Why is it that every single time I think that we might just have a little extra money for the holidays, SOMETHING has to go wrong? Seriously.. it’s starting to get REALLY old. Today’s simple shopping trip for groceries and potential Christmas gifts for the 8yr old nephew turned into a crazy ass mess that left me standing outside in the cold for an hour.
So, we head out late this morning for Ithaca, no big deal, right? Right… It was raining a little, but not bad.. coulda been worse and been SNOW. We get into the city and decide on an early lunch of chinese food. We eat, pay, head out to the car and everything seemed fine. We head off to the mall, on the premise of hitting up Toys’R'Us. I notice the “Charge” light is lit up on the dash. I figure he might have left the lights on while we were eating. No biggie, it’ll charge while we’re driving.
So, we get to the mall, drive around to try to find the appropriate entrance. Finally find the main entrance. He lets me out at the door and goes to park. Went in to find the map to find the store and a restroom. Now, the Pyramid mall is a SMALL mall, about 60 stores in all. It always has been, which is why I like it so much. So I scan through the store list. No Toys’R'Us. Wtf? I KNOW there was one, but now? No more. Not even a KB Toys! Crap, I wasted my time. Oh and while I’m on the subject.. They remodeled the entire freaking mall! It honestly looked like they’d bulldozed it down and started from scratch. That’s just how different the thing was!
One bright spot is that I know where AC Moore is now! It’s in the freaking mall. I was good, however, and didn’t go in there. In fact, I was so annoyed that I turned around and walked back out of the mall before Rob could even get inside. *laugh* I will be going back at some point to explore the new shops cuz I saw a few listed that I really liked the look of, like “THEE AMISH MARKET”
Anyway, we get in the car, the Charge light comes on again and I start to get a bit worried, but the car starts and runs just fine, so we just head to Aldi’s for groceries. Do our thing there, the car starts, behaves mostly. We get down to Tops and it’s kind of spluttery by that point. We go in and do our thing, figuring that, at worse, we can get someone to give us a jump and I can get it checked out tomorrow. We come out, car is dead. Meh. Fine, get a nice guy to jump it and we figure it’ll charge on the way home, no biggie. We head out, the car kind of splutters any time we get caught at a light. Finally get out of the city proper and onto the highway and it seems to be better.
We get down the road and … splutter, splutter, out goes the dash lights totally.. fuck… splutter, die… yep.. driving down the road and it crapped out. Shit.. coast it, luckily there’s a guy with an ‘auto repair’ business. Figure we can get him to take a look and see if it’s battery or alternator. He checks.. alternator. Fuck… Check cell phone - no signal area - FUCK. Use nice guy’s phone, call Mom, tell her exactly where we are, have her call the tow company we use.. tell her our phones are dead zoned.. so we then proceed to wait.
Stand out in the cold, wind, leaning against the car, watching for the tow truck for 45 minutes. Finally go sit in the car for a bit cuz I can’t take it any more. Wait another 15 minutes, Friend of nice guy comes out and talks to us, offers to fix it.. by this point, I’m ready to let anyone fix it as long as I can GO HOME. It’s freezing. So I go inside, he calls for part price, I call home, tell mom to cancel the tow truck cuz it ain’t shown yet, sit and get warm.. Rob and Randy (I finally find out names by this point) go outside to look the car over to see how hard it is to take off the alternator. Tow truck shows up! Thank god for that. I go outside, we talk a bit about what to do. In the meantime, Randy starts to piss me off, so we have the tow truck take the car. Thank Randy for his offer, etc.
Randy then proceeds to tell me.. get this one.. that since I am a woman, I need to stand there and make sure our mechanic tests the alternator because mechanics will always try to screw a woman over. He also tells the tow driver how to do his job. At this point, it was a crap shoot as to who was going to deck Randy.. me or the tow driver. We get the car loaded, climb up into the tow truck and off we go. Thank god. Not only was Randy annoying the piss out of me, he was DRUNK. Yeah. Thank god for the tow truck showing up. He told us flat out, he was taking the car with or without us. *laugh* We found out later that they have run-ins with Randy on a regular basis and won’t let someone leave a car there.
So yeah, we get somewhere I get cell service, driver stops to recheck the car - just because it’s good practice - and I call Mom, tell her where we are, with whom, etc.. Rob calls the garage, lets him know we’re coming and why. We get there, drop the car, check the car, yep - alternator is dead. Mechanic calls, orders part, part shows 5 minutes later and within 20 or so minutes, we’re on our way home - FINALLY.
Towing Charges = $85
Repair Charges = $150
Can we just declare Thursday as major FAIL? Yeah. All I want for Christmas is a blossoming Money Tree.
And just so that this isn’t all whine-fest, there was a bright spot. I got a lovely Christmas card from someone that I didn’t really expect one from and it totally made me smile. I also got the rest of the yarn that I need to finish the purple blanket that I’ve been working on. So YAY! Maybe I can get it done and shipped before the holiday after all!
With that said - I’m declaring today OVER and going to bed.
I think I finally grasped the basics of knitting.
