2009 - The New Year

Part of my New Year’s Resolutions is to try to update my blogs at least once a month. We are also at http://cweintz.spaces.live.com, which is a MSN site. Since there are a few family members already on BlogSpot, I decided to keep a blog here as well.

Here is a quick update on our lives; Darren is still looking for work. He has been doing some inspections on the side, but it is not enough work to live off of. The inspection jobs are from warranty companies that need a non-biased opinion of the repairs needed on the car. So here is how it works, you take your car in to be repaired under warranty, the mechanic does his thing and says what needs to be done, the service writer or manager calls the warranty company to get a claim number for the job, if the warranty company wants a "second opinion" the call an inspection company that they have a contract with. The inspection company will call their inspectors in the area to see who can do the job, and give him the necessary information about the car and which dealership to go to. When the inspectors get to the dealership, they document what the customer complaint was, what the mechanics solution was, take pictures and do a visual inspection of the car as to the cause of the problem. Darren really enjoys doing these inspections, he is currently with 3 inspection companies, but only 1 is using him on a "regular" basis. He was hoping that this would keep him busy, but it is very sporadic, one week he will get 3 or 4 inspections and then he won't have anything for 2 or 3 weeks. He is going to start applying to some of the hardware/home improvement stores in the area, so we will see if that leads to anything.

So far we have been enjoying the seasons, the fall colors were gorgeous and then all of a sudden Mother Nature decided it was winter and the snow came in. We had a "White Christmas" followed by some rain and by New Year’s most of the snow was gone. I am learning how to drive in the snow and ice which is an adventure in itself, but most of the time I have Darren "Drive Miss Daisy" (me) to work in the Jeep. We have decided that I need to get new tires so I can have better traction in the snow and ice. Who knew that you needed to have multiple sets of tires living in the Midwest?