I gots me the smooth, cool ride I had forgotten I owned. Yeah, my ’02 Jetta is purring like, well, a 4 year old cat named, ummm… Spankers. Yeah, sure Spankers. Spankers is a 4 year old ginger tabby who a kind of a stand-offish cat who requires lots of presents to start purring. It is one of those cats that prior to being lavished with gifts takes to meowing constantly when you stop moving for a second, and just kind of whines miserable while you flit about the room accomplishing tasks. Always meowing like a wounded pig whenever you slow down. It is a pig whose feet hurt, thus causing it to run about in a very haphazard manner. It is very difficult to manage the movements and direction of a wounded pig (otherwise I would have come up with a different analogy, clearly), especially one with bad feet. The pig is so difficult to manage that you tend to keep your child away from the pig, lest he bite said child. Sure you have to direct the pig daily, always in constant fear of dealing with the enraged wounded pig in difficult terrain. Oddly the pig’s condition did not deteriorate over time, so that less drastic measures could have been taken to help heal the cat… pig… where was I? Oh, yes, pig analogy. Preventative porcine medicine might have helped the bill not be so large. Wait a second I was in the middle of a cat analogy with Spankers starring as the disgruntled feline. Back to Spankers, the loud needing attention 4-year old ginger tabby. Sure a couple of times you probably slowed down and stopped on Spankers’s tail, but that only caused Spankers to howl like a cat in pain and shudder violently trying to free his tail from under your size 10.5 shoes (42 or 43 for my British readers). It took about $1000 worth of presents to get what will most likely turn out being about 1 year of purring. The good thing is that Spankers doesn’t meow and only peeps up once to let me know that he is hungry.

Okay, maybe I am not the best at analogies.

Anyway… A tune up accompanied with all sorts of soft engine crap getting replaced and having the rear brakes overhauled seems to have made a world of difference in the car. Sure, just throw close to 5% of the car’s original price at it and it runs smoothly. According to Edmunds.com it is currently worth just under $10,000 so by dumping 10% of it existing worth back into the vehicle, it now runs smoothly. That hurts. That hurts a whole bunch. Wow, I never should have figured out the relative percentages. That just plain hurts even more. That just plain hurts even more a whole bunch!

At least the dealership vacuumed the car for me. While I was getting beat up by the toughs in the billing department (I think his name was Helmut Voeller, and he was mean) Hans Gentlehandz was sublimely vacuuming out the interior. And they vacuumed it for free! So at least I got that going for me. My wallet hurt, but aesthetically I was pleased with the look of my vehicle, because not only did they vacuum, they washed the beast as well. For free! Or $1000.

Did I mention that I HATE car repairs!

To recap:
Stupid car repairs!
10% of current worth, sheesh!
I am not so good at the analogy
So, I will stick with hyperbole
Not sure what is going on for dinner tonight
Might make hamburgers or I might make some tacos
Really don’t know what dinner will consist of
I think I will ask Little Man when I pick him up
Problem with tacos is that I have to make the salsa
Problem with the burgers is that we don’t have buns
Wifey is Yoga-ing tonight
I really need to start exercising again
Who thinks I should update my profile?
One of these days I am going to redesign this blog
And then you will all be sorry
Mainly because everything will be borked up
Have a great weekend folks!

So I had to take my car into the shop today. Now I am not terribly mechanically inclined, but when the rear tire areas (driver and passenger sides) make a nasty grinding noise as I decelerate and start moving from a stop, that is not a good thing. As a car owner, I have had bad brakes before, and I am fairly certain that this issue is not a brake issue either. This is bad, bad, bad. I am glad that I am getting it taken care of, but I am afraid that this is going to be a fairly pricy repair coupled with my 40K mile servicing. I am not looking forward to this bill. Luckily, we have enough built up in our savings account to deal with this. This is why we have the savings account, but it is always painful to dip into savings for any reason. Wifey and I would probably just have wasted the money anyway on something non-useful like a trip back to Europe or a vacation or something else non-worthwhile.

Car repairs are a bit infuriating and intimidating for those of us who did not grow up elbows deep in the hood of a car. I know enough about cars to understand the basics of the internal combustion engine, but not enough to speak intelligently about what exactly a brake caliper does, but I know that they exist and that has to count for something. Now, this post is not intended to have any comments on what calipers do. I can look that up if I wish, the point is, for those of us not mechanically trained or inclined, we typically (yes, I am speaking for all of us) feel at the mercy of the mechanic to treat us equitably and fairly.

I am feeling rather car repair vulnerable today, because I know that I am being slung over a barrel, so to speak. That, and we are currently still dealing with the dealership’s service center. While crap is still under warrantee, we feel that we should use their services, but this is the last time we go there. I know, I know the dealership mechanics always cost more. I am well aware of that, and in a few months, the warrantee will go away and so will my patronage of their service center.

Currently, I am still waiting for information as to what the issue is and how much the issue will cost. My gut feeling is that it is not the brakes. My gut also feels like it is going to cost me an arm and a leg to fix.

To recap:
I hate car woes
Little Man did great yesterday
Wifey has a cute pic of him in his rain jacket on the way to pre-school
I just got a call from the Service Center
It was the brakes
They went from fine and noiseless to making grinding noises without any transition
I am not sure they actually fixed the issue
We will see when I pick the car up
I hate car stuff
Hate it with a passion that rivals the heat of 1000 stars
Hopefully you will have a post about how wonderfully the car is working tomorrow
I hate car repairs!