On Friday morning, I received this email reply from the auto shop's boss, the guy who worked on my car before (and an awesome person). I have not edited it at all except to take out his name/the name of the shop:
Good Morning Brandon
I would love to help you this weekend however you are right this is labor Day weekend and we are closed. It sounds to me like your vehicle really needs some TLC soon. We have loaner vehicles available what I would suggest is that we set you up with a loaner car. This way we can repair your vehicle without interrupting your busy schedule. We can set you an appointment next week just let me know if this would be helpful to you.
Well, shit. I did not know this, of course. They never told me about that on the phone last week. Damn.
Rae, however, suggested I get the "loaner" car and head for Mexico. Not a bad plan.
I suppose, if nothing else, I could get the loaner car if I absolutely needed to, but really I'm rather wary about driving someone else's car. When the ex and I were still together and I hadn't yet purchased my car, I would drive hers on the days that I had to go to/from campus when she did not. While her car was the easiest car I've ever driven, it wasn't mine -- and the fact that it wasn't mine made me super-nervous on the days and nights that I did have to drive it. That anxiety went away, of course, when I bought the Monte Carlo. I suddenly didn't have to worry about getting into an accident with someone else's car anymore -- my own car was my own responsibility, and the fact that it's an old beater lessened my anxiety even more. If someone smashes into it, I'm well-insured for it. Lady offered to let me drive her car once or twice, as her car (a Probe) is identical to my first car, which was a year older than hers is. I considered it (mainly for the sake of nostalgia), but did not do it. I'm paranoid that if something goes wrong, it's going to be my fault regardless of whose car I'm driving or when.
I don't let people drive my car for similar reasons, as well. Since I've owned it, only one other person has driven it (aside from the auto shop people), and that was the ex when we were still together. She drove it twice; once during our test drive and again the day I registered and put plates on it -- and that's all she wanted to drive it, ever. It was too big, too powerful, too different for her, so she said. The Monte Carlo is a unique car, make no mistake. It handles differently than anything else I've ever driven, it's bigger, louder and faster than anything else I've ever driven, and it took me a long time to get used to its acceleration and anti-lock brakes, as well as its turning radius. I'm so used to it now that it would be difficult to drive something else -- it would be a real learning curve, so to speak. Aside from Lady and Daisy, nobody's even been in my car other than me for the past year.
"I wonder how much that costs," Zedral said, referring to the use of the auto shop's "loaner" car. Up until then I never thought about a cost associated with it, but after I thought about it, I'm guessing it's not a free service -- especially when it comes to mileage and the like.
Luckily, the Monte Carlo will have rather light duty this coming week -- teaching and returning home two days, and then one day where it will sit in the parking lot for fifteen hours -- so judging on how well she's been holding up despite the circumstances, if I wanted to wait until Thursday (again) to get her in and not use any sort of "loaner" car, I could probably do so if necessary. Then again, if something happens, I'll basically have to call a tow truck and have her towed there if she decides to be temperamental with me. It's a real flip-of-a-coin scenario, really, but she's been holding up pretty well even if she is running rough. All of my actual planning was skewed by Labor Day weekend, so there's not much that can be done. Because of everyone having today off, I don't have much of a choice when it comes to driving, yet again. I have to keep pressing my luck for at least the next three days, because my schedule doesn't really allow anything else.
So because of this, I sent an email back to the guy at the shop asking him to set up an appointment for Thursday or Friday, whichever day was better for them, and to let me know. Barring any unforeseen circumstances, I'll get the car in there then, and will pay whatever it costs to get it fixed up, regardless of how much I so don't want to spend that much money at once.
Because I was expecting to drop off the car and be vehicle-less for the rest of the long weekend, on Thursday night (around 3:30 AM or so) I made a trip to Walmart to pick up the essentials, as I said I would probably do. I got many things, two frozen pizzas and a bunch of sandwich stuff (breads, meats, cheeses, lettuce) amongst them, and restocked the food and litter for the cats. I then spent the majority of the weekend taking care of the rest of my household stuff and/or the work I had to do for my classes, which took a very long time. Writing twenty pages for Playwriting isn't easy, nor is reading (and I'm not kidding here) well over 100 pages for my Surrealism class. I'm still not done with that, mainly because it's really, really boring. I'll more than likely finish it Wednesday morning/afternoon during my office hours before that class, because every time I try to read through it while at home I almost fall asleep. It's not exactly the most engrossing set of reading assignments, to put it mildly.
And 80% of them I had to print out here at home on my new laser printer.
I'm a bit bitter about that, in case you couldn't guess.
Anyway. It is Labor Day. Which means it's September. Fall is supposed to be coming, but it's not here yet -- it is currently 104 degrees here in Kansas. No, that's not a typo. After a few weeks of highs in the 80s and 90s, it's shot up again over the course of the past 48 hours or so and it has once more become unbearable. My air conditioner went on this morning for the first time in about three weeks or so, and I'm pretty sure it's almost out of freon after the past two horrible summers, because it's not really blowing that coldly. In the past sixteen hours or so, I've showered twice, but it doesn't matter when it's this hot -- as soon as I get out of the cold shower, I'm immediately coated in sweat again.
Oh well.
No comments:
Post a Comment