Word

Today is Wednesday. Last Friday I drove Nuria to the airport and now she's back in Costa Rica. She's been a trooper with helping me learn Spanish, but I think the days of learning new things may be behind me. Or maybe I just need to do the lessons for twelve hours per day.

Yesterday I took my car to an auto shop for its annual inspection, which in theory should cost $20. But every car owner knows how that goes. The mechanic put it on the lift and the first thing he said was, "You need a new muffler." Of course. It really doesn't seem that long since I put a new muffler on it.

I looked closely at the muffler. It was a bit rusty, but I didn't see any holes. Still, it was louder than it should have been. So I nodded "Okay." 

He said, "You need an oil change." I already knew that, so I nodded again and told him to be sure to perform a lube job, too. 

He then said, "Your headlights are foggy and need buffing." I said "Okay."

"It will be three hundred ninety five dollars," he said. Thank goodness it wasn't four hundred dollars—that would have been expensive. *sarcasm*

I walked home and waited for a call telling me I could pick up the car. After two hours, I figured the job should be complete, and I called the shop. The mechanic answered. "Oh, I was about to call you," he said. "Your car is ready."

I walked back to the auto shop. The first thing I did was to walk to the front of the car to inspect my shiny new headlamps. They looked the same as before. Exactly the same.

"They look the same!" I exclaimed. The mechanic offered some mumbo-jumbo about "painting" them, which I quickly put down. "They look exactly the same as before," I insisted. "I'm not charging you for that," he said.

I knelt beside the car and looked under it. A shiny new muffler was installed. I'm sure it was the cheapest muffler they could find. As for the oil change and lube job, I have only his word. 

I paid him $395. The Jeep is good for one more year.

As I walked out of his office, he offered me one tip: "You should sell that Jeep and buy a new one." But I wondered, "Why? It looks good and it's been running great for 26 years."

Today, my house and garage were treated for termites. I found termite tunnels in the garage a few months ago. I called a termite company and a salesman/inspector came out and looked around. I told him, inasmuch as they had to treat the garage, they could treat the house, too. Of course, they don't enter buildings to treat them. They dig a shallow trench around the perimeter of the building and put down a poison.

The salesman told me that the trench would be 8 inches deep. The young man who did the actual job (I will henceforth refer to him as "the termite guy") told me it would be two inches deep. When I mentioned the salesman's eight inch trench, the termite guy said, "That's the old treatment. The new stuff we're using is much stronger and we only go two inches into the ground."

The salesman told me the job would take four hours. It actually took one hour. I told the termite guy that the salesman said four hours, and the termite guy said, "He doesn't do the work."

The termite treatment was $850.

So, yesterday and today I spent $1245 and the only thing that I'm sure of is that I got a new inspection sticker and the cheapest muffler money can buy, and a guy with a hose spent an hour walking around my house and garage. Oh, and digging a two-inch-deep trench so narrow that I can't really see it. Maybe he did a great job, the best job any termite guy has ever done. Or maybe he did a quick job and then took the afternoon off. I don't know for sure. I have only his word.