Tag: mechanics

The Price of 4 Wheels

A lot of friends of mine have recently been stricken with car problems, either getting into an accident, having issues with parts of their engines, or simply needing a brake job, such is the case for my own car. Regardless of what it is, nothing related to car maintenance is cheap. It’s a great convenience but an inconvenience at the same time. I love having a car, but when it comes to having to pay and maintain or fix it – I’m not a very happy camper.

Luckily, I have a repair shop here in Southern California that is fairly honest and fair in pricing. That’s as hard to find as the perfect spouse! If I were to move out of town again, or more so, out of state, I’d definitely need help finding a new mechanic when the inevitable happens. While I have friends in San Antonio, I’d need a little help when it comes to finding good Dallas auto repair if I were in that neighborhood for a road trip or the husband was transferred out there for his job. It’s never easy to find that one honest mechanic, but at least I’d know where to start.

My parents have had a variety of cars through the years. Currently they have a Honda Civic, Chrysler Sebring convertible and a Honda Odyssey minivan. They’re currently looking into purchasing a 5th Wheeler to tow around when they retire. Since I was a baby, we’ve taken family camping trips up to the Sierras in the summer. They’re too old for tent camping and they plan to explore more campgrounds with a comfortable trailer to reside in. They can’t tow it with a minivan, so they’re also looking into trucks to tow with. Once they decide on one, like the Chevrolet Silverado, they’ll be set in that department. I’m pretty sure they’re deciding on the trailer first ;) It’s like a new home for my mom to pick out. I’m eager for them to decide on their purchases so I can get a glimpse! It’s kind of exciting :)

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Mechanics & Technology – How Conveniently Inconvenient

I’m back home in SD. The husband was out all day before our drive home with friends at a pub watching the damn World Cup. That’s cool, whatever floats his boat, but I thought we’d be headed back down earlier than 2pm! I mean, having to be at work by 4:30pm is kind of crunch and the later it got, the more likely it was we’d hit some sort of traffic. We hit patches of it and there were idiots in the fast & carpool lanes going slower than 60MPH which was ridiculous. Slow traffic stay RIGHT, assholes! Luckily I got home with enough time to hit the toilet, change quickly and head the 5 minutes down the freeway to work with a few minutes to spare.

We’ll be needing some maintenance to the car SOON. The brakes sound AWFUL and while we haven’t hit the average mileage for the first brake job, we’ve driven this car through a lot of LA traffic, cross-country and through all sorts of up & down terrain coming up & down between LA & SD. Not to mention some of the belts need to be replaced since they’re looking aged and cracked. We definitely don’t want something more expensive to occur because we neglected to change that shit out.

I’ve had my new laptop since, I think, March? Somehow the power adapter cord has melted itself through (or maybe it got under some other hot running electronic) and tonight the laptop wouldn’t acknowledge that fact that it was plugged in. Lo-behold, it’s melted enough through that it’s fricken smoking through the melted rubber/plastic on the cord. *sigh* Looks like I’ll be making a trip to Fry’s tomorrow morning since I’ll be wanting to use my laptop while I’m on vacation (hello movies!). Though it’ll only be half useful without Internet access, having a dead battery with no way to charge it would render it useless. It’d make for a great weight for when it gets windy, though!

So now I’m currently using a little battery power as possible (dim screen, no fancy desktop effects, as few open programs as needed). After I take care of some online business, I’ll be off to take a shower, get some clothes put together for my vacation and head to bed to wake up early for a doctor’s appointment. I have no hope of doing laundry efficiently here since our all-in-one machine takes forever with ONE small load! I’ll have to lug a bunch of dirty (though some clean!) to my parents’ house when my brother comes to pick me up. Thankfully they’ve got the family-sized efficient machines that are only a few years old (at least, the washer’s pretty damn new) ;)

PS: I have a new theme up. I’ve made some personalized adjustments to it but I’m still working on it as a whole! I need to make changes to have it reflect a personal blog and not a “magazine” style website, since that’s what the theme was meant for. I can do this! It’s not like I’m making a theme from scratch and no experience *lol*

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