No time to write this morning. Substitute post: an e-mail exchange…
Sunday, August 29, 1010, 8:48 p.m.
Funny to Tina
Annoying end to a hassle-filled week. Went down to my son’s house w. the little dog in tow. He fixed a wonderful dinner.
Having been up since 2:00 a.m., I thot I’d stop in the park in the way home, exercise the dog for a few minutes, then come back to the house and fall face-forward in the sack. You can sense this coming, eh…? Naturally, when the dog and I climb back into the car after a frolick in the park, the goddamn thing won’t start!
Dead battery. Sunday night.
I figure to walk to my friend La Maya’s house and ask her to call her AAA (which I can’t afford). Fortunately before I got there (she only just walked in the door a couple of minutes ago…just got off the phone from her), I ran into my neighbor Harriet, who called her husband. He used my jumper cables to start the van, and they figured out that the former Checker (now OReilly’s) at 7th St & Dunlap (garden spot!) is open till 9:00 p.m.
Miracle! Mighty miracle, because La Maya didn’t get home until about 10 minutes ago.
Ninety bucks later… Hell. That’s just about what I had to cover groceries until the end of September. What a fu*king nightmare.
I know that battery is newer than two years old!!!!!!! Oh well. Now there’s a new one in there. And now at least I can get to workoid tomorrow.
Gotta go to bed.
Sunday, August 29, 2010, 11:35 p.m.
Tina to Funny
E-gggaaaddsss! I hate days like that. I am currently sitting at Denny’s, visiting with my mom, drinking free coffee, using free Internet, fixing hundreds of files for Pearson. Boy will I be thrilled when this is over. The project manager actually told me to send her an invoice…they’re going to pay me everything in one big check! Holy cow…it’s a downpayment on a house (or in this economy half the cost of one).
I hope everything’s ok with the car. Not having transportation is one of my recurring nightmares. When do you need [the current editorial project]? Wednesday? I’ve got to finish up Pearson tomorrow…and tonight…but should have some time on Tuesday.
August 30, 2010. 6:00 a.m.
Funny to Tina
It got better… After I sent off that e-mail to you, I heard from my son. He tried to do his laundry. When the washer drained into the workroom sink, a gusher erupted…from under the sink, through the wall!
So evidently the pipe is ruptured inside the wall. Oh god. Think of that THAT’S going to cost. He doesn’t have a nickel or a dime since he threw his roommate out over the girlfriend episode, so now I’ll have to come up with that, too.
Meanwhile, my lawn guy is supposed to show up at M’hijito’s house to cut up and cart off the tree that sheared off at the ground in Saturday’s microburst. It literally snapped the tree off right at ground level. He’s going to do his routine clean-up of the yard and said he’d charge what I normally pay every two or three months…seventy-five bucks. I think M’hijito can cover that. But meanwhile, the plumbing bill is going to run into the hundreds of dollars. At least.
I don’t know where the money will come from. The goddamned ASU Fidelity morons…I told them to cut my drawdown to the minimum NEXT month. While I had the idiot on the phone, I repeated over and over and OVER: DO NOT CUT MY DRAWDOWN IN AUGUST! Open my checking account and what’s the drawdown? Seventy-seven cents. So I have no money. I called and yelled at them over the phone; 45 minutes later they were claiming they would fix it but it would take days and days. So it’ll be another week or more before they come up with the paltry $385 that amounts to after taxes.
It was $209 to install a new hard drive in the iMac. Now I have a computer that has to be completely repopulated. My son says he knows how to clone the MacBook back over into the iMac, but to do it, I’ll have to buy a FireWire…another thirty bucks or so. Jezus.
Yeah, the car: thank god Harriet came along. Otherwise the damn thing would be sitting there in the park as we scribble. It’s ten years old and has 100,000 miles on it. Normally I would hold a car 10 years and then buy a new one. But I can’t do that now. Even if I felt I could pony up the cash (I certainly can’t afford a loan payment!!!), the cost of registration and insurance on a new car would send me to the poorhouse.
No. Wait. I’m already in the poorhouse, aren’t I?
We’re the biggest cheeeepwads on the planet, but we have AAA or something along those lines. It’s well under $100.00, I think. Worth it.
I got so mad the last time AAA screwed me over (which was far from the first time) and left me sitting in 110-degree heat for over an hour with a big dog and no water that I vowed never, ever to deal with them again.
I got another service through Discount Tire. They were even flakier.
AARP has a roadside service; I haven’t looked into it, but now that my car is getting unreliable in its old age, it may be time to look at that.
Check your car insurance. I have Nationwide and they now have service like free tows and etc…. I think its kinda like AAA. Ive talked to others with different ins and they said they have the same. I got it and didnt open the envelope, just filed it, never paid attention then they sent the keychain tag again and I wound up using the tow service the next week. They gave me a ride home and towed the car to my mechanic.
I second @Brandy’s suggestion. My insurance (USAA) pays for towing 100% (maybe has a mile limit?). We pay about $12/year for the towing and car rental coverage. Have used it twice and no problems.
So maybe check with your insurance company how much it would cost to add that coverage to your auto policy. Or maybe you already have it and don’t know it?
I have to second that. Our AAA membership has been paid every single year since 2004 I think. It is so worth it and has gotten us out of more jams than I can count. We started with the basic, which is around $50 or something like that. We are now one level above that because we live in a rural area where we might have to get towed 50 miles or more to get to a auto service place. As a cautionary note, I will say they have a weird system of deciding who is going to come tow your vehicle. It might not be someone local, which would of course make sense, but someone 20 or 30 miles away. I did once have to wait in the hot sun for 1 1/2 hours to get my truck towed.
I your old battery had a warranty, you might talk to the merchant who sold it to you. Maybe you can get some money back.
@ all: Thanks for the suggestion about the auto insurance! Come to think of it, I vaguely recall being told the Hartford DOES have some sort of roadside assistance. Seems to me the rep said they don’t give you a card — you just call a number that’s on the policy. I’ll call them tomorrow and ask if that’s true.
USAA is top-of-the-line insurance. Hartford, from what I can tell, is pretty good, but I’ve been told no insurer can touch USAA in terms of coverage and service. We’ll soon find out, though, if the Hartford is trying. 😉