomorrow. Until then, here is another music video. These guys are soooooooooooooooooooo good I’m shocked that they’re not more famous. OK. Chew on this for a while.
Nov 22
I’ve been a fan of these guys for a while and here is a rare video of them live doing their version of Amazing Grace.
Nov 21
I’m glad this week is finally over. It was very chaotic, but the capper was that my daughter Rose had to have her Tonsils and Adenoids removed. It happened on Friday at 6:15 AM. We checked into the surgery center with my daughter dressed in pajamas, nightgown and slippers. She was clutching her Madeline doll and looking at everything like it was some kind of great adventure because she was getting so much attention from everyone. She had no idea what she was in store for, and everyone played along telling her how much ice cream she was going to get later; her grand parents bought her a present that she could only open after she got home, etc…
I felt like such a heel. I was about to betray my little girls trust. I knew that it was all for her own good. That didn’t make me feel any better. Some part of my relationship with her was about to change forever.
When she started to get nervous and we had to keep the charade going and calm her down, I really felt like an a-hole. When they wheeled her away into the operating room and we had to stay behind, I remembered when my son Michael was 14 months and had to have his tear ducts opened. They carried him away. When he realized something was happening, he stretched out his arms, over the nurse’s shoulders, reaching for me in vain to come and rescue him. He started to cry, still reaching, as the doors swung shut and I was standing there with my wife, feeling numb, and like a bastard. It all came back.
After Rose was done and came out of anesthesia, she was pretty hysterical. Doped, scared and in pain, she was calling out for us, with a gargling voice, filled with agony. It took a while for her to calm down. My wife and I reassured her that everything was going to be all right. She just cried and whimpered, “I want to go home.”
When we finally did go home, my wife and I gave her our full attention. The grand parents and Aunt Mikie watched the boys for us so that Rose could be taken care of. She’s finally starting to feel a little better and the boys will be home tomorrow. We’ll be working all week to get everything back to normal and ready for the Thanksgiving holiday.
I’ll have something to be really thankful for by then. She’ll be OK.
Nov 18
OK! Here we go again! MY HONDA INSIGHT HYBRID SUCKS! I HATE THIS CAR!
Ahem…Now that that’s out of my system, here is the latest Honda Hybrid drama. My car crapped out again after the IMA light came on…AGAIN!
IMA is Honda’s name for the hybrid gasoline/electric system employed in the Insight. The IMA system incorporates the electric motor/generator, the battery pack, and a lot of control circuitry that controls when power is supplied to or taken from the electric motor, controls charging of the high-voltage battery pack, and converts the electricity from one form to another.
They had to swap out the battery pack…AGAIN! This is the big battery we’re talking about. This is the third time since 2002. These batteries are supposed to be good for 80,000 miles at least. WTF? This supposedly GREEN car has now polluted some landfill or some recycling plant somewhere with two humungous batteries.
The cost to replace these battery packs run from $3,000 to $8,000 dollars. (Which I screamed bloody murder about and didn’t have to pay) Any savings you make on gas (Oh I’ll get to that later) is totally wiped out. It’s not just the Honda hybrids that are having these problems…
I refer you to this article as just one example: http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2007/07/used_hybrids.html
Now for the gas mileage. It’s nowhere near what they said it would be. At it’s peak performance, my car never got better than 43mpg. It’s average these days is around 37mpg. Which is good but not the 53mpg we were sold on. A Mini Cooper gets 34mpg highway and it’s a lot more fun!
So what do we have here? A plastic car (petroleum product) that has the worlds worst suspension system, that is totally computerized, needs parts that cost twice as much as other cars, the parts aren’t standard, it doesn’t get the gas mileage it was supposed to, has been through two transmissions ($7,000 transmissions) and is crapping battery packs all over the planet! Oh yes, and the radio is the cheapest piece of shit too. And as usual, the parts weren’t in stock so it took 5 days to get the car out of the shop.
That about sums it up.
If you’d like to read my previous post about the car, go to:
http://themommydaddy.com/2009/08/a-very-expensive-day/
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