|
|
|
accursed hatchback fixes
Monday, March 9 2009
The accursed hatchback, which I rarely drive, is in the process of being fixed. It's had problems since the first day we foolishly bought it on eBay. These problems have ranged from the big issues (brakes) to the small issues (various small screws and bolts missing). The other day we had our mechanic on Hurley Mountain Road replace the rear struts with ones salvaged from the totalled hatchback, and in so doing he found that one of its struts had been broken this whole time. No wonder the car had handled like an old school bus. No wonder I couldn't carry more than about fifteen concrete blocks in it.
All of these repairs are in preparation for selling the car to the next sucker in its long line of owners. I forgot to mention this, but on Sunday, Gretchen and I picked up our newest car at the Kingston bus station. It's a 1998 Subaru Outback, and, being a friend-of-a-friend car, less likely to be hiding nasty secrets. So far its nastiest secret has been the difficulty of opening its hatch.
Today a guy from a local car glass business came over and replaced the windshield on the accursed hatchback. It was raining, and I'd had to clear a place in the garage for him to work. (Most of the stuff I'd moved had been little bits and pieces salvaged from the totalled hatchback.) Strangely, when the installer was done, he left me the old windshield. That would have actually been a good thing had it only had the small crack that had caused us to order a replacement. But now it was full of cracks from the process of removal and now utterly useless.
While the accursed hatchback was still in the garage, I replaced its lower oxygen sensor, which had broken off in its socket. This seemed to keep the check engine light extinguished after I cleared the error codes on the car's computer.
While I was out lubricating the door latch on the new Subaru, David showed up. I'd promised to go with him over to his distant relative's house to help figure out the situation with the computer of the relative's wife, the woman who used her husband's handgun to kill herself on Thursday.
So there I was, installing obscure book indexing software on the survivor's computer and tracking down the files this software had generated on the late wife's computer. A couple other relatives were there with the survivor and they were so full of questions it wasn't always easy to work. But between David and me, we managed to figure out the basics of the indexing software. The only thing we couldn't do was guess the late wife's AOL password. As we were leaving, her husband insisted on paying me, and I knew that I had to accept or risk a scene. He'd dragged me into the kitchen for this exchange, and it was just enough privacy for the 72 year old man to erupt into sobs. It was awful, in a sweet life-affirming kind of way.
Meanwhile the household dog moped about like a rescue dog from Hurricane Katrina. I can't even imagine what he'd seen or what was going on in his little canine brain.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?090309 feedback
previous | next |
