Day 69

Spent the morning trying to get my car into a shop. Jeff's Auto on 99 was able to take me and let me know that I had a number of small things wrong, plus I am due for some routine maintenance so I let them go ahead with that. Luckily one of the parts was still under warranty ($400 saved) from my other shop (Andy's), so they will fix that for free when Jeff's gets done with the other things tomorrow.

Jeff's figured out the problem with my car hesitating before shifting gears and I am super excited to drive around in a working vehicle... even if it costs me another $500. If I can stall buying a new car until January of 2011 I can have all my student loans paid off, as well as my 30th birthday trip, and have a good down payment saved up. I think that can be done since my car has 125,000 miles on it currently and on average this vehicle runs to over 200,000. So if I drive about 15,000 miles a year, which is average, this whole scheme may pan out.

Had dinner with Michael and Lynn and attended the second NG Live! lecture of the year with Robert Ballard, an underwater explorer and generally awesome guy. He discovered ship wrecks in the oxygen-deprived waters of the Black Sea that were 1500 years old and you can still see the tool marks in the wood. Amazing.

Afterwards, Lynn & Michael dropped me off at Brad and Cynthia's and I borrowed one of their cars.

Almost finished with The Man Who Smiled, but was exhausted and needed to go to sleep.

I didn't call anyone today.