Let The Weekend Begin

I love weekends. I get to sleep in (mostly) and not have to commute or do "real" work. Plus I'm working from home on Monday so the weekend will seem even longer.

In Virginia, we have to get our cars inspected every year plus have an emissions test every other year. Now like most suburban families we're a two car family. Actually three if you count The Son's car. This moth it was time to get our old Chrysler Concorde inspected. Its a 1993, but its been garage kept all its life so the interior and the exterior still look pretty good and for the most part runs really well. The exhaust system not so much. Its been issuing a deep rumbling sound for a few years now and were told at one point by our friendly dealer service agent that the catalytic converter was disintegrating from within and it would only take $700 to fix it. But it kept passing the emissions test every other year and it was paid for and we didn't drive it that much anymore, so I just ignored it. Today it failed inspection. Apparently the Concorde has two catalytic converters, both are bad and one apparently exploded and put a hole in one of the exhaust pipes. Total cost to repair is now $2,500. The service agent also told us that it wasn't really a good idea to be driving it as carbon monoxide was surely leaking into the passenger area. No wonder we act so weird. So it will sit at the dealer until parts can arrive from Milwalkee sometime next week. Now the car itself is probably barely worth that, but I figure its easier than buying something new and incurring a new car payment. I'll personally kill it though if something else major goes wrong with it in the next few years. It would be nice not to have a car payment for a while. We just finished paying off our Honda Odyssey so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.