Friday Photo and Apology

This is the extra steep stairway to the perms – a few times up and down these and my knees will hurt for the rest of the day. At least it’s got good handrails. Some of the stairways have old wooden handrails which throw off weapons-grade splinters – which, of course, renders said handrails useless.

I’d also like to apologize for the disappearing act – I’ve been having car problems.

Not normal car problems, but car problems so teeth-grindingly annoying that when the tow truck finally drops me off at home all I can manage to do is drop to my knees, shake my fist and scream a word so bad  I’m actually afraid to type it.

The problem is that they can’t figure out what, exactly, is wrong with my car.  It’s started dying for no reason and the mechanic determined that it was a bad fuel pump, which he replaced.  The car ran fine for a couple of days and then died again – at a location 30 miles from my house. At 10 pm.

I had it towed to the mechanic (who was, of course, closed at 10 pm so I had to have the tow truck driver drop the car in a parking space in the street and push it in the next morning after they’d opened), who determined that they’d installed a bad fuel pump and put in another one.

The car ran fine for about a day, and then died again. At 2 am on the way home from work in the middle of a busy street. A kind policeman used the push bar on the front of his car to push me off to a side street and said pushbar tore off the rear bumper cover which might have really irritated me any other time but I was just too tired and beaten down to care.

Then, they decided that the aftermarket fuel pump was the problem and ordered one from the dealer.

The car went 20 miles before dying again, but at least this time it was during business hours. Okay, it died 40 minutes before the mechanic closed for the night, so I had to beg the auto club to get a tow truck there quickly and we barely made it.

At this point the mechanic sighed heavily and admitted that he hadn’t a clue what was wrong and was planning on opening the hood and replacing damn near everything he saw.

To date, they’ve replaced the fuel pump relay, the oil pressure sending something-or-other, a couple of other doodads and have scraped a shitload of carbon out of something called the EGR valve. At this point, he thinks he’s got it fixed, but he’s going to keep it and use it as his daily driver while I’m out of town in an effort to put this whole nasty mess behind us. For now.  He’s a nice guy and he’s trying his best, so I really do hope that he doesn’t get stranded in bumfuck in the middle of the night.

My friends and co-workers have been well-meaning but spectacularly unhelpful in informing me that I need a new car.

Tell me something I don’t know.

I know with every fiber of my being that I need to buy another car. I know it every time I cross my fingers and hope I’m going to get home. I know it every time I get stranded in some gas station parking lot in the middle of the night. I know it when I walk into the rental car place and the guys that work there greet me by name.

The problem is that until our friends at SAG get this strike business resolved, I can’t afford to buy anything more involved than groceries.

If the actors walk and I’m out of work for another four months, I’m going to be so broke I’m going to have to put McNuggets on layaway, so buying a car right now is completely out of the question.

I have to work tomorrow and the rental places are all out of cars (fucking holidays), so I’ve got to hitch a ride with a co-worker, which I hate because I always feel like I’m putting someone out.

The lack of car has foiled my plans to overeat at a few holiday parties Sunday, but on the bright side it gave me an excuse to turn down an invite to a screening of a truly dreadful movie.

Filed under: Non-Work, angry, auto, breakdown, car, stranded, traffic, urban, Work

Speaking of being late

I thought I had Monday off, but I got an early morning call to come in and cover someone who had called in sick. Unexpected work is my favorite reason to be pulled out of a dead sleep at 7 am.

I gathered my things, jumped in car, and after a stop for coffee, decided to get some gas for the drive across town and back. As I was pulling out of the station, my car died. No smoke, no clunk,  nothing – it just shut off.

After swearing and trying unsuccessfully to restart it, I called a tow truck. Luckily I broke down a few blocks from the mechanic where I normally take my car, so I figured I could get a tow fairly quickly, get a rental and get to work. I then sat and sat while said tow truck failed to show up.

At some point when dust started to settle on me, I called my boss and suggested that since I was going to be a while he might be better off to call someone else who would be able to show up before lunch.

Right after that, the tow truck showed up and hauled my car to the mechanic.

Although I’d reserved a rental car at a company with an office near the garage, I didn’t bother to pick it up as I thought I wasn’t working, and figured I could cancel it from the land line once I got home and had some breakfast.

I started walking the mile (or so) home and when I was about halfway there, my boss called and told me the other day player who they’d called had also broken down on the way to work and couldn’t make it in at all, so  I had to do an about-face and march to the rental place to get the car – and still no breakfast.

After getting stuck in line behind the tourists with endless questions, I grabbed the keys to my econo-sedan, got on my way and showed up at work about two hours before lunch.

Luckily everyone seemed to think the entire episode was hilarious.  Except me, of course.  At least the car didn’t die late-night in the parking lot of some godforsaken cell-service free movie ranch at 2 am.

The car needed a new fuel pump so between that and the rental I worked for free Monday.

I turned the rental back in this morning – it was kind of fun to turn corners at speed, although I’m used to an SUV so sitting down that close to the road kind of freaked me out.

What I want now is one of those nifty GPS units. I had fun programming in a destination, driving off of the planned route and listening to it freak out (“please return to the highlighted route” pause “please return to the highlighted route” long pause “recalculating”).

It takes so little to amuse me these days.

Filed under: mishaps, Work, breakdown, car, city, morning, rental, Work