Alternations

On Saturday night, my effing car died in the middle of the street. I knew it'd been having some kind of problem, so I'd made an appointment with my mechanic to bring the car in on Monday to have it checked out. But my car beat me to the punch. I recognized the signs from the last time my car died in the middle of the street: the interior lights started dimming, the "stereo" (by which I mean the "dangling crappy tapedeck") started wigging out, the dials started ticking in time with the turn signal. Luckily I realized this shortly before getting on the bridge to drive to the city and turned around; the car crapped out about a block later.

Also luckily, this time I could actually get the car into neutral so that Dealbreaker could help me push it out of the street (OK, he did all the work, I just steered). Last time the car died, I couldn't shift it out of drive, so all the people who stopped and offered to help me push it out of the street couldn't do a thing.

We called AAA, and they said they'd be there in 40 minutes, but actually arrived in five. As far as breaking-down-in-the-middle-of-the-road incidents go, this one was relatively painless. Like, it was raining, but we pushed the car under an overpass, so we stayed dry.

The best part of this was that a girl pulled up behind us while we were waiting by the side of the road, and asked me how to get to the 24 or to Telegraph. She looked pretty shaken about being lost in sketchy West Oakland, and relieved to see a harmless looking (read: white) girl by the side of the road.

Now, I called my mom to tell her that my car had died, and she of course started out by getting mad at me (again) for not taking Bill's car. This, for some reason, led her to start reading the real estate listings to me, saying that I should really buy a house, and look at all these open houses in my neighborhood! Even though my current neighborhood was my prime excuse for not taking the car, and she really wishes I would move to a nicer neighborhood, she suddenly wants me to buy a house here. Uh huh.

Turned out it was the alternator, just like last time. I debated scrapping the car, but my brother and the mechanic both reminded me that I wasn't going to be able to buy a new car for the amount it was going to cost to fix the car I already had.

But of course, the string of car problems continues. This morning I rolled down the passenger window so I could wipe off the sideview mirror, and the fucking thing would not roll back up! After I struggled with it for a while, I got it to roll up partially and diagonally. Uuuuuugh...I got it fixed for $50, but uuuuuuuuuugh. At least I got to miss a couple hours of work, and buy a latte on the way.

So I'm going to start saving my pennies for a new set of problems.