{"id":2094,"date":"2018-07-10T19:04:09","date_gmt":"2018-07-11T02:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/?p=2094"},"modified":"2019-05-03T19:06:05","modified_gmt":"2019-05-04T02:06:05","slug":"car-saga","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/?p=2094","title":{"rendered":"Car Saga"},"content":{"rendered":"      \n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\n\nCan I tell you about my car saga? This all happened yesterday, starting before the crack of dawn and ending well after dark, and in the midst of a combination&nbsp;monsoon storm and haboob. (That&#8217;s a new word I learned yesterday from the storm warning center. It means a&nbsp;massive dust storm in Arizona.)<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Here\u2019s the deal. I grew up believing that driving an old car builds character. I\u2019m not sure where I got this mindset. My parents taught me to get a reliable car, and not spend too much money. I think I only heard the second part. We have three cars (for five drivers), with a total combined age of 63 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I mean, yeah. My Suburban I have had for three years has worked for my family\u2014seats eight, plenty of cargo space,&nbsp;<em>cassette tape player<\/em>&nbsp;so we can listen to old audiobooks of Harry Potter while we go on road trips. Its odometer just passed 220K miles. That&#8217;s 354,000 kilometers, for you metric peeps.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But it\u2019s been giving me some trouble. Okay, to the tune of about $1,000 a month, since August. (No gasps required. I had those fully covered.)&nbsp;In fact, last week, I actually started crying on one of my several trips to the repair shop. Not full on donkey-snort crying, but my eyes did mist up, and I had to leave quickly and go out into the hot sun. That was the last straw.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Since that moment, I\u2019ve been obsessed with finding something to replace it as a daily driver. Last Tuesday I&nbsp;sold one of my 1998s, the Blazer \u2014<em>to a mechanic! So there\u2019s no guilt!<\/em>\u2014which put the pressure on for getting something else.&nbsp;<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">With a touch of shame I admit I became&nbsp;addicted to the online for-sale-by-owner listings, and then the dealership listings, and made close personal friends with every sales-guy&nbsp;in our little town. I learned a lot of weird tidbits about the car business. (If you want to hear about that, email me back. I\u2019ll tell you some of the wackier ones.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Then yesterday, it all came to fruition. It took all day, and I had to drive 500 miles (800 km) round trip, as well as brave&nbsp;a horrific storm that knocked down trees and flooded whole neighborhoods&#8211;the monsoon-haboob!&nbsp;<em>People!<\/em>&nbsp;But I ultimately made it home with both a throbbing headache&#8230; and a car.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At last, I have a car built in this millennium!Granted, it\u2019s a 2001, and&nbsp;<em>it still has a cassette tape player<\/em>, so I\u2019m not taking giant leaps into the 21<sup>st<\/sup>&nbsp;century, merely dipping my toes in the foam on the edge of the sand of the 2000s. I may be jinxing myself by expressing this, but my dream for this car is that it\u2019s as reliable as the ratings say it is, and that I can save $1,000 a month by buying it. &gt;fingers crossed&lt; #toestoo<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Normally I probably wouldn&#8217;t be posting a picture of a car, but the relief is making me exuberant. So here you go.\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"580\" height=\"386\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/The-Car.jpeg?resize=580%2C386&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-2095\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/The-Car.jpeg?w=800&amp;ssl=1 800w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/The-Car.jpeg?resize=300%2C200&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/The-Car.jpeg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 580px) 100vw, 580px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n      <div data-chorus-discovery data-url=\"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/?p=2094\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Can I tell you about my car saga? This all happened yesterday, starting before the crack of dawn and ending well after dark, and in the midst of a combination&nbsp;monsoon storm and haboob. (That&#8217;s a new word I learned yesterday from the storm warning center. It means a&nbsp;massive dust storm in Arizona.) Here\u2019s the deal. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"","bgseo_robots_follow":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2OUjT-xM","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2094"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2094\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2096,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2094\/revisions\/2096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}