The Marci Rating System

Last November, I purchased a car. From a car dealership. Genuinely still boggled that I managed it, but it turns out that car dealerships are extremely motivated to make sales happen, so after five years of *thinking* about buying a new car, once I actually decided to do it, the dealership pushed me through the rest of the steps.

(PS: I was not unwilling to be pushed. It was fine. The salesperson had some cute dog pictures to share.)

But now I face my next DOING THINGS challenge: the maintenance visit. I mostly want to do it, because 1) I'm supposed to get two free visits a year for the first two years and I like free things; and 2) I guess maintenance is important. I know nothing about cars except that I have one, and that for some reason, you're allowed to just drive these massive safety hazards around with barely any training and very little supervision.

Which is to say, cars make me nervous. Doing new things ALSO makes me nervous. But this will be a NEW EXPERIENCE, and once it's done, I'll have had it, and then I'll know if I ever want to do it again!

My car has been diagnosed with 'bad battery,' which sounds about right. My favorite part of the exchange went something like this:

AAA technician (paraphrased): 'here's the problem, you don't have enough cold cranking amps'

Me (thinking): is this a joke? is that a real thing? am I being punked? I've never heard of cold cranking amps, is that a thing I should know about? does everyone else know about cold cranking amps?

Me (out loud): 'okay, thanks'

Anyway, the internet informs me that cold cranking amps is a real thing, but to be honest I didn't read the explanation that carefully. In short: if the battery's cold cranking amps are too low, the car won't start.

And so I will be at the garage this afternoon, getting those cold cranking amps addressed! Hopefully!

Like gas! And food! The weekly grocery trip was delayed because yesterday was what the news calls a "weather impact day." (aka driving was bad) The snow was much more beautiful when I was seeing it on foot and not from behind the wheel trying to figure out which piles had ice underneath.

Which means today's the day! (Which means it would be a great idea to actually, you know, get up and do things. And I will definitely do that. Soon. Now? Maybe now!)

How the car repair experience went yesterday:

Me, dropping the car off as planned: "Great, thanks, when can I call about picking it up?"

Garage: "Give us a call at 3:30."

hahahahahahaha

*called at 3:30, was told they were still working on it and they would call me back in 45 minutes, or if I didn't hear from them, I should call back at 4:30

*called at 4:30, was told they were "almost done" and I could show up at 5:15 to pick it up

*arrived at 5:15 to see my car still up on the lift, was told "10 or 15 minutes" and it would be done

*actual completion time was about 6

BUT THERE IS GOOD NEWS!!!

1. All will be pleased to know that I fed the cat BEFORE leaving for the garage, so she was not waiting for her supper at the same time I was waiting for my car.

2. My car has snow tires AND an inspection sticker AND they repaired (yet again!) the exhaust system that they predicted would be a problem way back in 2021.

YAY! All in all a good outcome.

To the grocery store! IT'S TIME.

Very Important Grocery Store Trip Questions:

*Do I need gas? I think it's fine to wait, but I should check.

*Will my car start? WHO KNOWS. I hope so! ::crosses fingers::

*MOST IMPORTANTLY, will the store have those little fruit cups of strawberries??? Inquiring minds want to know!

*I am going to go interact with people today, at a grocery store! (AHHHHH!!!) I'm not sure I'm quite done hermit-ing, but I'm out of fruit and vegetables, so it's definitely time to get more food.

*Between the holiday and my post-holiday retreat, emails have been piling up. I cannot imagine the strength of people who leave things in their inbox long term; I have 14 emails in there right now and I feel like I'm crumbling under the pressure.

*Today's other major goal: laundry. That should be easier, actually, now that I think about it. Yay, laundry!

*So far I have not made use of this vacation time for any big adventures, but on the other hand, I also haven't (yet!) had that thing where my body goes 'oh you're on vacation? excellent, here's that cold I've been holding back on because you were too busy before.'

*I should probably put gas in the car too, as part of the grocery trip. My car is having unspecified water issues (aka water is entering the car somehow and then failing to leave again, leading to ice forming on the inside of the windows). The internet suggests running the air conditioning, which seems clever, and is also on my list for the ever-expanding grocery store journey.

At one point in September, there was a very rainy day, after a summer with not much rain at all, and I learned that my car is currently not as non-leaking as one might wish. The car has a moon roof, and it turns out that there's supposed to be a way for water to drain out of there, and probably that's blocked in my car. (I don't know, cars are a mystery to me!) There was water where there was not supposed to be water, is what I'm saying.

Ideally, this will be addressed at the garage at the same time I take it in to get inspected (fingers crossed!) and get an oil change (might as well). Which will be... sometime in November? I hope? For now, it's going to take a lil' trip to the garage for the predicted upcoming rain tonight and tomorrow. Put a roof over it! It should resolve the symptom, if not the problem.

Yesterday I was all 'oh yeah I'm clearing the snow off my car, it's harder than I expected, but I got this,' and then I noticed that the windshield wiper on the driver's side was splitting in multiple places and clearly needs to be replaced immediately, and I was just:


(credit Nathan Pyle, Strange Planet)

So, uh, today I'll be checking if the local hardware store has the wiper blades in stock that I need, and tackling the 'replace the windshield wiper blades' challenge. I hear that one comes with bonus points when you do it in the freezing cold!

This morning: cat going to the vet -- a new vet, since we've moved out of range of her previous mobile vet.

This afternoon: car going to the garage -- hopefully for an exhaust repair, and not a replacement.

On the plus side, taking the day off from work means I get to skip Everyone's Least Favorite Meeting! And hopefully we can get a claw trim done at the vet, and my car will be at least moderately quieter after they work on it! All good things!

Okay, so Trader Joe's sells these "72% Cacao Dark Chocolate" bars in three-packs, and they are EXCELLENT. A half a bar? A whole bar? Either way, a delicious breakfast choice -- good flavor, good texture, all around good chocolate.

(Bonus: the segments are excellently bite-sized without having to do any additional breaking up.) ((Even more bonus: it's a folding wrapper so you don't have to rip the foil, which for some reason is A Thing for me.))

The problem with Trader Joe's chocolate is that they're really only sold at, you know, Trader Joe's. The closest TJs to me is about 45 minutes away, and there's another one a bit further, and both of them are in the middle of plazas with (to me) scary driving parts to get there and back. Not ideal.

HOWEVER. It turns out you can get a lot of TJs products through unauthorized amazon shops, which may or may not be how I got my hands on 12 bars recently. Bootleg chocolate is also delicious, it turns out. (It's not *technically* bootleg chocolate, but it's fun to say -- reselling the packs isn't illegal, though TJs would obviously prefer they not.)

The clear solution here seems to be for TJs to do their own online sales, since people are clearly willing to pay significantly higher than in-store prices to get this stuff delivered to their door, and TJ's 'we don't recommend purchasing from unauthorized sellers' stance is just as clearly not effective. As soon as they do, I'll be there with my order for chocolate. (And until then, I may or may not be purchasing it elsewhere. As one does.)