Dakota just puked not once, but twice -- and both times it was on the carpet. Why can't our dogs ever barf on something easy to clean? We probably have 1800 square feet of laminate wood flooring in this house, yet she somehow always finds the 300 or so square feet that has carpet on it when she needs to ralph something up.

Well, I guess if I needed to throw up and I had the choice of either the bare floor or the carpet AND I didn't have to clean up the mess, I'd probably take the carpet, too.

Yesterday evening we put a posting on Craigslist for all the bricks that I pulled up when I redid the patio extension - they were free to anyone willing to drive over and haul them away. Our first response came within 5 minutes and we probably had another 8 responses in the next 15 minutes. In order to keep Selina's Gmail account from getting inundated with people asking if the bricks were still available, I decided it would be a good idea to go ahead and just pull the posting and deal the responses that we already had.

Man, I had no idea it would be that easy to get rid of old bricks.

Turned out that all that stuff I did to my car did not fix the issue -- during a trip back from visiting Selina's parents the Sunday after I worked on the car it started doing the old "you better not be in a hurry to get anywhere thing". At that point I had narrowed it down to a fuel delivery problem and the fuel pump was at the top of my list as the likely culprit.

Not really wanting to go through the hassle of buying the fuel pump (about $250), draining the fuel tank, removing the fuel tank, pulling out the bad fuel pump, installing the new fuel pump and then putting everything back together, I decided that it was time to take it to a shop. After asking some friends/co-workers who lived in Pflugerville for recommendations and then checking CitySearch and Yelp for reviews, I settled on the Automotive Specialists of Round Rock.

So I took the car in, described the whole not-being-able-to-accelerate problem, gave them the error codes that I pulled -- and even specifically mentioned that I thought it was the fuel pump. I did, however, say that I wasn't a mechanic and that I could be completely wrong. In retrospect, maybe that was the wrong thing to say...

Next day they called (after doing their own diagnostics) and they said that they thought it was just the post-cat O2 sensor (I had only replaced the pre-cat O2 sensor). Cost to replace (with taxes): $200. Although I knew that I could replace the same O2 sensor for less than half the price and I wasn't too clear on how the O2 sensor would cause the symptoms my car was experiencing, I just wanted my damn car back and I gave them the OK.

When I picked the car up, they told me that they couldn't reproduce the exact issue I was seeing, but that they did feel hesitation before that seemed to be cleared up after the O2 sensor was replaced. I paid my bill and proceeded to take my car home. At non-highway speeds, it seemed fine, but just to test the work that was performed (especially since I was still a little skeptical that the O2 sensor was causing the problem) I decided to take it out for a real road test. Seeing as the O2 sensor cost $200 and my post title references a price of $800, you can probably guess that the O2 sensor wasn't the problem.

Since the shop had already closed, I called and left them a message that it was definitely NOT fixed. They called me back the next morning and during lunch I drove back from work to the house, picked up my car, drove it over to the shop and explained to them that acceleration pretty much meant either trying to merge onto one of the freeways or trying to pass another vehicle. A few hours later, they called me back to let me know that they determined that it was the fuel pump -- yeah, didn't I say that at the beginning of this post?

Anyway, they said that they would pretty much compensate for the previous work done by knocking $200 off the price for the replacement of the fuel pump, which brought it down from $800 (which I was expecting to pay from past experience) to $600. So a $200 O2 sensor + a $800 fuel pump - $200 compensation = $800 for a car that I can actually drive, I now can stomp down on the accelerator and actually accelerate -- what a concept!

You know, I could have been really pissed about the whole O2 sensor thing with the guys at Automotive Specialists, but they really do seem like honest guys. When the guy called to let me know about the price of the fuel pump, he told me outright that they were going to compensate me for the O2 sensor work. I was planning on asking about it, but I didn't even have to. I'm keeping them in mind the next time I need major work done, but I think I'm going to make it a point to either tell them specifically what I want done (if I'm 99% sure I know what it is) or I will do a better job of questioning their logic when they come up with a remedy that seems a little odd to me.

As if dealing with rush hour traffic wasn't bad enough, Selina and I also had to deal with car troubles while trying to make our way home on Tuesday. There we were, driving down Exposition in order to avoid at least some of the idiots on Mopac, when all of a sudden my car decides that it's not going to go faster than 30MPH no matter how much gas I give it. WTF? I clicked on my emergency flashers and pulled into a side street to try and figure out what the hell was going on. At this point Selina and I are just wanting to get home, so I decide to push the limits of the car until (a) we get home or (b) the damn thing konks out.

Once I get back onto Exposition and drive a few blocks, I quickly realize that red lights and hills are suddenly my car's kryptonite -- and as much as I didn't like the idea, I was going to have to brave Mopac with a crippled car. I do OK until I hit the 183 interchange, at which time I'm forced to exit because I can no longer keep up with the flow of traffic. I ended up having to drive through the parking lot of the Arbor Walk shopping center in order to get to Braker/Burnet. A lot of back roads later, we finally made it to the house.

Still wondering what the heck the post title means? Well, those are the two codes that were spit out by the vehicle's on-board diagnostics (OBD). I used Selina's car to run to the local AutoZone and had the person there decipher the codes for me. Based on the codes, the description of the problem and what I saw under the hood, they recommended a new O2 sensor and possibly a new transmission pan gasket and/or oil pan gasket. Since I was already off today (Thursday), I decided to perform all three suggested tasks just to get everything out of the way at once (the car needed the oil and transmission fluid changed, anyway).

After spending all day in the garage getting every type of vehicle fluid imaginable on my arms, hands, face and clothes (ask Selina, I looked like a greasy bum), it seems like my little Neon is back up and running. I'd even venture so far as to say that she's down-right peppy. I'm sure hoping all that work solved the issue -- hate to have a repeat of Tuesday's fiasco on the roads of Austin. Since I had to dedicate the entire day to working on the car, it means that I'm a day behind on finishing my patio project that I started last weekend...gotta work double-time tomorrow on getting the rest of those paver stones laid down before Selina's birthday party!

I was going to wait until this coming Thursday/Friday (planned vacation days) to start working on the demolition/rebuilding of the terrible patio extension that was done by the previous owners, but since Selina's appendix decided that it wanted to make a grand exit on Friday morning, my weekend suddenly opened up (we had originally planned on spending the weekend in Houston so that we could attend Dzung's wedding reception). Even though Selina was sad that she couldn't help (I know she really wanted to), I needed to get started on this thing in order for it to be done by her birthday party.

So Saturday was demolition day. I'm not exactly sure how many bricks I pried up (it's a 10x9 square area), but I swear it was like a million of the damn things. I took the picture below about halfway through -- it's hard to tell, but the people put the bricks down without even leveling the ground, so it was about as even as a sidewalk in L.A. after an earthquake. After clearing the bricks, I did an initial leveling/tamping and then called it quits for the day.



Sunday morning was the start of the rebuild. I headed over to Lowes with a "$25 off $250" coupon in hand and proceeded to fill up two carts. One was loaded with 85 12x12 paver stones and 6 bags of paver sand. The other was filled with random equipment, which included a brand new circular saw and a fluorescent shop light. Since I have a small car, I also had to rent a truck from Lowes for $20 in order to get everything home. Weee! Lemme tell you, going from a Dodge Neon to a Chevy Silverado 2500HD is a big change. I'm used to being nimble and low to the ground -- being in that big truck initially made me feel like I was walking on stilts with sandbags tied to the bottoms. Took some getting used to, but I got the hang of it.



Anyhow, I arrived at the house, unloaded all the crap I bought and then took the truck back to the Lowes - made me think about how nice it would be to have a small truck or SUV as our second vehicle. I started laying the sand base -- and then I realized that I underestimated the coverage of the bags I had. Another trip was made (this time to the Home Depot, which is closer) for another 5 bags of sand. After getting the sand base set, I started laying the first two rows of paver stones. By that time it was getting late, so I just moved everything from the driveway to the back and will continue the process during the coming week. I'll be sure to post an update when the project is complete.

It's about 3:55AM (the automatic timestamp on the posting is an hour off) and Selina is resting up after her first visit to the hospital as a patient since she was born. She was having various levels of abdominal pain throughout the day, which only got worse when we got home and she took a nap, so off to the Seton emergency room we went.

After waiting around for blood work and CT scan results, the verdict finally came in -- her appendix was inflamed and needed to be removed ASAP. She was really nervous during the hours leading up to the surgery (I would have been, too) but she pulled through like the champ I know she is. Hooray for Selina!

I'd like to post more, but I'm dog-butt tired and I need to get at least a few hours of sleep while her parents are watching her before I relieve them in the morning.

Wait, it's already morning...