6 1/2 hours of waiting

Today was supposed to be fairly routine. Take the car for a service appointment, have "A" come over and watch Grace, possibly have Grace's friend from down the street come over too and all the while maybe I could get a little painting done around the house. Then at 5 we were babysitting the neighbor across the streets 1 year old for a few hours while they went to see Cirque Shanghai at Navy Pier.

I had a 9am appointment which obviously we were late too because I'm just late for everything in the morning because Grace just doesn't want to move at all. We got there at 9:30, told them what I wanted done and then went to the waiting room, where we stayed until 4pm. Mind you I didn't have time to eat breakfast before we went, but I brought food for Grace to eat. So she had breakfast and a snack and then some candy that they give out at the dealership. Then at some point in the afternoon she started to get hungry. I know it was after 1pm. Finally at 3pm our salesperson stopped by and asked if we needed to run anywhere and get anything. She asked if we wanted a loaner. I said we already have one at home. I also felt it was too late to go and get lunch considering it was almost time for dinner.

So we hit the vending machine and got some "great" selections to fill our tummies; read: carbohydrates. Luckily the car was ready "only" an hour later. Fortunately they didn't charge us too much for all the diagnostics they had to do. I installed the remote start system myself back in March and had a couple of issues I couldn't get to work properly. So they were going through every connection to see if I had done anything wrong. They did find one mistake; I had wired the hot side of the drivers door unlock relay to the ground and the ground to the hot. So that would explain why the drivers door wasn't unlocking unless you unlocked all the doors. The second major issue was that you would start the car remotely and it would start just fine but only run for about 2 seconds and then shut off. If this solves the problem then it turns out that I had run the initial programming of the computer with the engine cold and it learned that the engine ran a particular way. So then if you try to start it when the engine is warm it thinks something is wrong and turns it off. Lets hope that was it; it certainly sounds like it could be. Here is a picture of all the wires I had to connect:



So I believe the Montego is pretty much ready for vacation now. It needs a good bath and a tire pressure check. We did get the laptop case in the mail yesterday and I have to say it is pretty cool, but I'm not so certain it will work. The laptop is like right in your face almost, especially for Grace since her car seat makes her closer to the seat in front of her anyway. So then I tried it behind the drivers seat and I'm not so sure that'll work either because then you have to turn the laptop to face Grace and the angle is weird and I'm not sure she'll be able to see the screen. Plus it will put the laptop right in front of the passenger sitting there - almost making you claustrophobic because it does take up quite a bit of space. We'll have to see what Julie thinks when she sees it tomorrow.

So then if you remember what we were doing this evening from above, you know we had a dilemma. We were supposed to babysit for our friends at 5pm and I wasn't certain when I'd be home. So I called Julie and asked her to leave work early so that at least one of us would be here before 5pm. As it turns out I beat her home by about 1 minute. Then since I wasn't home all day I had to go back out and get dinner because I wasn't home to cook. So that was my day...basically a waste of time except we did get Julie's car in tip-top shape for the trip. So now tomorrow I'll have to work on the house and get stuff ready for vacation. Grace didn't get to play with anyone today except the baby we were babysitting. So I'm guessing she'll need extra playtime tomorrow.

Well again I'm super sleepy so I'll write more tomorrow.