All sorts of stuff

As some of you may or may not know...ol' Blue died for the last time last Thursday. You know, the truck I've had since 1992? The truck that was my "statement of independence" when I became single again, "so I wouldn't have to rely on a man for anything". The truck that had a string of beads hanging from the rear view mirror since about the second summer I had it because Aaron made them for me (they're still there). The truck that drove me and my two cats to Wisconsin, lived through all that snow with just some sand in the back. The truck that got Conrad to work and back for many, many years after I couldn't drive it when I got pregnant with Sadie and couldn't fit behind the wheel anymore. Yeah, that truck. Last Thursday, I could hear Conrad coming from much further away (usually I could hear him when he rounded the corner) and poor ol' Blue...she just couldn't go any further. She just died of old age.

After much car lot searching, jumping through every financial hoop known to man and the finance company deciding they didn't want us to have two car payments (they wanted us to trade in the van or pay it off - yeah right) Conrad decided to purchase from an individual a truck that would "just get him to and from work until we could get the van paid off". Well, let me tell you, the man can shop. Meet the newest member of the Wangler Family...
It's a 2000 F-150, black with a white stripe at the bottom, back seat for the girls, with 4 doors (only two have handles) and it's. paid. for.!!!!! No extra car payment! It rides like a dream. Seems to be a really good truck and for a good price. I'm very happy for Conrad and he's happy to have something that doesn't announce his arrival five minutes before he gets somewhere. He brought it home Wed. night and Thursday I called him to see how his drive to work went. I said "you didn't even have to shift gears, did you". He said "That truck is so smart, it shifts its own gears!". Now we have two vehicles that will fit the whole family and how nice that is going to be. Indeed.

Now, onto other things...

The upside to the tree being cut down was the insurance. The insurance adjuster came out and after surveying the damage, decided we needed a new roof. Go figure. So, today, that's exactly what happened. We got a new roof. See...

The pictures don't really show off the blackness of the shingles.

Now, I'm not too partial to the black color of the roof. But, I am WAY partial to the newness of it and the no holes in it. The people putting it on are relatives of the guys who did the second cutting of the tree. Those guys are fast. They started around 9am and were done by 4 or 5 this afternoon. I was amazed.

The thing that took the longest (in my opinion, don't ask them) was getting up the nails that fall to the ground while all that roofing is going on. This was my magnet...

full of nails. This was theirs...

much bigger than mine. But, mine could get into smaller places, like in between all those huge logs still in our back yard from the tree. It was actually kind of fun running that thing through leaves and such and coming up with a huge magnet full of nails. Scary, too. No barefootin' it for us for awhile. Or else, tetanus shots all around.