Remember, Remember
The Blog In November
Just in case you happened to miss it, there was an election in the US yesterday. Mel & I stayed up with a few friends to watch it, and partake in what should have been 2 hours of politically satirical fun with Stewart & Colbert. Alas, we only got to see the first half on CTV before the station yanked things back to their "regularly scheduled" Canadian content-filled shows.
Dammit.
Though I was at least able to be entertained by the happy squeak Mel unleashed when she found out Connecticut had voted for Obama.
As for today...well, perhaps now's not a good time to talk about today. Especially since it begins about 2 days ago. At the time, Mel was playing the part of the good driver and taking in her car for its regular oil & transmission fluid change. All goes well!
...until Monday, when Mel noticed something was definitely leaking from the front of the car. Naturally, no good came of this. After a night of stressing, she spent all of Tuesday running between two or three different garages (including the one who did the initial fluid changes) in an attempt to figure out what the leak was, if there even was one. Turns out, the garage doing the initial change had managed to spill a decent amount of transmission fluid inside the car, and what looked like a leak was the excess fluid falling victim to gravity. The garage was more than amicable to hose out the car and wash away all the fluid. And all was well!
...until, two hours later, as Mel swung by the mall to pick me up. Upon leaving the mall, the car began to do worrisome things, most notably stalling whenever we went from sitting idle at a light to accelerating. Then the "service engine" light went on. Not good. That's not a good sign to have lighting up on the dashboard.
Mel spent most of the US election night stressing not about the elections outcome, but about the car, since there was a chance that this could be something that might ultimately contribute to the car's demise. Three hours of sleep later, we woke up early on my day off & went over to the local Midas garage (who have proven themselves a number of times in the past). Despite having to wait a few hours since they were short-staffed and already backlogged at 8am (a frightening thought unto itself), we were given the good/rage-inducing news.
As it turned out, we get to thank the previous garage for this one. When they spray-cleaned the front of the car, they managed to loosen up a few things that shouldn't be loose, and as an added bonus the spray packed other bits o' dirt further up into the air hoses, completely mucking up the air flow into the engine. It took Midas about a half hour to clear everything out. They didn't charge us a cent.
And finally now, all was well.
...except for the fact that, as Mel takes a much deserved de-stressing nap on the couch, I am now reading the acclaimed SF author Michael Chrichton died today.
I'd almost be inclined to exclaim, "How much more suck could be crammed into today?!" but it's not even 4pm. So let's not invite further disaster today, shall we?
Labels: today's theme: a car full of pain
posted by Phillip at 11:28 AM
