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The other night I blew a tire while attempting to pick Miguel up from work. I hadn't wanted to get him because I had the premonition that something was going to go wrong with the van, though that could have also just been because the vehicle seems to be nearing the end of its life. When I brought the van in to get a new tire the guy who sold it to me said the tire had blown because I needed an alignment.The guy I wanted to bring the van to had coincidentally just torn out his alignment rack because he was moving his shop, so at his suggestion we ended up dropping it off at Big O Tires on this morning to have the van looked at and hopefully aligned. Luckily Big O is located downtown so it was an easy walk for us to go down to the Starbucks slash Barnes n Noble so Az could get some breakfast. After sort of reading a couple of books at Barnes n Noble (there was too much to look at to really settle down with a book) we headed out to continue walking and I got a call that my van was ready; it had not been aligned because there were too many other problems. The guy said that he would charge me $500 and cautioned me that he was able to turn my tires by hand 90 degrees from left to right. So we spent most of the rest of the day on foot.

This meant we spent the rest of the morning at the park, where Az opted to be swung the entire time. I don't think she really minded not having a vehicle. In the afternoon we did have to drive over to pick Z up from school, and then we parked by the tae kwon do school until he had class there. We had a few more hours to kill, without the convenience of a park nearby so we ended up at Taco Bell. I'm not a huge fan of fast food to begin with, but Taco Bell is one of the chains I especially try to stay away from. (The other is McDonald's. I think I've been to exactly five of them in the past 22 years, and every time was under great duress. Well, except for the time I was pregnant with Z and had a ginormous craving for Chicken McNuggets with sweet and sour sauce.) Funnily enough the shopping center where Z's tae kwon do is located features both a Taco Bell and a McDonald's. Again, I don't think either of the kids particularly minded our predicament of having to eat at one.

Scenes from a nice quiet meal with the kids.