Well, it saves on air conditioning...

In July, my passenger window broke. Well, not the window itself, but the nifty mechanism that makes the window go up and down. For the past three months, my window just doesn’t like to stay up. It seems to be happy hanging out about three inches down, but sometimes it feels like sliding all the way down. When that happens, I manually push it back to its normal ‘happy spot’, three inches from the top.

As we are quickly approaching the cooler season, I realized that this window issue was going to be a problem. I can’t very well drive around in the snow with my window cracked three inches. I began my investigation, calling around to various dealerships. All of the quotes seemed to agree at $400. Quite disgruntled, I decided that I could do better.

My very helpful co-worker offered her mechanic as an option. I called her mechanic and he quoted $250. Perfect. Sold. I made an appointment for that Friday.

I reached the mechanic at 2pm, filled out the necessary paperwork and sat down for some quality reading time. A solid hour passed. The very nice receptionist (who felt the need to peak at me every 10 minutes or so) approached me and told me that they didn’t have the right part. Someone had to run and get the needed part. She jokingly said, “But we close at 5 so it can’t be that much longer!”

After that, I waited and waited. 5:05 rolled around. A nice mechanic opened the door and announced, “Your chariot awaits!” I was so excited; I realized that in three hours I read well over 100 pages and my butt was adequately asleep. I awkwardly rolled off of the leather couch, paid the bill, and got into my car, super excited that the window was in the up position!

As I pulled away, I tried to resist the urge to play with the window. Finally, the child within took over and I rolled down the window. IT WORKED!! With great gusto, I rolled the window back up…but it didn’t respond. The window stayed in its happy three-inch-down place.

Slightly annoyed, I made a U-turn and headed back to the garage. The office was closed and the workers were on their way home.

“Hi! Sorry,” I stammered, “but my window still doesn’t work.” I really didn’t want to detain these fine gentlemen from whatever they were doing, but I did just pay $250 for absolutely nothing. The men discussed, examined, poked and prodded the lazy window. Finally, they brought out the heavy-duty glue and had my door assembled in a mere 20 minutes. They told me not to touch the window for 12 hours (time enough for the glue to dry) and then I should be good to go. Fabulous! I was simply astonished that it could be fixed so easily!

The next two days I was very mindful of not touching the window. I know they said 12 hours, but I decided to give it 36 hours, scared that it would need the extra time.

Sunday afternoon I decided that I had waited long enough. I bravely positioned my finger over the button and pushed. The window glided halfway down. I released the button and took a breath. Now for the hard part. I pushed the button in the reverse direction…and the window went up!!! So happy and hardly able to believe that I could be so lucky, I tried it again. I pushed the button down. The window glided down. Whew. I pushed the button up. The window began jerking back and forth and made a scary grinding noise. All of the sudden, my car smelled of burning. Damn.

I called the mechanic today and made another appointment to have my window fixed. Andy gets to take it this time. :)

The religious problem: SOLVED!

My drive to work today was painful (for lack of a better word). The commute that usually takes me 15-20 minutes, took me a solid 55 minutes. The intelligent state of Utah decided that the best time to work on one of two roads leading to the University of Utah, is the second week that school is in session. Brilliant.

I thought of this as I sat in gridlock trying to decide if I wanted to scream obscenities or just bang my head against my window. Finally I saw the reason for the back up. The brilliance of the construction was demonstrated by the merging of a three lane road to one.

One by one, everyone began merging, one behind another like a zipper. At the daredevil speed of 3 mph I allowed a Forester take the space in front of me. I nervously acknowledged that I will be late for work in 20 minutes (and I still had to catch the public transportation from my parking space). Trying to distract myself from such an unpleasant thought, I glanced at the construction sign wondering how many weeks I had to wait for my commute to return to normal. Instead of a date the sign read:

"IT'S OFFICIAL. GOD DOES NOT EXIST"

There you have it. The religious problem: SOLVED!
I swear to God, this really happened.