The All-New Bunrab

Quick notes: I haven't had time to read my flist for the past three days; if you've had momentous news and I've failed to comment on it, please forgive me; I'll try to catch up later, but we didn't bring our own computer and don't want to hog our friends', so I'm not reading everything.
We've seen Liz and Joe already, and we went to the rehearsal tonight of our former band. There is a tornado warning in effect, and a forecast of 3-inch hail. I didn't really MISS weather reports like that, you know.
Our rental car is an incredibly bright red; our friends Larry and Jeanne from the band have nicknamed it the Tomato Express.
Rob, you'll be glad to hear that practically everybody here is wearing flip-flops; we noticed that almost the instant we got off the airplane. (I will get around to offering my congratulations to landley and fadethecat later, I promise. Sorry we had to miss the wedding!)
Wednesday will be a visit with squirrel_magnet's dad, among other things, as well as squirrel_magnet's birthday. Happy birthday, you!

The emergency brake on the car decided to freeze up this morning, as we were leaving to go to the house we're buying, to meet the home inspector. We rapidly switched to my bike, which got us there, but is not really meant to transport two people for more than a few miles. S and I together outweigh the bike. S's bike hasn't been running for a while, and at the moment we haven't located the key for it anyway; it was somewhere in the kitchen in the old house, and probably Rob and Fade packed it neatly, and if we could find ALL the boxes labeled Kitchen, we'd find the key. But meanwhile, that bike isn't working anyway. So my bike is our only vehicle.

That meant we skipped going to the music-sorting party up in Bel Air this evening, getting all the old music out of folders and new music in, in preparation for the upcoming season - rehearsals start next Monday. Because my bike is DEFINITELY too small to carry 2 people 40 miles up the interstate highway at speed. We do need to have the car fixed by next Monday - not only will the bike really not carry us both to Bel Air, it most assuredly won't carry us and the tuba and the tenor saxophone.

We did make a quick trip out this evening, to return some library books and get supper - a few miles on local roads. By the time we finished supper, it was full dark, and cooled off to about 70 degrees. Which means that it's even a slight chill when one adds a 45-mph wind-chill to it. While I hate riding pillion, 'cause I get horrible cricks in my neck, and while my bike is not the right bike for the job, I have to admit it is still romantic, as it was when we were first dating, to be riding along a twisty road in the moonlight with a slight breeze.

We didn't manage to locate a mechanic this afternoon; we have towing coverage through our roadside service, Better World, so once we can set a service appointment up for a definite time and place, we can get the car towed there.

The home inspection didn't show any major problems. Several things in need of improvement or maintenance, but no big issues. The slope of the land toward the foundation/basement isn't ideal, but then, that seems to be an issue everywhere. No water seems to have gotten into the basement; there's no mold, no water damage marks, none of that stuff. We're going over the report to see whether we want to ask the sellers to do any of little fix-ups needed. While we were there, I went around with a measuring tape and figured out where all our furniture would fit. I need to do up a more or less to scale sketch of it, to try several things out. If I can find the graph paper...

We were also going to do things today like mail off my old hard disk to the recovery company, and mail a box of books to my friend Cindy's library, but, no room for parcels on the bike. Grrrr. I hate cars. Even more because sometimes one needs one, and that's right when it decides to break down!!