In Which I Beg For Mercy
I have been having so much fun this week! It's almost more than I can bear!
First there was all the nonsense with The Sister's wedding. Which turned out perfectly except for the...uh...bad part. If anyone wants to know about the bad part, they are invited to attend W and my wedding next year, at which the aforementioned bad part will undoubtedly be repeated. With one vital difference.
Whatever W's family drama goes on at our wedding will include my family. They're a bunch of crazy fuckers, my people, and I wish The W's Relatives the very best of luck. At our wedding, whosoever asketh for a beating shall receive it. I don't mind violence, I just don't want to have to deal with people. Is that really so much to ask?
Now that you're all curious about what happened at The Sister's wedding, I'm going to move on. As soon as I got home from the wedding I fell ill. Small fever, headache, and this bizarre jaw pain plagued me. I finally went to the doctor and was told that I have an ear infection. But get this: my head is swollen. Right in front of my ear lobes there is swelling, on both sides of my face. I look rather strange. And that just doesn't sound like an ear infection, now does it? Plus, my ears don't hurt. It's my jaw. I told all this to my father, who suggested that I may have mumps.
Now, I was vaccinated for mumps, just like the rest of you, when I was a child. I should not have mumps. But apparently there have been a number of small outbreaks of "compromised" mumps (the mild kind where you have a partial immunity to the virus) on college campuses lately. So. I no longer go to college, but I get all the really fun diseases anyway. I'm extremely crabby and uncomfortable. Bah.
That's why I thought that today would be the perfect time to begin calling around various repair shops in Portland. I'm basically looking for someone to completely overhaul my vehicle. The only things that work properly are the air conditioning and the seat adjusters. We're talking majorly busted engine here, people.
When I read out my list of repairs to the various mechanics, I alternately received low whistles, pity, and awe. One secretary relayed my list to her boss with her hand cupped over the phone. Though muffled, I heard him exclaim "Oh my god!"
That's not a good sign. Andrew, it looks like Mt. Hood may be out.
2 comments:
The Trucker spent a whole morning on the internet searching for a new engine for your vehicle last weekend. He emerged after several hours and announced that for $4,000 you could get a Toy or Maz with low mileage and some hope of drivability for the extended future. I was not at all surprised, having figured out that spending four large on a POS was the sort of thing that people do who have not yet learned that internal combustion engines on wheels are not anything that a member of our species should develope an attachment to.
Our Spiritual Vistors from Tennessee had recently stumbled onto a $500 Honda Civic with 40,000 miles on it. This astounding bit of good luck, of course, looks like all their other vehicles have always looked, ie, as if they were about to fall completely apart. This beauty was owned by the teenage daughters of a well-to-do business man. They seem to have had some sort of dyskinesia that impacted their collective ability to avoid intersection with solid objects while driving. At that price, though, the Spiritual Vistors didn't mid employing bungee-cords to re-attach dangling fenders. The car was in pristine shape internally, (since their wealthy father had made sure the oil was changed and the maintenance was done.) He just couldn't bear to see his darlings riding around town in a junk heap.
Given that the normal life expectancy of this make and model is 300,000 miles, (or 100 coast-to-coast trips) they have perhaps gotten the auto deal of a century.
You may perhaps recall that they paid $900 for a teal Mazda a few years back with 140,000 miles on it which they sold for $500 when it had 265,000 miles on it.
The Trucker's searching the internet for you was motivated by learning that their son had found an engine with only 40,000 miles on it for his vehicle (yes- the very same one that he flopped on top of and caved in the roof on while we watched, with windows that didn't roll up and God-only-knows living in the back seat) for $350 on the internet, plus $150 shipping. His Dad has a friend in town who will completely rebuild the innards, if they will get the parts-- so for $1,000 he will have a totally new vehicle encased in a very beat up old body.
I would still suggest that your best plan is to try to sell that thing for salvage and save your money until you can afford to buy a car that has a little better reliability reputation than that one. Or you could always try to get a friendship going with a Swedish mechanic, but I expect that some morose and melacholy Nordic would ultimately prove to be as unreliable as those cars.
Geez, the wedding, your "ear infection"/head, and your car. Oh E! I wish I were there right now so we could do something that's actually fun. I'm totally going to you and W's wedding, but let's hope that your family leaves you in peace for, say, 2/3 of the day. :) Call me, please.
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