can't bring me down

You ever have one of those days...?

I was planning to take my car into the Honda dealership for an oil change this morning. Last night after dropping off a friend and headed back to my house, one of my tires blew on my car. A nice guy came and changed my tire for me thanks to the Honda roadside assistance included in my warranty. Thus, after my oil change I headed over to Pep Boys to buy a new tire (of course, my tires are less than a year old, so it's quite sad that I already need to buy a new one. Bleh.). After they installed my new tire they informed me that two of the bulbs in my headlights were out. It was at this moment that I began to become suspicious... I've never been that big of a truster of car people anyhow, since every time I take it somewhere there's always something ELSE wrong with it, too, you know. I asked to see the burnt out headlights, and as I strolled over to see it I realized that HEY! the dealership was supposed to have just checked all the lights and other things - they even gave me a checklist saying that they had checked it out. Hmmmm...

Had Pep Boys figured out a way to bust two of the light bulbs???? Had the dealership not really done their inspection as stated???? Could it be in the three minutes that it took me to drive from the dealership to Pep Boys not one but TWO light bulbs, on opposite sides of the car, miraculously burned out???? I was pretty sure the third option was unlikely, so it became clear that SOMEONE was being dishonest with me.

Of course, you know the story - neither place would admit that they had either damaged or neglected to check over my headlights, so I was obviously stuck with the bill. Grr. It's so strange. I don't know quite what to think, but I'm pretty sure that my conclusion is that I will not go to that particular Honda dealership again. This is the same dealership that I boycotted for a couple years when they insisted that all I needed to do at the 20,000 mark was get my oil changed when the owner's manual clearly says that about 20 things need to be checked and changed.

I also feel kind of bad because in my frustration I was a bit rude to the Pep Boys person. He, very wittingly (but at the time very ANNOYINGLY!), replied, "Well, the place you took the car for the oil change doesn't check over things as thoroughly as we do here at Pep Boys."

The car things got taken care of FINALLY and I could get to work for the noon seminar that I was anticipating - Dr. Rafi Ahmed came to talk about CD8 T cells, which are one of my favorite things. I sipped a French vanilla cappucino thing and at a M&M cookie while I listened. I then proceeded to rip out the sock heel for the second time after having messed it up again after re-knitting it while waiting for my car to get fixed three times.

And...now, to make matters bad again, I just managed to get big grease streaks all over my jeans as I was moving some stuff around in anticipation of the great Washing of the Lab Floors scheduled for tomorrow. Ugh! I have NO time to wash these before the weekend, and I need to find some clothes to wear while I run around with the high schoolers on the fall retreat. This is not good. I may be doing laundry tonight at midnight. I don't know how in the heck I'm going to get my pants dry by tomorrow at 4p.m. as dryers are not an option because they shrink all the jeans that are hard enough to find in a length that covers my ankles. Perhaps I'll need to sacrifice my longest pair and hope they don't get too small.

BUT - can't bring me down, because THIS MORNING IT SNOWED!!!!!! It wasn't much, but it was LOVELY!!! Gentle while flakes that were hardly noticeable fell onto my windshield as I drove between car places and then to work. YAY YAY YAY!! Winter is on its way!!!!!!!!!!!