Monday, April 04, 2005

Weekly Update - Monumentally Bad April Fools Morning....

Hi all!

I had a fairly normal and boring week last week and I was thinking to myself on my way home from work on Thursday night that I didn't have much to report in my weekly update, but that was before April Fools Day and now I have quite an adventure to share.

April Fools Day is a weird holiday. I rarely am able to successfully pull off a prank on anyone, but nearly every year I fall victim to a prank. This year proved to be no different because I feel victim to a prank in a early-morning phone call from my old roommate and friend Lyle. But that was after I had the worst commute since moving to Seattle.

I left for work early on Friday morning because I wanted to get in early so that I could catch some night shift folks at my hospitals. So I was headed along my normal route and was atop a "bridge-like" overpass when all of a sudden, a crashing bang scared me and steamy smoke began pouring out of the front of my car. The engine was off, but I have enough momentum that I am coasting along absolutely stunned. Of course the first thing that pops into my head is that I am going to be on every traffic report in the city as "stalled car on 99 South blocking right hand lane" which is not necessarily how I wanted to make my debut in the Seattle media! I got to the side of the road, called a tow-truck and had them take it to the dealership. I made arrangements for them to diagnose the problem and then one of the service guys gave me a ride back into downtown Seattle so that I could catch the bus to work. So my commute was quite the adventure, including 5 forms of transportation (my car, tow truck, dealer car, bus and my feet) and took nearly 3 hours. Around 1130 I got a phone call from the service manager with good news and bad news. The bad news was that he informed me that it was indeed a blown head gasket which had cracked the block and the car was, in one word.....terminal. The good news is that they were willing to give me money for it as a trade in on a new one. Well it took me about 10 seconds to figure out that I was buying a new car this weekend!

I spend 5 1/2 hours at the car dealership on Saturday and after test driving 4 different cars and asking more questions than they ever thought possible I purchased a Chrysler Sebring Sedan. You can check it out at http://www.chrysler.com/sebring_sedan/ It is silver and really fun to drive. So all in all a really bad day turned into a really good weekend. Now I don't have to deal with the headache of registering a car in Washington, because the dealer did that for me.

The remainder of my weekend was spend showing off the new car. Don and I celebrated my purchase at Rock Bottom on Saturday night and I ventured to "the other side of the pond" to Port Orchard on Sunday to share it with Kristen and Dave. I had a lot that needed to get done this weekend (like paint the bathroom) but none of it was completed because my weekend was consumed by the new car.

Hope this finds you all well!

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