7/4 and My Dumb Car

My Dumb Car:
I had to get all of this work done on my car. It was totally expensive and predictable since I had basically been doing no regular maintenance on my car. Lame. I got new break pads in the front and back and I had to get at least one new rotor. I also got a new belt and a PCV valve. That was like the emergency stuff. But they also said I needed a new sway bar, a tune-up and something else I wrote down but can't remember. I am starting to get a little bit worried about the price of all these things, and was thinking about getting a second estimate. Does anyone have a mechanic that is not Pep Boys that they go to and would recommend?

7/4:
The other night Tom and I worked on a new song which just happens to mostly be in 7/4. Writing lyrics is largely my responsibility. The funny thing about writing lyrics for a song in 7/4 is that it's difficult; you're not use to doing it so it takes some work. However, the great thing is that you're constantly amazed by how many more syllables you can fit in each line. It's like the measures never end!

Car Towing

For those of you waiting in suspense to find out what happened to my car, here the issues:

Yes. My car was towed. Not only did I have to pay the tow pound $100+, I had to pay the city police just about as much. You see I was towed, but I was also cited! Not the good kind of citation, as in publish or perish, but rather the bad kind. So why was I towed? Well the answer to that question was sort of a mystery to me. The technical reason was known: variance posted. But what does that mean?

Well on Tuesday, I tried to find out. First I called the Pittsburgh Parking Authority. Mistake. As it turns out, two both the Pittsburgh Police and the Pittsburgh Parking Authority have the power to issue parking tickets in this city. If you call one, asking about problems for the other, they will yell at you. How can you tell? Just remember this helpful little rhyme: "Ticket is Pink? PPA's the link! Ticket is Yellow? Tell a policeman, fellow!"

So I called the Municipal Parking Court. Not only did they have no idea which variance was posted, they didn't know who I should call. They told me to call 311, Mayor Luke Ravenstahl's Response Line. That was better. They told me to call the Zone 4 Pittsburgh Police Non-Emergency line. There, a slightly angry man told me that there was a parking variance for three spots on Howe street so that someone could move. In other words, they had the exclusive right to park in those spaces that day. Okay, I can deal with that. (And indeed I did; I ended up paying the fine.)

But I did want to know how many days in advance they were obligated to post the sign! I saw nothing on Monday night, and I was towed on Thursday. Turns out, the Pittsburgh City Code says nothing about the concept of parking variances. Neither does any other official Pittsburgh city web site. Boo this man! If anyone can find out the real skinny, please, let me know!

Car Troubles...

My car has been a very frustrating part of my life for the past couple of weeks, and it all came to a head this weekend. The first thing that you should know is that it's always been very hard to lock myself out of my car. I have this number pad on that outside of my passenger door that I can use to type in a code that will let me into my car even if the keys are inside. However, when I went to Buffalo, NY for Thanksgiving I made the unwise decision to remove snow from my side windows by lowing the windows all the way down. Instead of the snow falling outwards, as I would have liked, it fell inwards. "Eh, what the hell," I thought. "It's just water. Nothing the interior of my car can't handle." Think again Nels!

The next day my power locks stopped working, along with the "one-touch" window lowering functionality and my keypad. Looking at my car's manual, I could see that all three of those items were on the same fuse, so I figure the water must have shorted it out. "Oh well," I thought. "I'll put in a new fuse at some point."

Flash forward to Thursday night! I discover two parking tickets on my car, $25 each. Apparently my residential parking pass expired a month earlier than I though. I was really lucky there were only two, since I basically never drive my car. I talked with my roommates, and they gave me the "visitor's" parking pass, because we only get two real parking passes per address. It says things like, "you may not use this on your own car" and "may never be used for more than 5 consecutive business days" all over it. I am worried.

Sure enough I discover a third parking ticket on my car last night. The description says, "Using Own VPass." Boo. That's three parking tickets in three days, for those of you playing along at home. And at this point I am not entirely sure where I am going to put my car on a regular basis. Status: Still Unresolved

Nonetheless, this morning I decide to try and get the fuse in my car fixed, and in the process of pulling the old fuse out of my car, proceed to lock my keys inside. No number pad to bail me out this time, because it was precisely what I was trying to fix at that very moment. I don't know what to do. I go inside Pep Boys. They don't have the fuse I want. They don't have a door opening service. I call up AAA, join, and they send some guy out. On the Rad Side, I got to see the AAA man jimmy open my lock with a Slim Jim. I think I'm going to buy one of those. On the Bad Side, after I got back into my car, I went to Car Quest, found the correct fuse, and it still didn't fix the problem. All this while I was supposed to be working on my paper! Status: Still Unresolved