Brian’s job is sooooo rough… Myrtle Beach this week, Atlanta next week… just off playing with toys and making people happy. If I believed in reincarnation, Brian would be my shining example — that man must have done something pretty darn good in a past life to deserve the one he’s living now.

I’ve been working a little more with off camera flash and it’s all still kind of fuzzy, but since I can’t bounce off the ceiling or walls in this house (green walls, people), I practiced bouncing off of some of the only neutrals in the house — the kitchen blinds. Half of them are neutral, at least. We won’t discuss the green ones they put over the sink.

Hard to focus in a self portrait, sorry… but I think the lighting worked well.

Breakfast with the kids. He’s so focused on her.

Sometimes he looks like such a young man, but in this picture he really still looks like a baby to me. Almost 6… SIX!

And my self portraits… a haze over both because the focus wasn’t perfect, but really… not possible.

AND… Happy Birthday to Me! It doesn’t really bother me, but I do find it kind of funny that I’m spending my birthday here while Brian parties in Myrtle Beach and my mom is off enjoying 2 weeks in Europe! I treated myself with a sugar free iced coffee and I ate some potato chips — the real kind.

Oh… I should also add that GM came through after TWO WEEKS and got me a rental car. How generous of them. I have no word on how long it will be before they inspect and make a decision about my car, but until them I am enjoying a stylish white minivan. I miss my car, but something about a minivan is just so neat. It’s so easy to get the kids in and out and I do love the space.

I hesitated to post this because I did not want to make this blog all negative and ranty, but I think it’s important to post about things like this so that they end up in better positioning on Google for others who might be searching for similar experiences. So, here we go. The following is what I’ve sent to a couple consumer complaint sites.

After reading a recent Consumer Affairs article about GM engine fires, I feel compelled to write with my experience. I drive a 2004 Cadillac SRX, which is under warranty through GM and has not been modified in any way.

On June 16th, 2008, I was leaving the grocery store when I smelled smoke in my vehicle. I drove approximately 20 feet from the building to see if I was pulling smoke in from an outside source, but when I was outside in the fresh air, I noticed that smoke was beginning to pour out of my vents.

I left the vehicle and walked around trying to determine the source of the smoke. I opened the rear lift gate and found thick gray smoke pouring from the area behind the windshield wiper. It seemed to be the source of the smoke.

At that point I called OnStar emergency services and they dispatched police and fire to my location. While on the line with OnStar, flames became visible from beneath the inside lift gate trim panel. The flames were approximately the size of the grapefruit and were partially blocked by the trim panel.

Wiper fluid and melted plastic were dripping from the lift gate on to the bumper and into the interior of my vehicle. The wind was blowing into the vehicle and because I was concerned that the flames might move into the interior of the car, I made the decision to use my large drink to put out the fire before it got any larger.

I successfully doused the fire about 30 seconds before the fire department arrived. They disassembled the rear lift gate down to the wiper motor, which appeared to be the source of the fire.

The damage includes the entire lift gate door and trim, the wiper motor and circuit board, the rear bumper, and possibly the upholstered cover of the cargo area.

I am now on day 11 of GM “investigating” the issue. They refuse to accept it as a warranty claim and instead have passed me through to the “product allegation” department where they did nothing but record my name and basic information for 2 days before passing me to another department. The other department says they need 7-10 business days to decide what they will do with the issue and I am not allowed to have any contact information for them unless they have not contacted me in 10 business days.

Through all of this, I am being denied a rental car and they are holding my vehicle at the dealer, apparently having told the dealer to park it outside of their garage for safety reasons.

I understand their need to investigate this claim. However, their refusal to offer me a rental car while they hold my vehicle is unacceptable and the only part of the situation that I do not understand.

I would gladly give them all the time in the world if they could step up and stand behind their products and policies by giving me a rental car during their investigation. While my car sits at the dealer baking in the sun, not being aired out and still smelling of burning plastic and metal, my family is missing out on our summer plans.

As residents of Janesville, WI we are duly impacted by the recent GM plant closings that will undoubtedly lower our property values, raise our taxes, and cause closings and cost increases for local businesses. I understand that they are having a tough year, but this is pennies in the grand scheme. I want this company to stand behind their product and show me that customer service is not dead.

It’s clearly a warranty issue and I should clearly be given a vehicle to drive while they are holding my car and not actively investigating or working on it.

UPDATE: 6/27/2008, GM claims department called to tell me that at some point in the future, they will be dispatching one of their 5 or 6 engineers to Janesville to take pictures of my car and investigate the issue. The engineers will provide a report to claims, claims will meet with legal, then legal will take some time deciding whether or not they are going to fix my car, then legal will get back in touch with claims and claims will call me. They give me no indication of how long this process takes, only that is it “lengthy.”

UPDATE: 10/22/2008, I realized that I never came back to update this issue. Since it has risen to the top of Google under some GM related keywords, I thought I should just finish this up so that anyone who finds it knows the result.

Earlier in my blog I mentioned that GM did eventually get me a rental car. For several weeks I drove a very lame Chevy minivan. After throwing a bit of a tantrum that I’m still not very proud of, the very understanding agent at GM’s insurer apparently went to GM’s legal department and got me a better rental car. For the last few weeks of the investigation, I did have a comparable rental car.

They eventually did “settle” with me for the cost of the repairs, but I had to sign away my life in agreement that they were not at fault for the damage. Obviously they could have saved a TON of money in rentals, legal fees, investigators, etc if they had just fixed it in the beginning (it was just over $2,000 in damage), but I’m not surprised that they were willing to waste the time and money.

The entire process took 2 1/2 months from the date of the incident. Only time will tell if fire damage will show up on my carfax report, rendering this car untradeable.

After 8 solid days of being mostly cooped up alone with 2 (wonderful) children, I’m about at the end of my rope. The only thing getting me through today was knowing that this was the last day of my misery.

brian_bfs: I cant leave NJ til Friday..

Ouch. That didn’t help. You know what didn’t help even more? Finding out it’s a 7pm Friday flight.

It’s storming here so we won’t be going anywhere. Honestly, I feel like baking a cake for dinner and calling it a day. I’m pretty sure child protective services can’t take away the kids for cake.

The weather has been bad and I’ve been forcing myself to use my 28-300 just to make sure I haven’t been too harsh about it… it’s an OK lens, but it’s nowhere near the quality I want, so I need to upgrade to the Tamron 70-200 f2.8 (hint, hint.. I have a birthday coming up).

… and I found this.

I made dinner in silence. I’m paying for it now. It’s almost 4am and Bailey is showing no signs of slowing down. Getting her back on schedule will be my first project as soon as everyone here is over the killer cold that Brandon brought home last week.

I’m finally getting to see how sharp my Tamron lens can be when it’s not wide open in low light (where it doesn’t excel like the 17-55 does). Did some stuff with flash tonight to test a new flash bouncer I’m going to make now that I’ve worked out the pattern.

Some of the random shots I took while testing. Nothing special, just seeing what it could do with no light.

Just one more week of school. This week we really NEED to get Brandon early and run him over to what we hope will be his new school. If he feels good about it, it’s a go. One more thing checked off the list.

Still conflicted about the pros and cons of church membership and the idea of jumping through the hoops of converting to a new denomination when I know it doesn’t change one single thing about what I believe. What’s the advantage? Lower tuition? Not a big deal — it’s a steal compared to Rock Prairie. A sense of belonging for Brandon. A very good thing, indeed. But at what cost? The commitment to a new church and the guilt of inevitably falling short of my obligation to the church, maybe to the detriment of Brandon’s good standing. So much pressure.