The Lessons to Be Learned...

If you don't pay your bills on time, things get shut off, ya know? In all my travels, I failed to get my electric bill taken care of. The neighbor who is getting my mail called on Friday to say that the power to my home in Plainfield had been shut off since Tuesday, and he had just noticed it. Oops! I got on the phone and got it taken care of, and the power was restored the same day, but that meant that everything in the refrigerator/freezer had been without cooling for four days...

Megan and Denis decided on Saturday morning that we all needed to drive to Plainfield to take care of the situation. I didn't think we needed to. The meat in the freezer would be refrozen and not in immediate need of disposal...and there wasn't all that much in the fridge...but I was out-voted. We got to Pfield close to dark on Saturday and launched into cleaning things up. Denis then used a floor machine to clean my kitchen floor (which was really, really dirty). Truth be known, I was happy to have the help, but there are still so many things to be done at their place in Illinois that I thought it could wait.

The biggest casualty of our long vacation trip from California to Illinois became Megan and Denis's minivan. It developed a sizeable oil leak, which they took for repairs last weekend. The mechanic declared that there was oil mixed with coolant throughout the engine and suggested a new engine. We had to take his word for it... Meg and Denis went out early in the week and came back with a 2009 Honda Odyssey. Nice buggy!

We are now back in Grayslake, IL. I'll be here for two more weeks, then headed to my home-on-a-slab in Indiana. It's been an interesting summer!