i made an omelet last week that looked so good, i just had to take a picture of it. i fry up a half onion with some fat-free butter spray, add some diced broccoli, and then some diced mushrooms, then cook up an egg white omelet, lay on some cheese, put some of the veggie mixture on top, fold over the egg, and put the remaining veggies on the side. top it off with ketchup, and i’m good to go.

in other news, i tried to get an appointment at my favorite auto shop, community tire, to do my brakes, but they were booked, so i ended up going to just brakes. they advertise front and rear pad replacement including turning the rotors and drums for $99.88, so i figured i’d save 50% over the $209.00 that my honda dealer quoted for just the front pads.

i’ll be honest. if i had to do it over, i’d have just had the honda dealer do the work. it went like this: i made an appointment for 2:00pm, they pulled the car in and inspected my brakes. after about 20 minutes, the service manager dude gave me a quote in excess of $300.00. he explained that in addition to the brake pads, i needed to have my brake calipers rebuilt, as the pads wore unevenly, and the brake fluid replaced (as it looked like coffee instead of apple juice; an analogy even a woman could understand :\ ), and the springs and clips on the rear brakes should be replaced. jeez.

i replied that the reason i was there, was to save money compared to the honda quote, not to pay more. and he replied that honda would not have rebuilt the calipers nor replaced the fluid. ummm, maybe because the calipers don’t need rebuilding, and the fluid replacement was included in their quote?

after discussing it with my hubby, i just went with the pad replacement on front and rear (even though the rears were still ok, it was only $10.00 more) and the brake fluid replacement. the total came to $145.21. we got out of there after 4:00 pm, over 2 hours.

after thinking about the whole experience, i could have saved 2 hours of my life for a little over $50.00, and have the comfort of knowing that trained honda factory mechanics fixed my brakes. the whole just brakes experience felt a little sleazy, like i wanted to shower afterwards. i will say that the car stops better now and the brakes don’t squeal, and my emergency brake lever and brake pedal both engage the brakes much closer to the start of engaging them. of course, i was warned that because of the uneven pad wear, the pads may only last 20,000 miles, instead of the 67,000 of the originals.

well, next time, i’ll stick with either honda or community tire.