Frankenvagen Disaster - Day 4-ish

Today was supposed to be the light day. Basically: let my sister come up and retrieve her car. She called in the morning to let me know that she would be out at 11:30 with my mom, and that they planned to take me to lunch. Ah, operation cheer-me-up!

They arrived about the time they said, with a prepared dinner for hubby-Eric and I tonight. Then the three of us went to lunch downtown, then the bakery for some sweets. My diet is officially set back by about three days by how much I ate. I don't care. I haven't eaten out in awhile, and it was great!

Then my mom went home, but my sister hung around to take me out to pick up my comic books. I'll note here that Eric and I prepay for our comics, and roughly half of the comics we read anymore are paid for by a friend who lets us read them first. Thus I just needed to pick up comics for this week. Part of me isn't sure why I'm bothering, as I haven't actually read a new comic book in three weeks due to depression. But then, Eric's been keeping up with them, so I guess it's all good. We also stopped by the grocery where my sister paid for a couple of needed items I had to pick up.

Then, because Automax is really good at fixing cars but really bad at calling people back, my sister drove me to my shop to check and see if they had gotten the CD player out. YUP! I settled the bill with them, and took my player with me. They also urged me to bring any used car I was looking at by the shop for a check before purchasing, and suggested I don't buy anything older than 1996 (I was thinking of avoiding anything pre-2000, myself). I saw the van in their yard attached to a tow truck, about to be towed to the scrapheap.

For the rest of the afternoon I've been putting together a list of "needs/wants/would be cool" for my replacement car. So far the only things on the "needs" list are heat and reliability. Theoretically it shouldn't be hard to find a car with those two attributes. My "wants" list is a lot longer, and I'll try to get some of those in my vehicle as well. I suspect none of "would be cool" will make it, unless I get really lucky. While we still don't know how we're going to pay for it, we at least are in no immediate danger of being unable to pay our bill for the rental and repairing Eric's car, thanks to the help of folks on-line.

As for the cyberbegging, it's soul-reducing and painful. While the help is much appreciated, the fact that it was needed is humiliating. Which is why I plan to keep track of the money exactly and pay it forward like any other debt. At the moment, I don't believe we need any more. I think we're good, unless the problem with Eric's car is much more severe than expected. I'll leave the original post up, but any more money will go into reserve to help pay for the replacement car. After I post this, I plan on hiding the Frankenvagen bit from the sidebar. I thank all the folks who contributed. The response humbled me, as I really wasn't expecting it. I am in your debt.

Now allow me to lean on you all once more. Besides my desire for happy stories, if anyone has any advice on what sort of car to get or what kind to avoid, let me know. Yes, I'm looking for opinion. I'm also working on a budget, if anyone has any idea how much I should expect to pay for a good used car (as opposed to a junker), please make a comment. I know, I know... costs range all over... but I'm not entirely sure where I'm starting. Buying a car is a new experience for me.