(written on the 26th and 27th from notes taken previously)
I was up a lot earlier than I wanted to be, getting maybe 5 hours of sleep.
Not so good after the significant lack of sleep yesterday and the ongoing lack of sleep from the last week or so.
And boy was I groooggy! 🙃
My first order of business was to put the new registration stickers on my van, but… I couldn’t find them.
The super expensive overnight UPS service said that it had been delivered, and when I looked up the delivery information, there was a picture right there showing the envelope on the porch, but all I could see in the van was an Amazon envelope that had come for something I had gotten Cory while I was in New Zealand.
I messaged my sister Heather and also Cory about it, and I talked to Colleen (Cory’s wife), and she said she had put an envelope in the bucket, and I remember getting something out of the bucket last night, but the only envelope I could find this morning was the Amazon one, so I figured that’s the one that I pulled out of the bucket last night.
The only thing in the UPS envelope was just paper and stickers, so it weighed pretty much nothing, so I wondered if maybe it blew off the porch and into the bushes, so I scoured the bushes around Cory’s front porch, and then I walked around the church that’s across the street that would have been sort of a stop for the envelope had it blown that way (the wind was blowing in that direction).
I looked all over for it and was pretty much resigned to likely needing to drive around Utah and back to South Dakota without the new registration stickers. I looked up my registration online and found where I could prove that my registration was indeed up to date just in case I got pulled over (something much more likely when my exhaust pipe is missing, and the vehicle isn’t so quiet 😅).
Speaking of not so quiet, when I went to start the van, the catalytic converter still not attached (I’d removed it so as not to have it stolen while the van sat there for months and months), it fired up with a roar so loud it scared me. 😆
Since I had yet to find the stickers, I decided to do a little bit of working on the van. I had removed the weather stripping from the rear passenger door of Cory’s van to replace the damaged weather stripping on my own, and I had ordered extra clips to reinstall the weather stripping with fresh clips, so I took some time to replace that seal.
Hopefully that’ll help keep dust out of the back when driving down dirt roads. 🤞
I also reinstalled the starter fuse that I had removed (also for security purposes). Cory reinstalled it a couple of times to fire up my van and make sure that it ran at least a few times while I was gone. 🙏 And each time he started it, he would remove the fuse again and keep it tucked away safely in the house. When I got here last night, or I guess better said in the wee hours of the morning, he had put the fuse in an envelope on the driver’s seat for me. 🙏
I spent some time cleaning out my van a little bit, trying to organize everything and get it ready to drive away. I’m the process, I lifted my backpack off the extra driver seat that I had sitting stored inside, and lo and behold, there was the little white envelope with my registration stickers inside!
🙃
Apparently, I was so tired last night that I grabbed the envelope without recording in my memory that I had grabbed a white envelope out from under the bucket, so once out of sight, I was done for.
Poor Heather, Cory, and especially Colleen (Colleen had done exactly perfectly by putting the envelope inside the bucket), all having to deal with a little bit of angst because of my dead brain. 😅
I don’t think it was even two minutes after I found the envelope, that I looked up the street and saw Cory driving toward me, and I excitedly held up the envelope in the air shaking it.
I gave Cory a big hug, and we chatted for a little while. 😊 One of the things we talked about was my travel schedule and my trying to figure out whether or not I should cancel my flight to Arkansas because of the issue with my cracked tooth.
I was debating whether to cancel the ticket and make an appointment with my dentist in South Dakota to get it figured out and fixed as quickly as possible, so as to not risk greater damage, or whether I should just continue with the trip, and try to be super duper careful.
Cory suggested that he call his dentist to see if they might have an opening, and I was a little concerned about the possibility of having to pay for an emergency visit, not wanting to spend a bunch of money, but surprisingly, they actually had an opening for the afternoon, and I made an appointment. 🙏
Cory had to go to work, so I bid him farewell, and then got to work reinstalling the catalytic converter on Rover.
Wish there were a way to reinstall the exhaust as well without welding it, but… nope.
Oh well.
In the process of cleaning up and organizing and everything, I noticed that my driver’s front tire was so worn down that one side of it was separating with metal showing.
I had thought that I had fixed that?
😅
Apparently not.
I think I have a vague memory of that being on the list of things I think I was supposed to do my very last day before leaving for New Zealand, and it didn’t end up getting done because the tire shops were busy for my last-minute wants.
Something like that.
So I called the local Big O Tires that was just a handful of blocks away, and they quoted me a surprisingly good price and had a bay open and available, so I popped right on over, showed them my spare tire, and they inspected it to make sure it wasn’t too old, and then got to work.
While they got going on my tire, I charged my phone at their little charging station (nice of them to provide that for customers 🙏).
The tire was replaced rather quickly, and I headed to Macey’s to grab some food, as my cupboards were bare, so to speak.
I didn’t really do much to stock up my cupboards. Tortillas and juice, maybe? 😅
Not much.
But I’m already grateful for the plethora of trash cans everywhere in Utah. 😁
The dentist visit went fine. They confirmed the AI diagnosis of a shallow crack. They didn’t think a Root canal is going to be necessary, but they did recommend a crown.
$1700. 😶
Eat fewer chips? 😅
With an understanding of the issue, and that it could definitely worsen over time, both by the possibility of deepening the split and by infection or increased decay within the crack, and knowing that I would at least get account credit for the value of the flight that I canceled, I went ahead and canceled my flight to Arkansas and made an appointment with my dentist in South Dakota.
I’m crossing my fingers that maybe the issue was actually a mistake made by the South Dakota dentist because the tooth that has the crack in it was actually one that they put a filling in when I was there last year.
Would be nice if it turns out to be a warranty repair. 🙃
🤞
I made some progress toward the renewal tags for Happy for my mom. I was able to do the assessment online, so now I just need to order the renewal tags. That’s on the to-do list now, but I’ve got to wait for the email notification that the assessment has been completed.
I stopped off at a Chase Bank to get an idea of how much I would lose by changing my New Zealand and Fiji dollars back into American, and the answer is about 10%.
😶
That’s such an exorbitant fee, if you ask me.
Good golly.
Instead of taking the hit, I decided to try posting an ad on Facebook Marketplace to see if anybody wanted to buy New Zealand cash for the going rate, as It would be good for anybody wanting to get New Zealand cash, because they wouldn’t have to pay the exchange fees either.
Oh, the banks say there are no fees, but the exchange rate they give you is terrible compared to the actual market value of the money.
Grrrr.
Maybe it’s not greed. Maybe it really does take that amount of peopled labor change the money, and they have to pay the labor for the people who physically move the money from place to place.
🤷
After running all my in-person and online errands, I headed to Cory’s mom’s house, as that’s where Corey spends most of his nights while taking care of his mom, and I chatted with both of them for a little while and then sat outside chatting with Cory about gospel stuff, taking advantage of AI resources as steady helps.
I don’t trust AI for facts so much, as it can be wrong on a regular basis, but for gathering up ideas that others have had and posted on the interwebs, it’s a fantastic resource for broadening understanding and perspective.
It’s like being able to tap into the ideas and insights of millions of people within seconds. An opportunity I very much appreciate. 🙏
Cory let me go ahead and crash in the driveway of his mom’s place for the night, so that’s where I am. The numbness in my leg continues. It’s changed a little bit and then changed back. It was numb only down by my ankle at first, but then it added a section going up my shin bone to just below my kneecap, a strip on the front of my leg maybe a couple of inches wide.
Really hoping I can get this figured out before nerve damage becomes permanent. 😅
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 