I brought the donuts

It's my birthday so I decided to bring donuts in to my co-workers. Wish I could share with all of you guys.

Car repairs...

Update 4/25 6:00 pm
I got my car back about 20 minutes ago. Without having to replace any parts (thank goodness) the bill still came to $650. Parts and tax were only $100 of that. So I guess my economic stimulus package is stimulating the garage I went to. Oh well, I need my car. I'll feel better when I post the flower pictures that I took today. :-)

I took my car in to the shop Tuesday morning. I was having trouble getting power when trying to get up to highway speed in a hurry. I know, I know, I have a diesel Jetta with an automatic transmission. But, it was getting to be worse than usual.

Well, since VW automatic transmissions aren't the best, the red Golf had a lot of trouble, I decided to take it to the place that has the equipment to completely change out all of the transmission fluid. There's a shop that's usually cheaper, more honest, and does better work. But that one didn't have the equipment to fix what I thought was wrong with the transmission.

That last sentence should have been my clue. I THOUGHT that was the problem. Should have had Ichabod take it for a test drive. He'd've known that it was probably an exhaust system problem.

So, on Tuesday I dropped the car off and walked home. The only good thing about this place is that it's a block from my house. They never call me, I always have to call them. This story is sounding more and more like a bad date all the time. I gave them until early afternoon before I called. They said it wasn't the tranny, it was probably the mass airflow sensor. But they had to clean out the intake first. It was really full of carbon. They couldn't properly check the mass airflow sensor with everything so dirty. They were going to need to keep it overnight so they could wait for gaskets to be delivered.

Okay, I told them, I can wait until Wednesday. Thank goodness I was still able to work from home.

Wednesday afternoon I waited until about 1:30 to call them. Now they'd decided it wasn't the mass airflow sensor, but the EGR valve. They'd need another night. Great. I had an appointment I needed to make at 4:00. They said they had a car I could use so I went over to pick it up. Do you think I'd be smart enough to read the paperwork before signing it? No, but I did after I got home. It was a 12 year old car, and dirty to boot, and they wanted the greater of $28 per day or $.47 per mile.

For that kind of money I'm working from home again today. They'd better have the sucker done really soon. Of course they haven't called me yet and it's 1:12 pm. I guess I'll be calling soon to see how badly they want to damage my credit card.

Color in my yard

My little green buddies have bloomed in the last week. Here's the proof!











If you look closely you can see daffodils starting to come up.