Monday-Wednesday, July 20-22, 2009

Monday was a stay at home day. It began raining and rained off and on all day. We did things around the trailer until about noon, when I decided to go up to the International truck dealer in Houston to have some work done to the truck or to at least make an appointment to have the work done. I had tried repeatedly to get through on the telephone but no one answered in the service department. I needed to have the transmission serviced by an Allison dealer, since it has not been done by a dealer since I have owned the truck. I checked on the website for Allison transmission service and had found the International dealer as being the closest location. When we got there, I realized why they had not answered the phone, this is a very busy place! We made the appointment for tomorrow morning, so we came back home.

Tuesday morning we got up and left for Houston about 8 o'clock. When we got into Houston, there was a serious accident near the 610 loop, which is where we needed to go, so it was very slow going. We arrived a little after 9, and dropped the truck off in their preventive maintenance shop. We went to the customer waiting room, but were soon called out to speak with the CSR that had waited on us. He told me that there was a serious problem found with the front end of the truck, so since we were leaving on a trip soon, I told him to go ahead with servicing the transmission and to do the work on the front end. About 12:30, I went out to check on the truck progress. I learned that the transmission work had been done, but the front end work had not begun. The truck had to be taken into another shop to have this work done, so I checked with one of the CSR's there. He did not know anything about my truck, but soon found out that the service manager had been told about it, but had apparently forgotten about it. He said that as soon as he could he would have someone start the work. He came back after more than an hour and told me that the GM dealer did not have my part in stock, but that an O'Reilly Auto parts store had what I needed. He said that if I wanted to go pick it up, they would install it for me. The savings for me picking the part up was about $300, so of course I went and got the part. By the time we got back, we had lost our place in the production line, so it was almost 5 o'clock before we left. Wow, what began as a routine service ended up taking all day long and cost about $800. I'm just glad they found the problem and got it repaired so we weren't broken down on the side of the road. The transmission shifts perfectly again too, so it was a good day.

We stopped off at the Luby's restaurant for supper, since neither of us had eaten all day. The food was good, but very over priced. The thing that attracted me to stop there was their sign that they had lowered the price of 100 items, but I didn't eat any of those.

Wednesday we went over to the house to work. Stella worked inside and I cleaned up the yard. I wanted to stay on top of the grass and not let it get into the same situation it was in when we got back. Man, I don't know how those yard guys do it, I couldn't work more than 45 minutes to an hour before having to stop for a short break to cool off. Of course, they are younger than me and used to doing this type of work in the heat. I think the yard looks good and it didn't cost me anything other than a lot of sweat. We came home about 4 o'clock after getting a lot done. Stella fixed us some of her delicious tacos for supper.

Although we didn't miss the television when it was out, it is nice to have it back.

So long.