{"id":28525,"date":"2016-12-06T17:02:55","date_gmt":"2016-12-07T00:02:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/?p=28525"},"modified":"2016-12-06T17:05:42","modified_gmt":"2016-12-07T00:05:42","slug":"sigh-old-blue-and-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/2016\/12\/06\/sigh-old-blue-and-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Sigh. Old Blue and me."},"content":{"rendered":"

Old Blue (aka 1993 Geo Prizm LSi, aka Toyota Corolla disguised as a Chevy) is mechanically about the best $700 car anybody could want. It starts on the first crank every time, all the time, and gets me where I need to go as long as that doesn’t involve freeway speeds.<\/p>\n

But beyond its solid gold engine performance, it’s … well, more than a bit funky. I long ago gave up trying to keep the radio tuned in to any actual station (a pebble in the road can bump me from NPR to Mexican tubas to metal to country twang). Before I Gorilla taped all around the trunk and taillights, rainwater would saturate the back seat and create puddles on both the front and rear passenger-side floor. The headliner drapes down onto my head in wet weather. The passenger-side window rolls down but can’t be rolled up (Gorilla tape to the rescue once again; the window is now permanently closed). The driver’s-side door handle lost its spring and it now requires a voodoo ceremony to get the door open. The brake light likes to flash on at random, particularly on cold mornings. And so on. And on.<\/p>\n

All these things I could grit my teeth and live with. $700 car. Reliable engine performance. Not complaining.<\/p>\n

But recently the blower on the ventilation system began randomly cutting out. No heat. Worse in this damp climate, no defrost. It might work first thing in the morning (good). But after that … maybe yes, maybe no. Today “no” became its preferred mode and I finally decided I had to do something about it. So I started looking up the cost of replacing blower motors and blower motor resistors.<\/p>\n

This was one of the first databits I found:<\/p>\n

\"screenshot-from-2016-12-06-15-35-59\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Today has been a very bad day of what’s been a couple of rough months in what’s turning out to be a pretty darned iffy year. Every time I turn around, something else is falling apart, and unfortunately one of those things is me. Life holds so many complications at the moment — most of them potentially terrifyingly expensive and a few of them life-threatening — that I’m tempted to find some method of just walking away to avoid dealing with everything. (In the case of Old Blue, that’s actually possible, as I live within walking distance of most places I need to go.)<\/p>\n

But when — already totally freaked out about the costs and complications of life — I saw that price range, I broke down and laughed and cried. And no, of course I don’t take it seriously. But at that moment I just felt like the Internet was Out To Get Me.<\/p>\n

FWIW, I couldn’t get that site to give me an actual Geo Prizm estimate and right now I really don’t care. I’m going to gorge myself with Mexican pizza, binge watch season two of Being Human<\/em> (the Brit version), then drown my sorrows in a nice cup of hot, sweet decaf tea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Old Blue (aka 1993 Geo Prizm LSi, aka Toyota Corolla disguised as a Chevy) is mechanically about the best $700 car anybody could want. It starts on the first crank every time, all the time, and gets me where I need to go as long as that doesn’t involve freeway speeds. But beyond its solid gold engine performance, it’s … well, more than a bit funky. I long ago gave up trying to keep the radio tuned in to any actual station (a pebble in the road can bump me from NPR to Mexican tubas to metal to country twang).…<\/p>\n

Continue readingSigh. Old Blue and me.<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous","category-money","ratio-natural","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28525"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28534,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28525\/revisions\/28534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}