Three Hours of My Life I'll Never Get Back and Politics

So last night as I was driving home from work, a message flashed in my car that said "low coolant." Doing what I always do, when I think something is wrong with my car, I panicked. However, since I had a meeting and didn't leave work until after 7:00 getting to a mechanic at that hour was unlikely. Someone who knows more about cars than I do (which is pretty much 99% of the driving population) assured me that I would make it safely to and from work today (he was right) and to the mechanic. I had intentions of going to the mechanic this week anyway since I'm overdue for an oil change (which btw never happens, this may be the first time I actually had over 3000 miles on my car since the last oil change) and I needed an inspection. I got there a little after 4 (can we please applaud me for leaving work before 4, that almost never happens unless I have to tutor, too bad I didn't get to do something fun, but I digress) and was told that yes, they could do the oil change, check the coolant, and do the inspection toady. Yay! Less than an hour later the service person came back and told me my car would not pass inspection because of my tie rods. She then asked me if I knew what a tie rod was and I said no, so she kindly explained it to me--not that I totally understood what it was nor did my later wikipedia search help terribly much. I checked some car info website that helped a little more, but yeah, let's face it, I don't speak car. All I got was that it has something to do with steering and suspension and would take several hours and several hundred dollars to fix. Well, it has been about seven months since I've spent hundreds of dollars on car repairs so I guess I'm due huh? :( Anyway, while I was waiting for my car in the waiting room I did a little bit of work, finished one book, started another one, and watched some CNN. It's been a long time since I've watched CNN. I have nothing against CNN, I just haven't had much time to watch a lot of TV lately and I've been watching the local news lately when I've been watching the news. So anyway, CNN was on in the waiting room and it was kind of loud so it was easy to get distracted from my books. And do you know what I learned from CNN? They need to get some new subject matter. The majority of the three hours was about Sarah Palin and Nancy Pelosi. Now I mean no disrespect to Palin or Pelosi. (See look I can be unbiased and say nice things about both parties--can't we all get along people). But people after three hours of hearing about Palin's plan to run for president, Palin's new tv show, Palin's daughter on DWTS, and Pelosi serving as minority party leader, well, I just get a little sick of hearing the same thing. Aren't there other things going on in the world? Could we maybe just do one hour on Palin and Pelosi and then move on to other topics? And speaking of politics, the CNN peeps were speculating a lot on the 2012 race, people, I cannot deal with the 2012 race. You heard me whine about all the political ads for 2010, I'm not ready for another two years of political ads. UGH! So to sum up, I wasn't exactly thrilled about wasting three hours and over $300 on my car and I'm going to get fat. How does my car make me fat? Well, it doesn't, but I worked late yesterday and didn't get to the gym and since I was doing the car thing today I didn't make it to the gym today either. And Monday was my own fault because I went to the movies instead of the gym, thank goodness I have a dance class tomorrow night because I have to work 'til after 7 tomorrow, which means if I didn't have dance, I probably wouldn't be motivated to go to the gym then. I suppose the one good thing about dealing with this car stuff today is I was originally going to do it Saturday or next Wed (I have the day off), but since I did it early I can enjoy my days off. :) And the service person working today likes me because we have the same first name and spell it the same way so she gave me a discount--yet it still ended up being over $300 for everything. On a slightly happier note, despite my recent complaints, my life is not complete crap, but isn't it human nature to whine when you have to spend three hours and 300 plus $ on a car? I'll have to write about happy things later in the week. In the mean time, have a good one everyone (and by everyone I mean the three of you that read my blog).