gah!…yesterday was a day that was out to get me.
Or at least the afternoon was – the morning was pretty much OK.
But after having picked Caitlin up, while sitting at a busy intersection waiting to turn right, the car stalled.
I tried to start it, and it didn’t want to…so we were stuck there with cars behind us, being impatient and not paying any attention to the fact that I’d put the hazard lights on. I called the NRMA, and they said they’d send someone out right away!…in 90 minutes.
After a little while of waiting, and poking around at anything that looked pokeable under the bonnet, I tried it again, and it started!…….and stalled again.
I was going to try to push the car round the corner to the left – as there was no way I was going to be able to get it through the intersection to the right, and even if I did, there was no where I could stop that way – so it would have to be left. But that wasn’t possible because it was such a busy intersection that there were always cars in the two lanes beside me.
Eventually it started again – and kept running this time, and it happened to coincide with a break in the traffic, so I got it round the corner onto Wakefield ave, and drove it up on to the grass (As it was a no stopping zone), and sat there with the engine running, wandering what to do. I didn’t really trust it to get me home, having stalled a few times now, but at the same time, I didn’t want to wait an hour and a half just to have it working fine when the NRMA got there.
However, it stalled again, so that pretty much answered my question for me.
By that point Caitlin was getting bored of looking out for the NRMA truck, so she clambered into the back and got out my laptop so she could play some games – which predictably enough caused the guy to turn up ;)
I described the symptoms to him, and he said You’re out of petrol!.
I said – but I’ve got a quater of a tank left!, and he said, well it definitely sounds like you’re out of gas to me.
So he emptied the contents of the can he had with him into the tank, and it started fine – but that didn’t prove anything because I’d mananged to start it ok before too. He suggested that my fuel gauge must be faulty….but personaly I couldn’t really see how that could be – I’m always aware of how much petrol I have, and I should have had another day’s trip to work and back before the warning light even came on – and that comes on when “Distance till empty” on the trip computer says about 80km. But anyway, we then followed him round to the nearest servo where I filled the car, and his can for him – which came to a total of 56 litres. So there’s no way I could have been out – I’ve got a 70 litre tank. I frequently put around 60 litres in when I fill up, and I’ve even had times when it’s taken up to 67, and I’ve never run out before.
But it got me home without a problem, and got me to work and back again today with no problem, so it would seem that it was related to the fuel level in SOME way at least.
I had planned to make some biscuits with Caitlin when we got home – and fortunately we still appeared to have enough time, so we headed to the shops to get ingredients.
When we got home, I decided that it was probably best if I just made the biscuits on my own, since time was short, and Caitlin was desperate to get on the computer so she could attend to her neopets (I’m still not sure what I think of neopets at this point, but it seems harmless enough so far, and I haven’t seen any evidence of the gambling games that gave it some bad press here in Australia yet)
In making the biscuits I learnt a valuable lesson – never grab a recipe from the internet at the last minute. Oh, and I need some scales…..I thought I’d bought some a while ago – but I must have imagined it.
So, scaleless and with a recipe that of course measured all its dry ingredients in grams, I had to do some creative measuring. The caster sugar was easy – because I’d just bought a new bag of it, so I just found out how many cups that was, and divided by how much I needed, for the cocoa I figured about 2 tablespoons, becuase that’s pretty much how much you always use, and for the cornflakes (I was making Afghans…yummy) I just kinda winged it.
I managed to cream the butter and sugar (I need an electric beater or a cake mixer, beating something with a wooden spoon is painful, literally), but then I got to the next step -mix in the cocoa, cornflakes, and flour….flour??…WHAT FLOUR??, there’s no F***KING flour in the ingredients!!. I had noticed that earlier, and thought it odd, and checked the list a few times to make sure I wasn’t mistaken…but unfortunately I wasn’t bright enough to check the method to see if there was any reference to it there.
That left me with a problem – I had flour, but I had no idea how much to use, or if it should be plain flour, or self – raising, or something completely bizarre.
A quick search on the net for alternative recipes was futile, because all the other recipes were completely different to each other – some used plain flour, some used self raising, some even had eggs in them….
In the end I figured it’d be plain flour – cause they’re supposed to be fairly flat crunchy biscuits, not cakey, and guesed about half a cup, ’cause that seemed about right.
I finally battled the mixture into something vaguely resembling what it should probably be like, and bunged what would fit on a tray, shoved it in the oven and went to pour myself a glass of coke.
I had an open bottle that was about 2 weeks old in the fridge, and an unopened one that was about a week old – so I figured it was time for the open one to go, and tipped it down the sink, then opened the newer one, and poured myself a glass.
But it was partly frozen…gah!, so it had gone all funny, like partly frozen coke does…
Then Emma turned up, and needed to go to the shops, so she said she’d grab a new bottle of coke.
So I put dinner in the oven (pizza), and tipped the half frozen coke down the sink.
Then Emma got back, but hadn’t bought any coke, because it would all be warm, and she’d figured the partly frozen coke would be better than warm coke.
I got a LOOK when I told her I’d tipped it….heh.
So, I had milk with dinner…
Fortunately the rest of the evening was OK…the biscuits turned out pretty good, altough they looked disturbingly crumbly when I took them out of the oven, and Emma iced them using icing she made with some chocolate melts she bought while at the shops (I was just gonna do the cocoa, icing sugar and water type icing), so they ended up pretty much perfect…heh.
But I’m still not suprised I woke up with a headache this morning….blah.