The $900 Lightbulb

M drives an Audi A6. Or rather M drove an Audi A6. As of yesterday we bought another Jeep like mine.

The Audi has history behind it. He bought it, then a friend of his was going to buy it off him, so they took it to Washington State, with promises of taking over the payment and paying him what they owed on the car. Turns out that never happened, not a payment was made, and M was getting tired of paying for a car that he wasn't using.

Fast forward to planning our honeymoon. We decided that we were going to use the oppurtunity to kill two birds with one stone (we're efficient like that), and go 'repo' the car, and use that to drive cross country.

Ended up being the best honeymoon ever. We had a blast, and got the Audi no problems.

It's a super sweet car, fully loaded, leather, heated seats, moon roof, super engine, the works. I had a blast driving it, except when the mirrors decided to auto adjust themselves, and I almost merged into the same semi-truck twice.

When we came home to trade it in, we had a lot negative equity, since the milage was so high. We got rid of my VW for my Jeep, and M continued to drive the Audi.

I drove a Saab all through college, and loved it, but the repairs on it were outrageous. The Audi was in the same category. We had been saving enough to pay it off, and trade it in with something new, since the baby was coming, and it sounded like we were starting to have transmission issues.

M finally came home one night, and waved a warning ticket around, saying that the front light had gone out, and that we had to run to Wal * Mart and get a new one the next day.

Simple enough.

We got the bulb that we thought we needed, and M went and did manly things to get it fixed. After he fought with it for an hour, and decided that calling the dealership and asking them would be the best course of action. (I don't think that he could even get the light cap thingy off).

Audi had lovely news for him. The light needed this thing called a primer (I thought that that was what you used when you painted), and you could only get the right primer through the dealership. This little primer-majigger was an easy $500. $500!

Crickets!

Then, of course, you had to buy the light (and you couldn't buy it from Wal*Mart, turns out) for another $150. Finally, the labor to put the thing in was $90/hour, and the job was quoted at 3 hours. That's another $270. I think most of my hair fell out when we was relaying this message.

In case you're horrible at math, like me... that's $920.

For a lightbulb.

What the toast what a whole transmission  going to cost?!

Thankfully it's tax season, and we'd been on the ball about things, so we got our refund quickly. That gave our savings the boost that it needed, and we were able to get things sorted out with the Audi (which I'd been referring to as the devil car).  

We ended up with this puppy:

It's even manual, which is super fun!

Now we have 2 Jeeps! My big Liberty, and M's Compass.

A big shout out to Willie Racine's Jeep, who were GREAT the entire time. We've worked with them twice in the past six or so months, and I wouldn't hesitate to go back the next time we need something (which hopefully, won't be for a while...a LONG while).

Among other things (aka, I can't write, and NOT update everybody on Shannon!) the peanut is doing great. I think she's going through a growth spurt, since she's up every two hours, and when I say up, I mean wide awake and ready to party. I'm not a huge fan of partying at 3am anymore, but at least the company is good.

M goes back to work tomorrow, and gets to work through the weekend, so we'll see how it goes. The only option that I have is to deal with it, it's just a matter of how messy the house is going to get in the process. :-). I'm excited to be able to venture back to the barn on Friday as well, so you can get photo bombed with pictures of Wil's makeover, instead of just a million pictures of my kid sleeping.

She is perfect though. Just saying.

I am fairly proud of myself however, the pre-preggo jeans fit. They even button, AND the circulation in my lower half remains fairly strong.

Winning.

That's it for now, I'm off to fold the bazillion loads of laundry that have been neglected the past few days, then Peanut and I are off to my Mom's house, so she can meet my Godmother.

I'll just leave you with a few pictures.

:-)