I am not a huge fan of waiting on things, as you folks may know. I am, overall, a fairly impatient person in a lot of aspects in my life, and my patience is never thinner than it is when I'm jacked on a pot of coffee and/or am in a fairly crappy mood anyhow. Both of those things were true this morning, about an hour or so after I woke up.
Please note, as an aside, that there are many things I am patient for or can be patient for. I exude the patience of the gods when it comes to my students, when it comes to people I love, when it comes to the cats, or when it comes to most monetary issues. I may not necessarily like it most of the time, but I can be patient when the situation calls for it. Politeness, tact, and knowing one's role also plays a large factor in most of these situations as well.
Ahem. Anyway.
Around 10AM, I called the auto shop back as planned.
"We're still overbooked from yesterday," the guy said. "You called yesterday, right?"
"Yeah," I replied.
"Well, by the way it looks we won't have any room today, and the soonest we'd be able to get you in would be tomorrow afternoon -- but you wouldn't be able to get your car back until Monday afternoon, at least."
Shit, I thought. My heart sank. I can't do that; I have class Monday afternoon, due to my fall semester schedule that now runs four days a week.
I told him I would be unable to do that because I had work on Monday, and he understood.
"Tell you what I can do," he said, "when can you get it in, and how long is the longest you can leave it, in case we're still booked?"
"I work from Monday until Thursday around noon," I told him. "Thursday afternoon would be the earliest I could bring it in, and then the longest I could leave it there would be until Monday morning at the very latest."
I didn't realize until after I hung up that next Monday is Labor Day, so I could actually leave it until that night if I really needed to.
"Well, call us back on Thursday, then, and if we have any open spots at all -- I'm guessing we will -- you can bring it over and we will get your car worked on as soon as we can, since you've been trying to get it in. I apologize for that. I doubt we'd have to keep it the entire weekend."
The last time those guys worked on my car, it was in March or so to fix my serpentine belt and belt tensioner. They had it in and out in a little more than 24 hours. I know they're fast at what they do, and apparently this must be their "busy season."
"Sounds good to me," I said. "In the meantime I hope she holds up until then."
And we hung up.
So I guess that's the plan, really -- call 'em Thursday before I teach to make sure they have open spots, and then drop off the car on the way home from class. I'll probably have to hitch a ride home with one of the techs in their courtesy car, like last time, and in the meanwhile I will just have to cross my fingers and hope that landboat doesn't die on me this week while I'm going back and forth for teaching.
In order to help keep her running -- because I don't yet know what exactly is going wonky on her -- I went to Walmart this afternoon and purchased three bottles of fuel injector/carb cleaner, a new jug of coolant, two more quarts of oil, and a bottle of Marvel Mystery Oil. I put one of the fuel injector/carb cleaners into the tank when I filled up this afternoon, then came home and replenished the coolant, added another quart of oil to the engine, and put about half of the Mystery Oil in there as well (because yes, you can add it to both oil and gas). If it's anything in the fuel system like buildup or clogs or gunk, that stuff and the cleaner should clear it out, and the coolant and oil should keep the car running smoother anyhow. It may be a stop-gap preventative measure, but if it keeps the car running another week until I can get it to the shop, then that's good.
I will note that even if the car starts behaving normally again since I've put that new stuff in it, I still plan to take it to the shop next weekend anyhow. It'll be Labor Day weekend, I'll have Monday off, and the car is long overdue for an oil change and other regular maintenance like a coolant flush and a belt check/lube/etc. Not to mention the spark plugs and fuses, which if they can fix -- price be damned -- I desperately need them to. I love that car. She may be old and heavy and loud, but she's still the best car I've ever driven, and I'd like to make her last until something major blows on her and she can no longer be driven. As I told Zedral, if all else fails and I have to end up driving home to West Virginia in nine months, I want to be able to make sure said car will make the trip. If Lady's car -- which is two years older than mine, mind you -- can make it to the east coast and back twice a year, my Monte Carlo should be taken care of enough to make a one-way trip back home once if I need it to, especially if properly maintained between now and then. That's just the way I see it, folks. If that means I have to spend $1k on getting everything on it fixed, then I have to bite the bullet and do so -- that would be cheaper and easier than finding another car, purchasing it, registering/tagging/insuring it, and then finding something to do with the Monte Carlo. I don't have the time -- or patience -- for all of that unless I have no other choice. Like it or not, the Monte Carlo is sticking around until she goddamned dies on me, and cannot be resuscitated.
Let's hope that doesn't happen anytime soon, as well. And more than that, let's hope that pumping her full of fluids this afternoon will help solve or put a band-aid on whatever is making her all sluggish and weak as of late until I can get her to the shop. Until then, as I said, I'll be driving to and from campus gingerly, with my fingers crossed, hoping that the car will survive another four days of driving back and forth. And I certainly won't be driving her any more than I have to -- gas is already expensive enough, and I don't want to press my luck any harder than I already have.
I will say that during today's driving, she only acted up a little bit -- she revved a little higher than usual when I started her (which, again, makes me wonder if it's a clogged fuel injector or something) but settled back down to idle normally, and she didn't go sluggish on me while I was driving about town. Granted, that was only about five miles' worth of driving, but still. One can hope, right? Again, fingers crossed and all that.
In other news, I revised my students' lesson plans to incorporate page numbers from both editions of the textbook used for the class, and emailed them to tell them, basically, "either edition of the book is fine; buy whichever one you can afford and let's move on with our lives." I didn't use those words, of course, but still, that was basically the message. I also got two emails of praise and appreciation from my bosses for dealing with the situation in the best possible way given the circumstances, and was told that my efforts, flexibility, and devotion to my students/classes is appreciated much more than I know.
I felt really good about that, actually. I was also shocked. I receive so little praise or genuine compliments (from anyone, really) that I never know how to react to them. For example, I've been told I'm good looking many times over the years, and I've always been like "No, seriously, I'm not. I have a receding hairline and a burly, woodsman's beard. I'm overweight and have man-boobs. I swear a lot, smoke like a chimney, and drink too much coffee. Believe me, I am not attractive." People tell me I'm funny, or I'm fun to be around, and I give them strange what-have-you-been-smoking sort of looks, because I don't necessarily see myself that way. Yes, I do have a quick, sharp wit. Occasionally. But the concept of people actually wanting me to spend time with them and or wanting to hang out and chat with me, for the most part, feels strange and foreign. I constantly have the thought of "you people have met me, right?" running through my head. Perhaps my self-esteem is lower than I originally thought. I don't know. I don't think my poetry is that great either, yet a fair amount of people tend to love it, so who knows.
The rest of this weekend will be spent doing homework more than anything else. I have a lot of reading to do, and should spend most of the day tomorrow doing that. I also need to clean the kitchen and run the dishwasher, and try to get some decent sleep. There's a lot to do in the coming week or two.
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