Diary of a madman

Well Christmas has come and gone and it's back to work for me. It's the first time ever that I've worked between Xmas and New Year. Everyone had a great time over the Festive period and think everyone got the presents they wanted from Santa. Mind you he needs to have a word with the Elves in the packing dept and tell them to stop using so many wire ties to hold them in the box.

I got a satnav system for the car which I've yet to install as the Beast is still grounded. I did get the new part from the stealership last friday but when I got home and opened the package up the new fan shroud was completely shattered. A new one is on order with an unknown delivery date.

Mrs P and I are now only 6 short weeks away from the newest member of the family joining us. We've still not discussed names very much although if it's a boy I want to call it Luke. This is purely for selfish reasons as I want to say "Luke, I am your father"

No smoke without fire

The Beast is temporarily 'dead' as I wait for a new part. Wednesday night on the way home from work it nearly caught fire when the electric cooling fan seized. Luckily I noticed smoke coming from the radiator and a strong burning smell just as I pulled into the driveway at home. I opened the hood and smoke poured out along with the horrid acrid smell of burning plastic. I dumped a watering can over it to cool it down before any flames started. The new part is dealer only as it's unique to this model car (and beacuse they didn't make many of this model there are no aftermarket parts) and costs a lovely $700 for a new one. They are on back order but they expect to be able to get me one within a week. Til then the Beast will remain sat in the front yard. I took the old one out this morning and I could hardly turn it by hand.

We almost bought a new house this week when we put in an offer on a 4 bedroom house that was foreclosed on. Mrs P scrambled round to get us a mortgage offer and we submitted this to the seller but they chose another buyer who had a cash offer. Mrs P is distraught but there will be others.

Back to school

Last week I went back to school to study the Fundamentals of Real Property Appraising. It was a week long course in Orlando and boy did they work us hard. There were about 50 people in the class from all over Florida from a variety of backgrounds and it didn't half show. Who wears shorts and flip flops on a training course??? IQ reducers (AKA baseball caps) were in attendance too, even while in the class room and hit a maximum on Tuesday and Wednesday when 6 people wore them! One bloke went for then ultimate in "fashion" by wearing his backwards...

The course culminated in an exam on Friday and I'm pretty confident that I've done ok. The pass mark is 70% and with 50 multiple choice questions that allows for 15 wrong answers!