My new toy

So last weekend I had a momentary lapse of sanity. This now sits in my garage:

I decided Shanequa was not going to be a functional vehicle when it came to transporting things, namely house related items and my motorcycle. It's also supposed to be a doozy of a winter here, and she defintely is not a winter car. So I now own a 4x4 truck. It's pretty nice, a 2007 Nissan Frontier. It came with the topper on the back, which is nice for keeping things dry since it rains every now and then here. The hardest part of adjusting to it has been the gas mileage. It gets half of what I was getting with the car. Since I travel 120 miles a day to and from work, that adds up way too fast. The only reason I'm not totally freaking out about this is when I switch over to working for Clement Group in two weeks, I get a gas card for that travel.

The bad thing about this truck is apparently Nissan put together a whacked out set-up where the coolant somehow leaks into the auto transmission fluid. Not a good mixture. I, of course, didn't know this when I bought the truck. The only reason I discovered this is it makes a weird vibration noise at certain times. Upon researching this on-line, I discovered it's common in these trucks. Nissan knows about it, but apparently won't step up to take ownership and fix it. So I'm talking to the dealership to see if they will fix it. The lesson here, which I didn't realize - call me naive I guess - is that a dealer does not have to fix a used car before putting it on the lot. They should disclose anything, but it's not necessarily their responsiblity to do that. And their out is you sign an As-Is document when buying the car. Fortunately I bought the extended warranty, so hopefully that helps. So, wish me luck on this, we'll see how it goes.

Other than that, not much going on. Work is picking up, finally. It will be a challenging project just in the fact the Corps team we are working with has absolutely no experience in construction. We can't figure out how that is, but somehow they got the job. I have already had one blow out with their project manager, and I'm sure it won't be the last one. We also just got the approval for the second building to start, so it's going to get pretty busy shortly.

I started the process of changing my name back to just Dixon. What an effort. Too many trips to too many places to prove who I am. This week some time I get to sit at the social security office with the crazies to get that one done.

Today I decided to be adventurous and make cinnamon rolls from scratch. In my effort to keep things as healthy as possible, I used whole wheat flour. I also didn't put much sugar and cinnamon on them. So they came out looking good, but they tasted like wheat bread. Without the sweetness. So I whiffed on those. I will try again though, it's a new challenge.
Anyway, here's to another fun week. Hope everyone has a great one!!