Van repair and Autumn Ball

Thursday, October 17th.

Last night Jens had decided to camp out in the van while Dan slept on the floor in Susie's room. She got up early this morning to go work on some of her glasswork to get it ready for a show in Milwaukee tomorrow evening. She let us sleep in, though, so we waited to get up until a few hours later. After having a bite to eat together with Isaiah, who was cleaning up after his brewing experiment the night before, we drove over to the studio where Susie was working to see her glass art. She's working on a fascinating ancient technique of making two-dimensional pictures by melting together long strains of glass and slicing off thin pieces that form the image of a face. She also took time to demonstrate the actual glass blowing technique to us even though she was still far from having everything ready for her show. Before we left we got her and her friend Laura, who we'd met the night before at her house, to join us for a couch picture outside the studio. Then we gave Susie a ride back to her house, managing to fit both her and her bike in the back of the van!

After saying goodbye back at her house we left her wonderful world and drove back out on the beltline around Madison headed for a place we really didn't want to go: the Ford dealership and service station. With the gorgeous but intimidating (and cold) Rocky Mountains looming in the horizon of our travel plans we had decided to take the opportunity to have the van looked over. Wednesday morning we'd had the heater looked at, but as we'd feared to mechanic's conclusion had been that we'd need to replace it, which was $200 we didn't really want to spend. But we still wanted to have the engine looked over since the problem we'd been having with the van not starting up very well seemed to persist. So we spent the afternon at the Ford dealership while they replaced the fuel pressure regulator which had apparently gone bust and was causing the entire engine to overwork itself. We decided to believe that explanation and paid the unpleasant $280 bill that followed. It was of course money we didn't want to have to spend, but we tried to convince ourselves that it would be well worth it if it meant having a trustworthy vehicle that we dared drive into the desert and also quietly hoping that perhaps this would also have a positive effect on our pathetic gas mileage.

That evening we had dinner with Dan's grandmother and aunt again and spent the evening with them. At one point we decided to head out for ice cream and swung by the dining hall on the way out to check out the Autumn Ball that was being held for all the residents. A group of UW college students had come there as volunteers and were having a great time dancing with the residents. We met an older lady named Marcel who thought we should also dance and went out to find us each a cute college girl to dance with :) The music for the dance was played by a small "big band' playing old Glen Miller tunes so it wasn't exactly the kind of music we're used to dancing to but neither were the girls so it was quite fun. Dan's grandmother didn't feel like dancing but instead he got Marcel out on the floor for a dance.

The party broke up around 9pm after which we headed out for ice cream at Ella's Deli on the other side of town. The walls and ceiling of the Deli are decorated with all sorts of mechanical dolls that wave their arms or bicycle around or do little dances. And each table is a little showcase containing everything from a PEZ dispenser collection to a pinball machine or a small model train. Quite the festive place. And the ice cream is great too! Not a bad way to end a good evening.