Bad Luck is Still Luck

My disclaimer on this post is that I know I’m a very lucky person overall. Health, family, friends, etc.

However…my life has been one unlucky break after another since my return from Australia. The first thing was that my Intrigue was d-e-a-d…had to have the battery replaced. Due to the fact that I needed a car, I then pulled the Corvette out…only to find a puddle of fluid (later diagnosed as oil) on my garage floor.

Thurs - The Corvette was delivered to the dealer on my way to work (right across the street). I got an estimate for $266 – not as bad as I thought for an oil leak – wow, things were looking up! By noon that day, I had 4 missed calls from the dealer explaining an additional $550 in repairs that were needed for things that worked prior to delivering to the dealership (I swear!). I’m convinced they ripped me off and I hate that sense of not knowing enough about cars to know how badly I was ripped off. By the way, the dealer was kind enough to provide me with an estimate of $1,900 for the “dangerous” tires I was driving on.

Back to the Intrigue. The same night I brought the Corvette home, my dad replaced the Intrigue battery. Life was back to normal and I was only out about a $1,000. I resigned myself to not buying any Stanley Cup Playoff tickets after that spend.

On Friday and Saturday morning, we drove the Intrigue around a ton - to the Tiger game with my 7 year-old nephew, to Somerset and to Kmart. That’s where the joy ends. The thing died again in the Kmart parking lot. After calling AAA and getting it towed, it eventually got repaired (along with making the a/c functional after 2 yrs.) by a neighborhood mechanic for only a couple of hundred dollars more…plus a whole lot of aggravation.

Life was great again…until Tuesday morning that is. On my way into work from Ann Arbor in the Corvette, I got an error message “Service Active Handling”, which is a computerized way of providing for racecar skilled driving for Corvette owners. (my cruise control started dis-engaging on its own as well). I don’t really need active handling (or cruise for that matter), but due to the 4 hours of searching I did on it on the internet, there was warning after warning about serious malfunctions to the car if its not remedied. And guess what, its anywhere from $500-$1,500 to fix. I promptly called the stupid dealer because I KNOW that somehow, someway, their expert service caused these things to happen to my car. I let them get away with $550, but enough is enough. As you can imagine, the dealer thought I was a nutjob for accusing them of tampering (or making a mistake, uh-huh), causing these things to all go wrong at the same time. And I quote, “you are lucky these things are happening while at the dealership as compared to on the road”. You’ve got to be kidding. The warning message hasn’t come on again, so until it does, I’m considering it a glitch. In the meantime, I’m paying $1,100 for new tires – not through the dealer.

AND Finally, last night, I had a great time at the Tiger game. The weather was beautiful, Dontrelle Willis won, etc. On the way home, we stopped for gas and I put my cell phone (flipped open) on the top of the car. I thought to myself as I was pumping, I’d better not forget that phone….and guess what…I drove off with the phone on the roof – didn’t realize until almost 11:30 (an hour later) and we drove frantically back to the gas station. The whole way there, I was muttering about what an idiot I am, warning Lanae to get out while she still could, etc. We were just hoping to find the phone so that I didn’t have to deal with Verizon last night. Well…that damn thing was literally in the middle of the intersection of 2 major roads…still flipped open. We got in the left turn lane, I jumped out and got it while people honked behind us and took off. The phone is badly chipped and looks a mess, run over a couple of times, but Lanae got it to work. I can’t see who is calling, but it works! Having to spend an additional chunk of money was averted. Boy, aren’t I lucky?