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On Tuesday, I finally got around to doing what I had been planning on doing for a few weeks now, changing my oil. Well, not so much me doing it, as my car is a Nissan Altima and has a ground clearance of about 8 inches, but instead the fine folks at my local quickie oil place. I say "fine folks" in a mocking way, however, because the $25 oil change with $3 coupon ended up costing me $250. Good Times. But first, the oil change. While working on the oil change, and fighting off the pitches for a new air filter and engine flush, they informed me that my anti-freeze was low. Being naturally suspicious, I told them I was going to fill it myself later. (For those of you who don't know, anti-freeze is available at your local auto parts store for under $5, and you just pour it into the hole marked "coolant". Their charge was around $12 for doing it.) Now, back to the rest of the story... While in the garage, the mechanic tells me my tires are overinflated. I'm surprised, as I had just tested them a week ago and the gauge was fine. He goes and fixes the pressure on EVERY tire. I thank him. Notice that he had to look at all four tires and test their pressure. After paying, I drive the LESS THAN 2000 FEET to my apartment complex. Get that? I drove less than 2000 feet after the oil change. Irked about the anti-freeze, I pop the hood to check the level. It is dead even between the MIN and MAX level, which in my book really isn't so much low as it is perfect. This angers me slightly, but what should I expect from these places? (I will not even begin to get on a rant about how it is aparently acceptable business practice - in many fields, like electronics, car repair, and household repair (carpentry, plumbing) - where specialized knowledge is necessary, to LIE to customers to make an extra buck! Life is too complicated and filled with too much information for me to be constantly educating myself on how not to get fucked over by some douche-bag who enjoys ripping people off. END RANT.) As I am about to close the hood, I hear a slight hissing. I wonder if the guy who inspected my tires did something and my tire is leaking, so I bend down to check it out. And what do I find? A screw embedded in my tire, with air squeezing out underneath the head! So, while it is possible that I picked up the screw in the 2000 feet I drove, I really think that it is more likely that I picked up a screw WHEN I WAS IN A CAR GARAGE! You know, the kind where they screw and unscrew things! Damn you, oil change weasels! Then, I quickly drive the car to Walmart, so they can repair the tire. (Thanks to Blain, who informed me, the car ingnoramus, that a "hot plug" can repair a tire as good as new with no need for replacement - saving me the $60 or so for a new tire.) However, Walmart has an hour to hour and a half wait till they can look at my car, because Jimbo - the only mechanic there - has "like three or four cars to get to, after I finish here talkin' to Bill". Realizing that I have stumbled into a time warp and that my tire is deflating as we speak, I go down the road to another tire shop, where they'll do it for only $3 more. Fine. Amber picks me up, as they need an hour and I need a shower from raquetball. After the shower, I get a call that 3 of the tires (one was replaced a year ago) need to be replaced and the patch isn't worth it. It'll cost $226. So, I gave up. Fine. I get it. I don't know as much about cars as people who make they're living working on cars! Clearly, this is a deficiency on my part, and I deserve to have my money taken away because of it. I don't know much of what goes on besides the right one is for faster and the left one is for stopping. Thus, you deserve all of my money. In the end, it wasn't that bad, as I checked and my tires were 40k tires and I have 38,575 on my car. Plus, driving to California and back isn't a great time to "let it ride" on old tires. Still, I enjoyed getting riled up. Yes, at the end of April, Amber and I are taking a two week trip to Indio, CA for Coachella, a music festival. We'll be stopping by the Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, and all the boring states in between. This should coincide perfectly with the arrival of my brandy-new HighDef TiVo, allowing us just enough time to miss the UPS delivery and having them ship it back to the store where I bought it. For some reason, UPS refuses to come to our apartments before the front office closes at 5PM. Therefore, we have to be home to pick up the packages, which is hard when home is in Michigan and you're in Utah. Details and itinerary to follow. Like, after I figure out anything more than "Well, we should probably go west." Wow, that was long. I guess I should make these shorter and more frequent, as opposed to long and tedious, but that's me.