Day 81

Good day everyone. Today I had mentioned to Erin that I would try to get up around 1:30 and take her car over to valvoline to see if I could get the Air Conditioner working. It looked like it was going to be ok. The did a pressure test and it appeared that it would hold the pressure, so then they started to fill it with coolant, and the next thing I know I noticed that they were putting the equiptment away. I figured that wasn't a good sign. Apparently the condenser has a leak. They pointed it out to me, so I asked "How much is a part like that gonna cost out of curiousity?" They said "Usually that would be like $150 if you get it through auto zone and not your marked up part store."

So, I ended up not having to pay anything since the job couldn't be done, and left. I told Erin about it when I got home, explaining the part(s) that we would need in order to get her ac working. She mentioned that we should try to see if there are any salvaged Ford Escapes that we can get working parts off of for it instead of buying brand new. I said "Sure, we could probably do that. We wouldn't be able to guarantee how long they will last." But, it is true, we could probably find them used somewhere with a car that was totalled before it had really used the life out of all the parts it has. We could even have JD, the guy that fixed Erin's transmission possibly do the work.

So today feels pretty weird as far as school goes. I enjoy trying to plan a day ahead. Basically by today when I came to work, I had completed today's assignments as of yesterday evening, but had saved them as a draft and then turned them in after it was past midnight (making it officially friday). So today when I came in to work, I had posted my assigned posts and had already taking part in class participation. So when I came in, I looked at both classes and thought "wow, I don't have anything I have to do today."

In fact, I can post on saturday if I want to, but I'm not required to. I have already done everything I need to for the week. I also have already turned in the weekly assignment in both classes that is due at 11:59 PM Sunday evening, I got that done wednesday morning. It was part of my wanting to be pro-active in school this week. Well it worked the way I wanted it to. I'm looking forward to getting off at midnight saturday evening and being able to go home and do whatever. During the day sunday when we're not celebrating the 4th, my teachers should have posted the upcoming week's assignments, and so I will try to go online and do whatever I can ahead of time. What I do is save them without officially posting so that on the day that the forum question is meant for, I can just log online, hit "send", respond to 3 people's posts, and I'm good.

So I'm going to call that it for tonight. In closing, last time I changed my oil in my truck, I took it to valvoline because I needed the serpentine belt replaced too. Today I changed the oil myself but I was unable to get the oil filter off no matter what I did. I ended up saying screw it, left it on, and put the new oil in. This time instead of regular oil I got full synthetic for it. While I was on parking lot patrol, I stopped a few times to listen to my truck and it actually sounds better currently I think. I also changed the Air Filter. That was easy. Erin thinks I should take classes and learn how to work on cars. I said "what, you want me to be able to open a shop in clinton?" She was like "That wouldn't be a bad business!" I don't know. I mean, it'd be nice because I wouldn't try to charge an arm and a leg, and would do the best work I was able to. I would want to be one of those shops where people come back to because they trust me to fix their car correctly. Not one of those shops where you take your car in for something, you leave and something goes wrong because of what they did.

So that's it all! I will try my best to remember to come on here tomorrow and write more for you! I appologize that with school there has been a few days that I've completely forgotten about posting here until it was already too late for that day. See ya later!

CB