How to Have Fun on a Sunday Night in Arkansas

Yesterday after church Jax and I managed to have more fun than should be legally allowed. Most of it was planned, but some of it just sort of happened on its own.

First up, after dropping Grandma off from church we went home and changed clothes. I know, the excitement just built up to such a crescendo that you can barely contain your enthusiasm... We changed so we could go to an open house and wander around getting a realtor's hopes up. It just so happened that this particular open house was being put on by someone I went to high school with, so aside from looking and learning about features we will want in our future house, but I actually got to catch up with someone I hadn't seen in about 14 years. Granted, Laura didn't like it when we realized that we hadn't seen each other in 14 years, but mostly that was because it made us both feel old...

Anyway, next up was picking up Dougy and Granny and chauffeuring them down to White Hall for dinner. Except for one small, teensy detail. Dougy sort of left his meds at home, so we had to turn around and go get his meds so he wouldn't end up unconscious on the ground. Fortunately he realized his mistake while we were still in Little Rock, so we didn't have to go too far back, but it did cut into our gas reserves.

After making it down to White Hall we all had a good time celebrating Father's Day in our traditional manner: with meat and potatoes heaped upon our plates. After dinner I fell asleep on the couch for a while, which is also traditional. After a while the youngest Pearce showed up and swept us all up in her own personal whirlwind. Sadly we all had to return to Little Rock shortly after she appeared.

When we left, at first we didn't notice anything in particular. While we were still on the small roads in White Hall I thought I heard an odd sound but wasn't particularly worried about it. However, when I got the car sideways* pulling onto the "big" road, the odd sound got louder and didn't go away. I didn't notice the car handling weird or anything, so I applied the traditional fix of ignoring it until it went away. When the stubborn sounds wouldn't go away, I pulled off the road to check the tires only to find that the driver's side rear tire was completely flat. So I had the chance to change a tire on the side of the road, which I haven't had to do in several years. I've had more engines fail than tires in the last five (5) years, which perhaps tells you more than you want to know about the sort of cars I've been driving...

Anyway, Dougy was also helpful in the tire-changing process, making it go by much quicker than the last time I changed one. When we finished and got back into the car with it's miraculous air conditioning, the temperature gauge on the dash said it was about 86 degrees. At 10:15pm. I felt like I could have used a spoon to scoop up some extra air and stuff it back into the tire...

Sadly, since we have never needed our doughnut spare tire before, it was also a bit low on air, so we stopped a couple of miles up the road for air and gas, due to our fuel reserves being depleted with the extra trip into Little Rock earlier in the day. When I got out of the car at the gas station, the windows had fogged up to the point that I couldn't see out of mine at all, and most of the others had pretty well become useless as well. Daggum heat.

After getting gas and air, we finally returned to Little Rock, only an hour later than we had planned. Hooray! Then today we went and got a new tire. Jax will surely make a post about the tire itself, including the pictures we took this morning when we discovered how bad the hole was, but I don't have the camera or memory card with me, so I can't.

*By "sideways" I mean that I gently pulled out onto the road. However, I do have a reputation to maintain...