Yesterday really sucked on the frugal scale. It was about a 5. Really, it was lower, but I am giving it a five because spending $382 ended up saving us $1200-1800 for a transmission rebuild in the near future.
When we came back from Ohio I noticed that when slowing down the van made a strange thumping noise. I thought it was the brakes, and didn't give it much thought because we were planning to get the brakes done next week. I did mention it to Marty, but only as a "good thing we are getting the brakes done soon" passing comment. He noticed the sound, but wasn't convinced it was the brakes, so we started to pay attention and noticed that it was always when we hit 30 MPH. Wonderful! The transmission.
Long story short (or is it too late?) our warranty doesn't cover the electronic part of the transmission and of course it was the solenoid pack (whatever the hell that is...) $382 later, it is fixed, the van is back to running great and as a bonus, the pesky check engine light that has been on since early January (that the handy dandy computer the mechanic has said was because our gas cap wasn't fitting right) is now off. We also got the motor of the passenger side window replaced, again. Thankfully, that is covered under the warranty, again.
Yesterday also meant the death of my beloved Freecycle monitor. She told me it didn't work right, but it worked fine for me so I thought she was loopy. Yesterday it showed me that it really doesn't work. Today, I went to hook up the other Freecycle monitor - the one I drove an hour to pick up, and got the other as a bonus - and found out that "Works great!" means "so blurry you will get a headache." Luckily, the one I was going to buy before I put my faith in humanity - and drove an hour to pick up two piece of junk monitors - was still available, so I ordered it. Nothing fancy, but much, much better than the tiny, old, dark one I am borrowing from Alex right now. Remind me later to buy this kid a decent monitor.
Also, remind me never to accept anything offered on freecycle ever again.
2 comments:
We have a federal and state surplus here (Iowa) that has tons of monitors for reasonable prices and gives away 15in CRTS. Maybe you have one nearby you for the kids' monitor?
GigoIt.com is a improvement over Freecycle where free items are listed. It has a lot of advantages over Freecycle like pictures and search and it's easier for beginners to pick up.There are lots of advanced features too, like RSS, a Google Earth layer, and gmail-style conversation views. I hope you check it out.
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