The News is Good — Janet Szabo

Kevin texted me a video of what they did to my car at the BMW dealer, starting with replacing the transfer case under the recall. The tech noted that the splines on the output shaft flange had gone bad—exactly what happened the first time—and there was no charge for that repair. The husband is hoping that this third transfer case has been remanufactured with better materials so that it does not also fail in another 30,000 miles. While running the full diagnostic panel, they found two other parts that needed to be replaced for an additional cost, so we had them do that and replace the battery as well. I am going to continue to drive this car as long as I possibly can.

Now I just need to retrieve it. Susan and her daughter are heading in that direction Thursday and offered me a ride, but that is the day I teach the serger class and I don’t want to risk not getting back in time. I have a couple of other options. Amtrak goes through Spokane, but the train gets in at 2 a.m. and I’d have to sit in a very sketchy train station downtown for a couple of hours. That’s not going to happen. Given the hiccups we had with the car hauling company, I am reluctant to use their services again.

I’ve never quite understood why there isn’t air service between Kalispell and Spokane. I looked into flying to Seattle, changing planes, and flying back to Spokane, but the ticket is close to $600. I could take the train overnight to Seattle for $49—it gets in mid-morning—Uber to the airport, and fly back to Spokane for $89, but that would take at least a couple of days.

I’ll figure something out. I know of a few other people traveling in that direction this week, and perhaps the timing will work out. I just don’t know how we would shoehorn a trip over there into the husband’s schedule right now, or he’d take me.

I met with the class coordinator at the quilt store on Thursday and we talked about additional serger classes for the fall. She agreed that I should see how this first class goes and talk to the students about scheduling other classes in the fall. I’m not crazy about teaching classes in the evening, but not everyone can make a daytime class.

Our employees were here yesterday morning, helping the husband load some things on the trailer, so he enlisted the help of two of them to move the new cutting table up to DD#2’s bedroom. (He treated the crew, including the mixer drivers, to lunch at a pizza place near the jobsite yesterday.)

That top is a jelly roll race quilt I made while I was in Alaska. The fabric is Deb Strain’s “Cultivate Kindness” line. I’m going to add a narrow border of red Kona and then a wider border of one of the prints in the top.

Now that I have my system back in place, I can organize and prioritize some future projects and finish existing ones. I probably won’t be doing any big quilt projects again until the fall, though. We had a frost warning for yesterday morning, so on Thursday (in the rain), I covered all of the plants with row cover or tarps. It did dip down to 32 degrees briefly yesterday morning, but everything seems to be fine. At least it wasn’t snow. I weeded the peas yesterday. It’s raining again now, which is wonderful even though it means that the yard and the garden will be a jungle again by the middle of the week. I’ve got a big batch of chicken stock simmering in the roaster that I’ll can and process tomorrow afternoon.

And I would be remiss if I did not note that tomorrow is National Sewing Machine Day. I was out in the old garage yesterday looking over some of my machines. A couple of them just need an hour or two of TLC to get up and running again. I am not lacking for projects.