100k

My 99 Tacoma will soon cross the 100,000 mile mark.  I bought the truck used in 2001 with around 30,000 miles on it.  The truck has been more or less bulletproof since I have owned it.  Sure there have been some annoyances but they all had to do with the prior owner not disclosing that his son had an accident with the truck.  The accident was the cause of the maddening random squeal I would hear from the drive shaft.  A poor quality repaint of certain areas from the repair also has resulted in the clear coat peeling off on some top areas hit hardest from the sun.  The only thing I have had to do that was outside of normal maintenance was have the starter replaced in 8 years of ownership. 

When I purchased the truck I decided to grab an extended warranty from the credit union for it.  I never used the coverage once.  The starter conveniently failed a few months after the coverage expired.  It’s been a great truck for me that has been a crucial part of so many home improvement projects that I’ve lost count.  I have no plans of getting rid of it anytime soon.  Hopefully if the refinance goes through I can stop procrastinating about a couple maintenance items that need to be addressed.  It’s been a GREAT truck.

Yesterday a guy came out to template our counters.  The way Ali described it, he basically built a thin wood template of our existing counters.  That template will be used to cut out our new granite counter tops.  It’s pretty exciting that things are actually happening.  After work last night I used the last of my Xmas gift cards at Home Depot to buy a new GE reverse osmosis system to get installed at the same time as the new counter tops.  They had two GE systems there, one was roughly $100 more than the other.  I opted for the more expensive system for a few reasons. 

If any of you have an older under the sink RO system and have ever attempted to change the filters in them, especially the DE filter, you know how much of a pain in the ass it is.  Well the system I got has super simple screw on, screw off filters (that sounds funny).  It also is a space saving design that attaches to the wall of cabinet instead of taking up floor space.  Yea the filters are more expensive to replace.  I’ll pay the extra dollars to avoid what is typically a very wet and curse word filled filter changing experience that has been the norm for the last 7 years.

We are supposed to go to our former neighbor’s new place Saturday night for dinner.  We need to mow the grass this weekend.  Another thing I grabbed at HD was a bag of weed and feed specifically a type to control dollar weed (or as we call it, Creeping Charlie).  The area of our yard around the pond/orchard is INFESTED with dollar weed.  Dollar weed is an extremely invasive, vine-like weed that spreads like mad.  It will overtake an area in no time, choking out anything else.  Ali hates it as she is constantly pulling out of landscaped areas.  Well enough is enough.  I am hoping this stuff will get rid of this shit once and for all. 

The rest of the weekend will hopefully be enjoyable.  I don’t see why it shouldn’t be.  I’m hoping to put in 3 miles plus on the treadmill over lunch.