What a Doozie...

For the past week and a half, I have been having some car issues. I was on my way to my internship in Bluffdale when my "check engine" light came on and the temperature shot through the roof. That was scary. So my dad came and checked it (because he's so amazing) and my radiator was pretty dry. Okay, it was completely dry. I'm utterly useless when it comes to cars, and I forgot to check my fluids. Yes, I'm a typical girl in that respect.

Anyway, my dad said the car would probably be fine from there, and just to worry about overheating if my car started steaming. Well, the next day when I pulled into work in Orem, my car was steaming. Joys. So I called my dad again, and he was working in Provo that day anyway, so he came and put some more fluid in and told me that it was probably good now. Except not.

It kept steaming. I kept babying it, and making sure it had enough fluids, checking it before I drove it anywhere, filling it some more when necessary. But it was still running, so I was careful and kept using it, though I didn't want to drive it too far for fear of it dying on me.

And to add to my car woes, on Sunday when I went to check the fluids before work on Monday, my tire was flat. Woot. So Brandon was a gem and helped me change it (thank goodness for good guy friends). On Monday (and now we're getting to the good part) I emailed my managing editor at Paper Crafts (I still love that I have a managing editor...so cool!) and told her that I couldn't come in because I was driving on a donut, and driving 50 on I-15 is so not fun. Instead, I drove over to Discount Tire and got my tire fixed. (Luckily it was free because I've bought tires from them before.) (Do you think there are enough parenthetical statements in this paragraph? I apparently don't.)

I drove home on my newly fixed tire and pulled into the parking lot at the BC. But when I got out of the car, I heard a funny noise and smelled a funny smell. I looked down under my hood, and a bright green puddle was forming right by the front driver's side tire. Now, I may not be a car expert, but I was pretty certain that it's a bad thing when fluid drains out of the car on its own. I called my mom, and then called my dad, and checked some hoses to see if I could see a cracked hose, and my dad said he would come down and look at it. He did, and couldn't see anything. We would have to tow the car someplace and have them look at it, and since it was probably a radiator problem, it could cost up to $500. He basically said that my 1991 Honda Civic wasn't worth the troubles and asked me if I was okay with buying a car earlier than I anticipated. I didn't really have a choice, so I said yes.

Then my mom came down to lend me her car for a little while, and now I have to buy a car ASAP. Which basically means in the next couple days. I am excited about getting a new car, but I'm not excited about the payments, and I've decided that I hate looking for cars. It's really stressful.

But right after my parents left, I was trying to turn on my laptop, and it wouldn't work. It had been having some problems on Sunday when I was trying to use it, but I got it to work again. I tried to get it to boot up, but it started making an ominous ticking noise. Jonathan informed me that the last time he heard that noise was when his external hard drive died. Lovely. I tried looking up the disc utility, but my hard drive didn't even show up. I called my incredibly computer-savvy brother, and he said I was screwed. My hard drive has died and joined my car in technology heaven. The hard drive took all of my pictures, music, and writing/school work with it. Hooray.

So in the same day, my car and my laptop (my three-month-old laptop) died. It was quite the day. Tears were inevitable. My friends were really nice and took me to Spoon Me for frozen yogurt and a dollar movie. I needed it. That day sucked.

Thankfully my MacBook is still under warranty, so I just have to take it in to the Apple Store so they can fix it. I'm going to see if they can save anything from my hard drive, but I doubt they'll be able to. Luckily, I think I have access to all of my music through friends and CDs, and a lot of my important documents are on my flash drive. But my pictures are gone for good. Sad day.