Perhaps I'll begin posting like Kathleen's blog. Except instead of posting about home repair, I'll post about my car.... here goes:

My car never had a Wonderboy (someone that did lots of home repairs very, very incorrectly). I know- very incorrectly is bad grammer, but I have the luxury of not giving a damn. You see, I don't teach english. But I digress. My car did have a previous owner who neglected the car quite a bit. We could call him.... Captain Disregard. Only because it doesn't matter what we call him- I'm not really going to refer to him ever again past this post. I hope. Moving on. Nearly 2 weeks ago, I went to pick up the car in Flint Michigan. The Cap'n is a co-worker of my father, and he had left the keys with my dad, and left the car in his driveway. I saw the car and thought- well, at least it runs. Its not much to look at- the front and rear bumpers are a decent shade of red, while the rest of the car is a very faded red. Keep in mind, it is a 94 Geo Prizm. My dad helps me put my license plate on - really just holding the umbrella, as it was raining quite hard when we got there. I look at the 2 keys - identical to each other- yet one is for the trunk, and the other for the doors and ignition. I finish a visual inspection of the outside- not terribly bad- a few rust spots.... but what did I expect for $500?? The only other flaw I found was that the radio antenna had been snapped off. Ok. No biggee. I proceeded to unlock the door. After struggling with the keys - it takes just the right angle to unlock, that even today I haven't figured out- it takes a good 10-15 seconds to unlock the door as I angle the key and jimmy it around.... I finally opened the door. And it was then that I realized I had made a mistake.

The seats were stained - presumably by... well, I don't even want to venture a guess. I did throw my clothes in the wash after I got home though. The passenger seat was nearly covered in what appeared to be an entire box of chocolate chip cookie crumbs. The floor in the front 2 seats were both matted down- hardened from wear, and each were filthy- bits of food from the past 10 years that had been dropped and lost to the driver. It is my guess that the Cap'n doesn't own a working vacuum. The center console was perhaps the most disgusting. I felt like I needed to wash my hands after touching it. The letters and numbers that indicate the gears on the shifter were unreadable due to the amount of spilled and caked coffee. Dust had collected everywhere on the dash.... it was unreal. The rear bench seat was as if a small white dog had made a home there for several months.... during the shedding season.... and someone kept scratching and petting it. Gross. The center dash had 2 missing knobs, one of which I found in the ashtray, if we can call it that. The ashtray was more of, well.... imagine eating a year of meals in the car with your hands, and instead of using a napkin- you wiped your fingers in the ashtray. The ashtray also had about a dollar fifty in change that no one would dare touch for fear of disease. It was disposed of. Stuffed in seat crevices were empty ziplock bags - some full of medications and tylenol 500. There were several peanut shells and cashews strewn about.... to put it bluntly, even a homeless guy would have tidied up before living in the car. But dirty doesn't mean undriveable, so without cleaning up a single thing, I got in the car and headed home.

That is, until I realized I was out of gas. I called ahead to my dad and told him to stop at the very next gas station. We gassed up, and continued home. Now, since it was raining and september, the car began to fog up. I realized what the knob in the ashtray was for - to use on either of the 2 controls that were missing knobs: Temperature and vent control. (Fan speed still had its knob- lucky bastard). I turned the fan speed to high, pressed the A/C button, put the knob on the temp. and turned it to cold, then put the knob on the vent control and tried my luck at the different vents. It was then that I learned that this car's air conditioning didn't work. When I arrived home, I began parking, and realized that any sharp turns resulted in an odd quick-cycled-squeaking. Hmmm. Ok. I unbuckled my seatbelt, and it didn't retract. Fine. I got out and my dad said- hey- your rear brake lights don't work. Perfect. We broke out a shopvac, seat covers, and a roll of armor-all wipes, and went to town. An hour later, I had a car which was at least clean.... though it didn't smell that way. Later that week, I fixed the antenna with a wire hanger and some duct tape. I threw my old floor mats from my Jetta into this car, and bought a hanging air freshener for the rear-view, and a little tin freshener that sits in the back on the floor. My car smells like Vanilla now. I bought some new bulbs for the back, and now the brake lights work great, but I somehow managed to make my rear left turn signal stop working. So it'll be back to the store for more lights. So.... I thank Cap'n Disregard. His car gets me from point A to point B, my insurance is half of what it was with the Jetta, and I now have a much greater appreciation for the vehicle that I drive. I plan on driving this until it dies- I save about $14 a day (you do the math) for every day that I don't buy a new car. If something non-crucial breaks, I'll leave it or try to repair it myself. If something crucial breaks, I'll spend as much as $250 TOTAL on the car- meaning if it needs $200 of repairs this month, I'll do it. But if in 2 months it needs $100 worth of repairs - screw it. That comes to $300 and I'm not going to spend more than half the price of the car on repairs. :)

So thats that. And now its time to get to work. Enjoy your car! Love your car! Appreciate your car! Don't do what Cap'n Disregard does. ;)