Today is... a soaker

The day has gone off well, for me at least. Elsewhere around here, there's weather-related chaos... the capper being a mudslide that blocked a large portion of the DC Beltway down near Alexandria for nearly the entire day and last night. Shades of California or Indonesia or something... you don't think of mudslides in suburban Virginia.

For me, the day will cost some money. Took the Volkswagen over to the dealer to get the timing belt replaced and an engine light shut off, and about $1200 later everything I let them do is done. Now, mind you, that is almost exactly double the $599 they advertise a timing belt replacement for on their printed coupons they send me every month.

"Oh, you have a Passat, so that'll be more."

Mind you, a third of the cars they SELL are Passats, so it's not some weird rare thing, right? How the hell much more could it be to do that job in a B5 car than, say, a Jetta? And could they be bothered to put on the coupon, "Passat hundreds of dollars more, and we'll also want to replace a $350 belt tensioner and hope you won't know what that is and tell us not to?" They also insisted there's a broken ball joint in the front end, which I also doubt, since I'd have felt it. In any case, that's something I can replace fairly simply.

The engine light was caused by "a broken vacuum hose," but of course, rather than replacing one hose, they replaced the entire set for $230.

So, $1200 for the things I let them do, but probably avoided another $800 for the stuff I refused to let them do.

This Volkswagen will never be returning to this particular dealer for the rest of its natural life, of course. But at least now it'll pass its emissions test and won't beep at me every time I start it up.

Suzanne and I have been trading short emails all day... neither of us seems to be able to concentrate on work, preferring to look forward to Friday night when I'm going up to her place again. I need to do some shopping, though... her birthday is next week and I want to find something very special I can give her.