Blah, more bad luck

I left work early on Friday to go pick up my car with brand new transmission #2 in it. I was pleasantly surprised that it was ready after only 1.5 days of work on it. When I get there after a not-so-scenic detour up the Mass Pike (stupid blocked roadsigns), I finally get back into my Civic, drive it around the rotary, only to have the check engine light come on. OK, not ideal, but I figured maybe they just forgot to reset it after working on the car and it should be a quick fix. I hadn't gotten very far yet either so I just circled back around to the dealership. Then they tell me that they're closed and no one can look at the car until Monday. What?! You don't work on weekends?! Apparently they only staff a couple of people to do oil changes on weekends. $@#*#!!! So annoying!

So now I'm back in the stupid little Chevy Cobalt rental. At least Honda is paying for that since they didn't have any loaners left.

Rewind to Thursday...we finally got a bunch of furniture delivered. Dining room table, 8 dining room chairs, kitchen table, 4 kitchen chairs, and a coffee table with ottomans that tuck under the table. Yay, furniture! Boo, defects! Literally 50% of the stuff we got had problems with it. Major scratches on the kitchen table leg, 3 out of 4 kitchen chairs are pretty uneven and tip back and forth, 4 out of 8 kitchen chairs have dings and scratches on the legs, imperfections on the surface of the coffee table, and threads unwinding on one of the ottomans. All the pieces are from Jordan's Furniture. Hmm, might have to revisit the wisdom of shopping there. The delivery people should have taken all the defective stuff away but they insisted we deal with customer service instead. Fan-freakin'-tastic.

Fast forward to this weekend. Saw some friends at the Harvard-Yale game (Yale kicked our butt, apparently, but as long as the tailgating is good who cares?). Most of them were old co-workers from my first job out of school--good people, good memories. Then we spent all day today test driving cars. Subaru Impreza (they didn't have an automatic WRX--yeah yeah, hush all you stick drivers), Saab 9-3, Infiniti G35, Mazda 3 hatchback, and Audi A4. We were supposed to go check out the Acura TL and TSX too but they closed at 4pm and we missed it (who closes at 4pm just cuz it's a Sunday?). So far, the A4 wins hands down. So I'd be following in the footsteps of D., D., and M. back in SF/LA. We'll have to see how I like the Acuras though; off to test those tomorrow after work I guess.

OK, everyone out there send out some good luck vibes to me so this black cloud goes away!