It's My TV….It's My Peanut Butter

So, the saga of the car continues.  I made another attempt at popping the hood and trying to identify the issue.  It’s literally painful for me to have an issue with a piece of equipment or technology that I can’t at least identify.  Sure, I may not have the tools or resources to fix it, but as long as I know what the problem is, I get a small victory.  Not so today.

In the meantime, the laundry remains unfolded. the stack of ironing hasn’t shrunk.  I did empty and reload the dishwasher, and the kitchen’s clean.  And, of course, my big Friday-off-weekend-museum plans continue to be thwarted.  If you are imagining me shaking my fist at the ceiling, you’re not wrong.

And let’s cap this off with my having nothing interesting whatsoever to say for this post (reference above bitching and moaning).

But, at the end 0f the day, I turn on the news and my car issues and wasted weekend pale in comparison to the uprisings, floods, earthquakes and tsumamis the rest of the planet is dealing with.  So, my weekend was wasted, but the bigger problem is that I’m a total jackass.

Apologies for the lack of a Friday post.  Bigger apologies if you couldn’t reach the site.  I spent about 4 hours on Friday evening trying to get connected to the site so I could post my entry, but alas, the Internet Overlords (or at least the web hosting overlords) were against me (and if they were against you between the hours of 8 and midnight, please leave a comment–I’m still trying to narrow down the reasons for the issue).  So, I’m going to try to post this back-dated (don’t want to take the top spot from Kristy).

Coincidentally, I was going to blog about another technical difficulty which tried to ruin my Friday:  my car wouldn’t (and still won’t) start.  She drove just fine Monday, and cranked with no issue Tuesday (before I opted to drive my Mom’s car instead since it hasn’t been out of the garage in a while).

I hate not being able to fix things myself, unfortunately the time it would take me to work on the car and figure out the problem, well, I just don’t have it.  I can narrow down all the obvious stuff (the battery is fine as are the connections to the battery, she’s not leaking any fluids and nothing looks obviously disconnected under the hood) and her fuses appear to be okay.  She attempts to turn over when I crank it, but just never does.  There are some other things I could work on checking (spark plugs and connectors, the starter itself….), but again it goes back to time and lack of familiarity–while my conceptual knowledge of the operation of my car is enough to keep me from feeling totally embarrassed, the hands-on part makes me feel utterly ridiculous.  I mean, I know the role of the starter and basically how it operates, but I’ll be damned if I could actually pop the hood of a car and point to it with an certainty.

So, since I have two other vehicles that need driving, I’m very lucky.  I’ll be waiting until my next Friday off work to call up the tow service connected to my repair shop of choice.  And when it turns out to be some easy-peasy fix, I’ll try to assuage my feelings of inadequacy and stupidity by reminding myself that the cost will be worth it for the time and frustration I save.

I have a recently developed secret heresy.  The relatively new onset of this heresy does not diminish the overall problem: I have found myself suddenly, and inexplicably, a  major Top Gear Addict (the good, British version, not the crappy American version).

Now, for some of you, Top Gear may not seem even remotely heretical.  Definitely not something to be ashamed of.  The difference is, you probably haven’t spent large amounts of time scoffing at and dismissing cars valued for their speed.  I have.

My entire judgement of  cars up until now has been based on the following points:

-4 wheels

-good gase mileage (too cheap to pay for gas)

-ability to go well over 100K miles without major repair (cheap again)

-A/C operates (hot climate background necessitates this)

-Radio operates (tornado alley requires the ability to tune into local radio while driving across Kansas)

I am all but turned on by excellent gas mileage and high reliability.  I don’t mind driving, but I don’t enjoy it so much that I can ignore the costs of car ownership (my enjoyment of frugality is greater than my enjoyment of driving).  I am small Japanese car material, and I’ve always been okay with this.  I am interested in alternative fuel vehicles and don’t mind if they will be less peppy and have top speeds of 60mph.  I don’t even mind if they are tiny (as long as I can get in my own suitcases, hell, I drive alone 99% of the time anyhow, so small is fine).

And then came Top Gear.

WTF.

For those of you not familiar with Top Gear, it’s a British programme (note the -e there;  it’s been ported to America, Australia and other places, but the original is the best) about speed and cars out of any reasonable person’s pay grade.  They test drive on the, and comment in a very British humor way.  But this is no episode of Motor Week on PBS.  In between these three not-ugly-but-not-overly-attractive British men perform meaningless and insane challenges in various and sundry types of cars (turning regular cars into amphibious vehicles, racing across various parts of the world in cars, sometimes versus public transport).  It’s humorous, meant to be funny.  But at the heart of the show, there’s car talk.  What’s cool and fast and awesome.  Oh, and there’s also stars who drive reasonably price cars around a race track (imagine Carmen Diaz driving the British equivalent of a Chevy Cobalt hell-for-leather around a formula 1-esque track).

Um, yeah.  Evaluations of Prius gas mileage this ain’t.

How is it that I find myself glued to watching a show about speed and luxury cars?  A show that mocks the little Hondas I find appealing?  That dismissing gas mileage with derisive snorts?  This is not right.  This is not me.  And yet, this show runs a back-to-back marathon set on a Saturday and I’m glued to the boob tube like it’s a loop of gratuitous rewind moments interspersed with footage of Colin Firth, Zachary Levi and Matthew McConaughey.

I repeat:  WTF?

Sure, Jeremy, Hammond and Captain Slow are all hilariously funny with their banter, insults and commentary.  And yes, I do find it side-splitting to watch a VW beetle dropped from 1 mile up.  But it doesn’t make up for the fact that I’m not a car person.  I should NOT be this sucked in.  It’s embarrassing.  I actually found myself wanting a Mercedes McLaren SLR the other day.

Shame?  Right here.