So, we jumped through their hoops - the State of Arizona that is - took the car back to the repair shop, they installed the "new" hose, took it across the street and he it checked.  They passed the car for the emissions test and that was that, right?  While all of this was going on, Caleb had to do all of that as I simply am dumping responsibility for that car onto him, I was at Discount Tire attempting to get the warranty on the tires honored.

85,000 mile warranty on the tires.  Well, that car doesn't even have 85,000 miles on it and 3 of those tires were either very low on tread or bad - one of them had the cords separating.
I was offered replacements at half price, which I jumped on, but the "new" warranty for the same tire is now 25,000 miles.

I went over to Garcia's mexican food across the street, had dinner (it was going to be at least an hour wait for the tires and I had no inclination, whatsoever, to sit around in that waiting area) and was talking with Caleb about the car as he was going through the "process".  The emissions facility is going to pay for the damages to the car.  So, the car passed emissions and all is good in the world, right?  NOT.  I tried to register the thing and it came up with: "Needs emission tested".  Yeah, whatever.  Once you pass emissions it automatically goes into the system as passed.  I have the PASS paper in my hand!

Fortunately, the car has another 3-day permit on it so it's legal to drive for 2 more days while I call the state of Arizona again and ask them why they are so incompetent.  This is not the first, or 5th, or 10th time I've had problems with either the vehicle registration or the driver's license department.  It's just unbelievable that we've had to to through all of this crap.  

Yup, just tried again in case there might be some lag time in it getting into their system for whatever reason, no go Joe, it's coming up with "needs vehicle emission testing", blah blah blah.

A nice thing that occurred yesterday, though, was coming home and finding my new tree sitting on the kitchen counter.  Took it out, very healthy specimen.  Not sure if it will survive the winter, I need to do more research on that.

Well so much for my peaceful pre-work rituals.  Not going into that, but it's time to leave for work anyway.  I am going to do a search for temps in Madagascar, though, during their version  of winter and see what it gets down to.  That's where this tree originates from and it's natural habitat.

G'day.

ben