Karma works

Back in spring I wrote on this blog about donating our used video game consoles and some games to a local after school community centre (their video game console had been stolen).  Since then, there's been some interesting things happen because of this.

Initially I went in and helped out a bit with some (attempted) redecorating in the centre and just chatting with the people who run it day to day.  Around mid-May I was contacted by someone who had passed my name on to the higher-ups in the community centre (they knew I was a graphic designer) and asked me to be involved in a summer activities calendar to be distributed to the schools here.  

The calendar was designed and done by the end of June and was received quite well (and I liked working on it because it was a fun change to do bright and colourful designs for kids!).  After that, I didn't hear anything back (and didn't expect to), until yesterday.

I had one of the women who was involved in the project call me up out of the blue to tell me that this calendar has been the topic of a few discussions with some key people in the community -- and that she'd like to ask if I would like to be involved with producing the calendar for the next THREE years.  (I said yes, of course!)

So I just thought it would be interesting to show how something that started out as a small deposit to our karma bank ended up being something much bigger!

Made it!

Well, Thursday take two! I finally made it to the step class that was going to take last week. It went about an hour long and *hurrah!* no 6-pack nazi instructor. I hate to be smug, but I really like it when there's people in the class worse than me! It was a nice change from the usual week routine and the class wasn't huge. I thought there would have been a lot more 'resolutions' keeners getting in on the class, maybe it's because it's at 9:15am and they don't turn out that early. :)

We also got Trevor's wheel back yesterday, all repaired! No more sinking our savings into a $550 wheel from Chrysler! The repaired wheel looks so good you wouldn't be able to tell where it happened (but I can, I have an eagle-eye *caw caw*). But it looks great and makes the other three wheels look like crap because they're all dirty and the repaired one is all *bling bling*. lol

Other than all that excitement, I've been trying to finish the pantry organization (slowed down a bit, I have to plan things out a bit more for optimum efficiency, lol!) and we went to Ikea on Tuesday night and bought a bunch of storage boxes (in green *lovely*, warm grey and white). I also bought two of these:They are glass and stainless steel (and wood somewhere), and can be wall mounted or have legs added to become a sideboard. So one's going next to my desk (where there's a heater, and mounted to the wall with the extra support from 2 legs) and the other is going under the 'fake-out' electrical panel (thanks to a 'Sarah's House' idea of mounting a frame with a hinge over top with a magnet closure, voila! no ugly panel!). Both are nice and compact and offer oodles of storage, which is what I need in here.

And I'm still basking in proud auntie mode. I went out and bought a little teddy bear for the little man that I had my eye on last night. *sigh!* Can't wait to meet him! But I've had word from the new mom that he gained 5 grams in weight yesterday, so it's just a matter of being patient and waiting for him to beef up and get strong.

And that's the sort of day it was yesterday...

Well, I didn't make it to class yesterday! (I think I had a good excuse though...) I had to go and rescue Trevor from a run in with this (keep in mind it was dark!):
I picked up the phone around 7:20am yesterday (insert Trevor's comment of 'after I called 16 times!' -- insert my comment of 'I couldn't hear the phone when I was in the bedroom!') and Trevor said that I needed to collect a few things from the garage because he not only had one, but TWO FLAT TIRES from hitting that pothole.

So I zipped up my on-call rescue gear (insert Trevor 'you're the worst on-call rescue, you took 45 minutes to get here' -- insert my 'I didn't hear the phone!' again) and gathered up the supplies from the garage. Good thing was that he hadn't made it to the freeway yet, so he was still close to home and (bonus) right behind a Shell station that also (bigger bonus) was beside a Starbucks! (Not that either was used, but still!)

Into the rescue auto I went, blasting down (okay, dramatic effect) the street and taking the same route that Trevor took that morning. As I was coming up to the gas station area, the car dipped on one side and BANG! I heard my tire take a beating. While sucking wind at that point, I knew that was the pothole Trevor had hit AS WELL.

I pulled into the back of the gas station and found Trevor's car parked and pulled up behind him. He got out of the car and I said, 'I think I know the pothole you hit, because I hit it too'. (Insert swearing here.) I first looked at his car and he had two completely flat-as-a-pancake tires. And I looked over at mine. One tire with a big goiter bump on the side of it. All write-offs. Luckily I didn't do as much damage as Trevor, but while we (okay, I held the umbrella, Trevor did all of the work) jacked up his car and put a spare on one of the wheels we watched to see if my tire was going to flatten as well. The on-call rescuer is good at taking pictures.
And it didn't which was really good, because this is what we had to do next:

Take the tire from Trevor's car and go to Costco (where the tires were from) to get replacements. This would have to be done one at a time. Costco didn't open until 10am, so we had to leave the car, go home, and wait until it opened. An hour and a half later we booted it down to Costco, waited outside freezing our bums off and were let in to the tire center there. All for them to say that his tires weren't in stock, but the Surrey location had two in.
The damaged rim and the flat-as-a-pancake tire. A Michelin to boot *sniff* (apparently a really nice tire). It was hit so hard the impact actually made it SPLIT.
So we had to go back to the car (because we're not making two trips to Surrey -- the original plan was to get one tire done and then drive Trevor's car back to the Costco for the other tire to be put on) and jacked up the front of the car (with the spare on the rear wheel) and took that tire off to take with us. Off to Surrey we went in my car, got to Surrey and found out that they could only put one tire on the rim because the other rim was damaged (think big dent). While we were there, we checked to see if my car could have new tires on to replace the damaged one (you can't just get one, unsafe! unsafe! lol) and we find out that my car is a 'special' case and there's no demand for that type of tire there, so it's not in stock. (1856014D's if you must know.)

And now we were on a mission to get a replacement rim, AND find my tires. We called the Chrysler dealership and they had one rim they could order in from Winnipeg, but we had to come in. Then we called another tire place and found that they had some BF Goodrich's that would fit my car. Okay, done and done. So back into the car (with the new tire - not mounted, the new mounted tire, and the bent rim). Off to the Chrysler dealership we go. Stand in line, find out that the new rim costs $540, order it anyways and head off to the other tire place for my tires. Get to the other tire place, get new tires on my car (almost $300 later), ask them about a place they recommend for rim repairs, and off we go to Surrey again. Get to the rim repair place, find out they're not sure if it can be repaired, but they'll give it a shot, dump the rim there and cancel the $540 rim at the Chrysler dealership. PHEW.

Now it's 2:30pm and we haven't even had time to eat lunch, Trevor has had a day off work and we're both cranky and can't believe how long it took to sort out a bunch of tires.