Bad Engine

Today was a rough day. It started with me once again having to wave off another one of my favourite people as they headed off on a big adventure. Don’t get me wrong I’m happy for Jonathan and the hopefully nothing but excellent six weeks he’s about to spend in the states, but I will of course miss his company. Admittedly though I will be regaining Holly in about three and a half weeks, which will more than help.

Anyway, after hugging Jonathan overly long at the airport, I got in my car and headed over to work. This is where the second part of my rough day reared its ugly head. As I pulled into the hospital car park smoke started pouring out from under my bonnet and my temperature gauge read as high as it could go. There wasn’t much I could do because, 1) I had to head into work and, 2) I know nothing about car mechanics.

Work was then the third part of my rough day. It turned out my weekday counterpart was away on Friday and had left a larger than normal list of things for me to do. I was not happy. I don’t mind doing the work, and the work itself I was more than capable of doing, the problem is the almost impossible amount of time I’m limited to do it in. This is when I nearly broke down, it was only about nine o’clock in the morning but everything had been going wrong, and I had no idea how I was even going to get home! I allowed myself a few moments of self pity before just getting on with, mostly because I needed to complete my work and get back to the car before my parking ran out. On a day like today it seemed sure that if that happened I was likely to get a fine.

Of course ‘getting on with it’ is the, not so secret, secret to fixing your problems. Don’t cry over spilled milk. Why not? Because if you clean it up then there’s nothing to cry about. So I started cleaning the milk. I put my head down and got my annoying amount of work done literally just in time for me to get to my car before my parking ran out. I then watched the temperature gauge slowly rise as I carefully drove my car home. It was once again pointed well into the red by the time I got there, but I did get home. I then started calling up a number of mechanics, most of which either didn’t work on the weekends or were full up with work today. One finally told me to call Lube Mobile who had one slot left between two and four. I waited. At around two thirty the mechanic showed up and inspected my car.

It was a leak it one of the coolant pipes between the engine and the radiator. He flushed the radiator, fixed the pipe, refilled the coolant, then tested it all to make sure it was working. All this took about an hour and while the cost of it was okay it also more than cancelled out the actually wage I’ll receive for working this weekend…but at least I have a working car again.

I, and my day, are well and truly done.

- Damian