Monday Morons--I'm going to be nice today

I'm going to put off that other thing yet again. I promise that I will get to it, just not today. Trying to address everything that I can remember being mentioned. Thoroughness takes time, and I have other things to do right now. It is the last regular week of classes this semester, and my husband is home this week.

And before I forget, welcome to my new readers, including everyone's favorite hairy nurse.

So for today I will talk a bit more about the car situation. This isn't quite a retraction from the earlier post. http://insidioustruth.blogspot.com/2007/04/monday-moron-mechanics.html I still think that the world would be a much better place if people would just be honest and tell you that you are not their main priority and they can't get to your problem until later, maybe much later, and you might have to come back later or just go somewhere else entirely. But I will say that I'm liking the people at the car repair place a bit better this week.

So every once in a while my car doesn't start. Usually, if I take a deep breath, count to ten, make sure that I haven't left the lights on, make sure to to turn off the AC or the heater or whatever, then right after that the car does start. Sometimes I go away for five minutes or so and then the car will start. Once in a great while it just doesn't want to play nice and I go away for like an hour and then it will start. Once or twice this past year I couldn't get it to start at all and then when I would call someone for help it would make a miraculous recovery.

Wednesday afternoon, after doing all of the usual stuff, it just wouldn't start. Since I was in a shopping center, I tried going shopping for about an hour. The car still didn't start. Okay, so this is like one of those emergencies that I got an emergency cell phone for.

The cell phone was missing. I must have left it on the charger and I left the house too sleepy to notice I didn't have it. Great.

So some nice people at Office Max let me use their phone to call the auto club. I got a recording. Press one for English, etc.... Okay, a few minutes later, I'm talking to a real person who asks for my name and could I please repeat my membership number.

I'm sorry, that account was closed in December of 2006 for lack of payment.

Okay, I don't feel like arguing about it. Since I didn't personally write that check, I can't swear that's a lie. I just want to go home. The car can wait, and school can wait, and all the other stuff I meant to do can wait. I'm tired now. I call my mom for a ride home.

Mom doesn't just jump in the car and come get me. For some reason she has a bunch of questions. She doesn't know any more about cars than I do. What is the point of the questions? Does she really need to know exactly what the problem is for her to give me a ride home?

Is that all you need? A ride home?

Well, the car probably just needs a jump. Maybe we could figure out how to do that.

Trying to do stuff like that when you don't know what you're doing is dangerous. I don't want to do that.

I thought so. Just a ride home will be fine. I can probably get someone else to help me out with it later.

Okay.

I wait for her to come give me a ride. She lives a bit closer to the place than I do, but somehow it takes her longer to get there than I expect. Since the last time I had trouble with the car it started just as soon as someone can to help, I try the car again. No luck.

Why don't we call your brother and see if he knows what might be wrong with the car.

Okay.

My mom and my brother have a discussion about the car. He doesn't even talk to me about it. Mom keeps coming back to "but we might have to get it towed anyway. So maybe we should just go ahead and pay someone to tow it now."

I don't want to pay for someone to tow it now. I'm almost certain that I have already paid for such things to be taken care of, and I'd rather just go home and find out why the motor club claims that the account was canceled due to lack of payment and maybe have it towed somewhere tomorrow. I'm just really tired right now. I've been stuck here for more than two hours and I just want to go home.

But before I do that I should probably stop at school and clean up the work area so that someone else can use it. Since I won't be able to use the space during the evening class I should at least move my stuff out of the way so that someone else can use it.

The idea of making a detour to the college seems to totally confuse my mother. Like she forgot I was taking a college class. She's told me often enough that I'm wasting my time with it. But when I mentioned it Wednesday she didn't seem to know what I was talking about. But, she didn't want me to be rude, so she did make the detour to the school so I could put my things away.

I got home just in time to have a soda right before my brother called to tell me he could drive me back to Arlington and have a look at the car. I haven't had time to call the auto club and find out about this cancelled account business, but I'm almost certain that it just needs a jump and that my brother can handle it faster than the auto club people anyway.

So back to Arlington we go. I don't have any jumper cables, but that is something that I should probably buy anyway, and the car was nice enough to get stuck in the shopping center next to a place that sells them. But after we try the jumper cables, the car still doesn't start. Some gizmo of Dad's says that the battery and the alternator are in fair to good condition. So maybe it's the starter. Seems like I just got a new starter like maybe a year ago, but I can't really remember.

Never mind. My brother is nice enough to take me back to school where I talk to the professor and tell him about the car and that I don't know how long it will take to get it fixed and all of that. So I wrap up one of my projects and take it home. I can't do that much with it at home, but working on it a bit at home is better than not getting to work on it at all.

So the next day after calling my husband and looking at the auto club card and emptying my wallet and finding another auto club card, we figure out that he has yet a third auto club card. They are all from the same company, but they all have different membership numbers and different emergency service numbers. Apparently the card I tried to use had been "cancelled" when my husband cancelled a certain credit card and got a new one. So I got the third auto club number from him and called the auto club back and got a recording saying that the account was paid until March of 2008. That's what I thought.

I called my mom and we went back to Arlington. I had my phone with me this time. She offered to let me use hers, but no, this is what I have the emergency phone for, and I really never use it, and I should make sure that it actually works once in a while.

Twenty minutes later, after talking to both the auto repair place and someone at the auto club, my mom and I are waiting for a tow truck. It's probably going to be an hour, and I had planned to buy my mom lunch while we were waiting, but we are not supposed to leave the car. She says that she just wants something like a hot dog anyway, so maybe she could go get one and come back. But mom is in luck, cause there's a guy with a hot dog stand in front of the Home Depot.

The tow truck guy is a little early, and I don't quite finish my lunch. My mom and I were talking, and for a moment we forgot we were supposed to be watching for the tow truck. Oh, look, there it is.

The tow truck guy came a bit earlier than expected, because the car at his last stop made a miraculous recovery as soon as he arrived.

So he fills out a form that asks for every number that is anywhere on my car. Then he puts the car in neutral and moves the car to a better spot in relation to his truck. I could have helped him with that if I'd realized that he couldn't get the truck close enough to the car where it was. But he seemed used to doing stuff like that all by himself. Then he lifts up the car and puts lights on it and all that stuff and takes it away.

I go around with Mom for a bit to run some errands.

After I get home someone from the auto repair place calls and says that it does just appear to be the starter, and they've looked and found out that I just had that replaced in June. So since the starter has a 12 month warranty, there will not be any charge for fixing the starter and I can have my car back Friday morning if they don't finish with it by 6pm on Thursday.

Great. I might even get my car in time to go to Friday's ceramic class.

No such luck. No one calls. After lunch on Friday I call them, and they tell me the car is ready for me to come and pick it up.

So that afternoon my mother gives me a ride to the auto repair place. The guy who must be the new manager comes out to meet me and explains that he's the one I talked to on the phone. After looking at the paperwork a second time, it looks like the starter was replaced in June of 2005, and is no longer under warranty.

But since he'd already told me over the phone that there would be no charge, they went ahead and fixed it for free anyway.

Okay. Liking the auto repair people a lot better now.

There is still stuff wrong with the car, cause I didn't get all of the suggested repairs last time. And now I think maybe car needs new shock-absorbers. But I don't have the money and I'm pretty sure that all of that can wait til I get a job or something.


And just in case you haven't had enough morons for Monday, here's some links to some really silly stuff.

The llama song:
http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/llama.php

The Sawyer song (LOST):
http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/sawyer.php

The Dalek song (Dr. Who):
http://artistic-insanity.net/song/daleksong.html