A series of unfortunate events
Last night I took an ungraceful spill on the sidewalk. This isn't very uncommon for me. I fall a lot. This one was particularly dramatic, with 3 or 4 false starts before the grand finale of eating it whole sale. I scraped up my hand and my elbow and my ankle, and I thought that was it. NAY! I woke up this morning to discover that my hip was hugely bruised and my shoulder is suffering some mysterious side effect whereby moving my right arm at all feels like somebody's tugging on my shoulder and holding it still. Awesome!
THEN! On my drive home last night, after the fall, my little oil light on my dash started blinking just at the same moment as my engine started to shake. It shook and shook and started to smell like chemicals and burning and finally I stopped at a gas station, checked my oil (there was NONE on the dip stick), and poured a quart in to make it home.* With no help from the men at the gas station at the corner of 29 and Graham. It was really nice of you to watch me fighting with opening my hood (for those of you familiar with opening my trunk, it's even harder than that) at 11:00 at night. And just keep staring. Instead of offering any assistance or pretending to care. But all that staring sure was helpful!
Anyhow, so this morning, bruised, partially immobile and in a pisser of a mood, I found out that my AAA membership had expired last month. Whoops. But, they helped me anyway. I always forget how nice those people are on the phone. "Hi thank you for calling AAA how can I help you?" "Hi, I need a tow." "I'm really sorry to hear that! Are you in a safe location?" That is excellent customer service. They know that people calling them for help are going to be in unfortunate circumstances, and they train their employees to act like human beings. Imagine that!
Anyhow, that's all. Bitching for bitching's sake about my crap day. As the AAA operator said to me before we hung up, I hope your day gets so much better.
*I should note before a commenter jumps on me that no, I haven't lapsed in my oil changes. I just got it changed 3 or 4 weeks ago. No, I don't think they left me dry because... it was 3 or 4 weeks ago and if that had been the case this would have happened sooner. I think it's probably a leak of some kind. Which is sure to be cheap and painless to repair! Or, not at all. My mechanic made some seriously sad faces at me this morning when I described what was going on. Uf.
posted by Blogs t r e t c h @ Thursday, August 07, 2008
3 Comments:
I would hope they left you dry on oil. Otherwise you may have an oil leak which can be costly to fix. I recently had a coolant leak in my car that I drive like 2,000 miles a year. I figured it was only a hundred or so, but I got quoted $1,000+. I took it somewhere else and got it all fixed for $500. $500 is still a shocker for how much it is driven. I was lucky because a friend gave me a massive discount. Hopefully you don't end up getting railed. Don't be afraid to try and get multiple estimates.
Fortunately, I have a very honest and trustworthy mechanic that I've been going to as long as I've been driving. So getting ripped off isn't a concern. But yeah, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it's not a leak. That would set me back in a way I'd really like to not be set back at the moment.
Man. That stinks. Good luck on the oil leak -- and if it helps, take solace in the fact that I also took an embarrassing spill on the sidewalk this week.
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