So far so good…the pump’s doing fine, the old one probably can be fixed…

The kittehs have their annual shots, and tags, and are none the worse for wear—we had a little set-to with Shu, who is perhaps just a wee bit spoiled and believes he runs the household…but he has his shots now.

The faithful Forester, 120,000 miles, is in the shop being serviced: we thought we were going to have to do the timing chain this round, but turns out we got that at 90,000 miles, so now it’s all the belts and fluids: it’s running really well, and we just want to be sure while the car is old, the oldness does not extend to its wear-out-able parts. The engine runs great. This is going to be spendy, but it beats paying for a whole car, or fixing it AFTER things have gone wrong. Seems the tires are going to be ok for a bit, but I’m going to talk with them about it—tires are cheaper than fenders if they’re getting iffy about skids. I tend to spring for 100,000 mile  all-weathers that really will affect handling: an extra margin of safety and agility if some ditz ahead of me decides he’s missed his exit at 70 mph or if a badly-loaded table leaves a truck and bounces my way (had both happen.) And we have serious snow and ice up here. Sooooooo we’ll think about the tires.