With my continued gas savings I bought this! (1999 Accord LX)

[Xist]

1. The grill block probably didn't help my transmission.
2. The transmission may have a leak, which wouldn't have helped.
3. The transmission may have been overheating when I got the CEL and overheated ATF may have expanded more than warm fluid.
4. Overheating wouldn't have helped.
5. The transmission appeared to perform within specified parameters once it had an adequate supply of transmission fluid, but there is low probability of living long and prospering.

[Xist]

She messaged me "I have something to tell you when you get a chance" and I thought:

She came down to Mesa to take care of her dad. She brought her daughters and each had 3 bags, with a friend in Alaska sending the rest.

She told me that she needed to get a job, find a place to stay, and get a car.

I didn't know how to help with the first two, but I had two cars that ran at the time. They didn't look great, but she could drive one until she received her tax return and could buy what she wanted.

I didn't want to offer to let her drive my car without a headliner if I didn't need to and of course I reinstalled the passenger seat before driving down. I just wanted to put the headliner in the back seat and drive to see my friend, but it was too long, so I turned it, and it rested on the headrests, so I just wanted to reinstall it enough to secure it. I reinstalled the handles above the door and just grabbed everything else.

It was funny because I couldn't find the fourth handle and I asked my brother to help.

He often watches me work.

He immediately handed me the handle!

I got him some cookies to thank him.

He brought me something from my Civic. He is so sweet and helpful!

My sister insisted that I needed to write up a contract so this didn't fail horribly like with that ex.

I visited my friend and her daughters. She was staying with her sister-in-law and everything seemed Skittles and beer, so I went to get a hotel room, which Mom told me to do before seeing my friend.

Mom didn't mention Spring Training. Sports are meaningless, so I never think about them, but she seems to care.

I didn't realize that it might be more difficult to find rooms because it was a holiday weekend, either.

We usually stay at Best Western and I don't ever remember having difficulty getting a room, even for major holidays, and many times Mom called to get a room as I drove us down. I would ask "You didn't reserve earlier?!"
"I didn't have time!"
"Too busy watching Hallmark and napping?!"

She always got a room.

The 5 closest locations were sold out. The nearest was in Phoenix and had a room for $209 before taxes and fees.

I guess that was less than half an hour away, which wasn't bad, but I wanted to find something closer for less.

I wished that I had my laptop, so I could work like an adult. It was a royal pain on my phone. I searched Google for hotels near me, tapped on one that looked promising, kept tapping, suddenly had 8 tabs open, and then when I went to book a room it was sold out.

I would back out to my search, but it always took me too far, and I needed to reenter my information each and every time.

Sometimes Google Pay showed up. Sometimes it didn't and I was still on Travelocity or wherever I got from clicking on the Google link.

My friend said that I must have been looking for 2 hours when Priceline suddenly showed me a pricebreaker, they choose one of 3 nice hotels and I get a discount. Right now it is showing me hotels with swimming pools and an 8.0+ rating, which run $214-239 a night.

It says "Get 1 of these, pay $132."

So, suddenly it showed me a nicer hotel than I was trying to get, for less than I was hoping to pay, and I immediately booked.

PSA: Once it is late enough, Priceline [and presumably other sites] decide that you are sleeping in your car tonight, let's get you a room for tomorrow night.

Also, they billed me for 3 separate rooms. Hopefully 2 would have disappeared, but reminiscent of my Tucson tragedy, my bank declined the transactions.

Tucson made sense. Who would intentionally visit there?

Well, probably someone in desperate situations, which was how I ended up, but only because they froze my card!

My bank asked if I authorized those transactions.

Three?! No!

Your new credit card is on its way

How am I supposed to get a hotel tonight?!

Right my debit card!

That expired the 31st! I never received a new one!

I just used it at Winco!

The sister-in-law and her husband had gone to bed a while before, so I told my friend that I was driving to a hotel that allegedly had a vacancy and hoping the machine would accept it.

That card worked at Winco again, Walmart, and a gas station, but the guy started putting my information in manually and said he couldn't use it.

I started driving to Best Western. They usually act helpful and say they remember us, but I saw a motel with a vacancy sign and the guy said they accepted cash.

That was the other part of the story. I hoped to buy an accident-free Camry with a working starter and heater, so I had more than enough money for a place that reminded me of somewhere I stayed in Afghanistan.

I mentioned that to Short Facebook Dating Ex and she said she stayed in worse.

Than Afghanistan?

She said they stayed in a hotel and she sprayed every surface with Lysol before touching anything.

I bought sheets and blankets to use in Afghan Inn--and shoved some giant cabinet from the fifties up against the door.

My room was super close to the street and it wasn't a great part of town!

Also, I recently watched "Reacher." I think that kicked my paranoia up a notch.

It was a lousy bed, but I slept. Then I visited Short Facebook Dating Ex, who recently mentioned finding my Honda key. It must have been for my Civic. I hadn't bought my Accord before we stopped talking.

Apparently I lost a key in her couch and asked if she had seen it.

That then almost led to an argument, but I was able to keep that under control--unlike with my Alaskan friend's sister-in-law, but I will just mention visiting a friend in the hospital and dropping off my laptop and my new travel bag containing car money at my sister's.

My friend's dad is in the hospital and they picked up his Vue and had it repaired. I had been looking at accident-free Camries when she told me.

"So, you have a car now?"
"Yes."

I stopped looking at cars. I will buy something newer and better when I am ready to sell one.

I kept trying to get a haircut, but stuff always came up. Great Clips had a sale. I was supposed to get a $9 haircut, but they charged me $12, saying that was $5 off. As soon as I made the reservation I drove to the sister-in-law's and messaged my friend, but she didn't wake up until Great Clips went from saying that I had a 27-minute wait to they were waiting on me.

I reinstalled the visors and visor clips while I waited on the VA. Someone was supposed to call me on Thursday, but I never heard back, and they said that I need to play phone tag with the civilian hospital to request the follow-up.

Ah curses. They told me to have the civilians fill out some form and fax it to a number. I put it in my phone and lost it.

As soon as I got to my car I called my friend and asked if they had breakfast yet. They hadn't, so I offered to take them, and my friend agreed.

[freebeard]

When I had saved $250 on haircut, I stopped keeping track.

PSA: Once it is late enough, Priceline [and presumably other sites] decide that you are sleeping in your car tonight, let's get you a room for tomorrow night.

I wouldn't want a car I couldn't sleep in comfortably. The Superbeetle is the best.

I now understand the Reacher comment in the other thread. Is Reacher like Archer?

[Xist]

"Reacher" is a Prime miniseries reboot of Tom Cruise's "Jack Reacher, based on Lee Child's novels, except the original was another case of choosing a short actor to portray a big guy:


The sister-in-law let me in and said "A little communication would be nice."

Ah, being passive aggressive?

No, she went full aggressive. She kept yelling and cursing at my friend, saying that she was happy to make breakfast for them--"

• She didn't act happy.
• As far as I know, she didn't ask if they wanted breakfast.

My friend kept apologizing and the sister-in-law kept yelling the same things over and over and then kept telling her to stay at her dad's place.

The dad has a trailer in a 55+ community half an hour outside of town and she wasn't sure they had fixed the septic system.

I told my friend "Let's get breakfast and then deal with this" and kept guiding her out the door and to the vehicle.

Her sister-in-law yelled and cursed the same things repeatedly, expecting a different result, until we got in the vehicle, so now the whole complex knows the sister-in-law is a raging lunatic.

I told her that she kept saying that, lay off, and she started yelling and cursing at me.

Imagine how much that meant to me.

They decided they wanted Jack in the Box, so I had my phone take us there, and apparently Google chose the eighth-closest one, almost 6 miles away, and then my friend randomly turned, saying "You didn't tell me where to turn."
"We weren't there yet."

It was fine, just weird, and then I needed to ask her to turn left 3 times.

They got breakfast. I had eaten a cup of oatmeal in my room.

Apparently my stomach shrank when I prepped for my procedure.

I seem to have lost 8 pounds since.

My friend wanted to bring her daughters back with me to Show Low, but said that her bags wouldn't fit in my trunk. A friend insisted that it absolutely wasn't true that you needed a credit card to rent a car, so I asked and started to post here asking if Dave Ramsey actually told the truth about something.

I wanted to write "the whole truth," but clearly that wouldn't be the case.

Dave says that you don't need a good credit score to get a mortgage, you just need to find someone willing to do the work.

That sounds like far more work than using a credit card for gas and paying it off every night. Ramsey and his followers insist that if you have credit cards you will get in over your head in credit card debt, but when I called my bank to see if there was anywhere in town I could get a card made the same day the system announced that I had over $200 in credit card debt.

I had around $2,000 in my pocket, plus thousands each in 2 accounts.

I'm not doing great, but I am not in actual debt.

Anyway, I have never heard Baby Stepper mention any difficulties renting a car without a credit card, but that friend told me the last time she tried they wouldn't let her.

The telebanker told me she didn't think that there was anywhere in Phoenix I could have a card made the same day, but I could rent a car from Avail.com with cash.

I cannot rent a car from Avail.com with cash.

Of course, Google says you cannot rent a car without a credit card.

We were across the street from a Uhaul and so we went in and asked if I could rent a car with debit or cash.

Yes.

I said that I wasn't hauling anything, I just needed to get my friends and their bags to Show Low.

The F150s and 10-foot trucks can only be used in-town. He said that the 15-foot trucks were unavailable for one-way trips--and so were the 20-foot trucks.

He sent us to a location in another town.

I rode my bike there and rented an F150 to get to Easter dinner in 2014 when I cut myself badly trying to fix my Civic.

Then my sister tried to lecture me and I left.

She inherited dad's controlling nature and anger issues, but he just seemed happy to be there, and then he tried to follow me when I left, but I was too fast for him.

That is pretty much my last memory of him.

Anyway, I called Uhaul because their site didn't show the change to my reservation and they found me a closer location, but their machine didn't like my debit card--the only machine to get picky during my entire trip--and they couldn't accept cash.

I called Enterprise and asked for the nearest official location. That was a business that also rented out Uhauls.

They sent me back to the place across from Jack in the Box and the guy asked "You wanted a 15-footer?!"



They accepted cash and we were on our way, except I had just wanted to guarantee that I could get a vehicle first.

We still needed to drop off her father's vehicle, and I am unconvinced that my friend remembered how to get there.

We dropped off the key and she cleared out her Alaskan bank account.

I guess she will open one up here--unlike me!

We finally picked up the moving truck. I had wanted her to drive the newer vehicle, while I watched all of the gauges on the one that broke down 2 months ago, but I forgot to mention it while we did the paperwork, and I drove the box truck into the setting sun and towards a snowstorm with only 9 bags to weigh it down.

I wouldn't recommend it, but we made it!

I ran inside for one of my other credit cards and realized that my bank did replace my debit card--a year ago.

I couldn't find either, so my then-girlfriend told me lie and say my cards were damaged so that they didn't cancel my cards, but sent new ones anyway.

However, I found my debit card, and kept using it.

The girls kept saying they wanted to go swimming, but hadn't gone yet, so I got them a room for 2 nights at Super 8, which has an indoor poor. Unfortunately, it is closed indefinitely.
They make a big deal out of their breakfast, but it sounds lame.

It was cheaper than the seedy motel where I stayed and Mom gave them a bag of milk, cereal, snacks, bowls, and plastic utensils.

She really can be nice.

The entire contents of the moving truck fit in one trolley. I had my brother come with us and help them with their luggage.

I bid them goodnight, took him home, ran his bath, took him for a walk, and slept in my own bed.

She found a mobile home available now. Hopefully it is decent. Rent doesn't seem too bad, especially with current trends.

Mom says that I adopted some orphans.

[freebeard]

What's he standing on in that picture?

I do hope you have speech-to-text so you don't have to peck all that out with your thumbs.

[Xist]

Do you see the microscopic microphone icon above the comma to the left of my spacebar? That is the speech-to-text button!

Of course it is!

I need to see what keyboard I have on my Samsung Galaxy S6 that works better than the Microsoft one that I installed, which is still better than the one that came with the phone.

This one changes far too many of my words, often to Spanish!

I type as little as possible on my phone, always preferring to use a computer, although I would not recommend my $13 Big Lots gaming keyboard.

The keys are too stiff and I don't always push all of the keys hard enough.

[freebeard]

Well, if that's true you'd have time to rewrite for concision.

I have speech to text but it's on a non-worldfacing machine. I can't find a picture of my currently most useful keyboard. 6x2.25" so it slips into a shirt pocket. Little chiclets keys, but it has a trackpad and a laser pointer.

It works upside down in the dark, but I suppose your phone does that too.

[Xist]

I wouldn't argue that my phone's keyboard works in any situation.

The seventh time that I tried to summarize my friend's situation to another friend I wrote: "My Alaskan friend announced that she moved down with her daughters and needed to find a place to live and a car. I brought down one of my working cars wanting to buy an accident-free Camry to drive back, figuring that I would lend my friend my car, but then she got her dad's vehicle from the shop, and said she was good to go.
That vehicle is unsafe.
She was staying with the sister-in-law and that seemed to be working out, so I just wanted to take them to breakfast before driving home.
The sister-in-law yelled and cursed at her, the same things over and over again expecting different results, and told her she needed to move out.
I rented a vehicle to get them up here, but since my bank canceled my credit card when Priceline charged me three times without providing a room for the night and my debit card expired the 31st I ended up paying cash for a Uhaul, and by the time we were finally able to leave the valley we hit a snowstorm.
I grabbed another credit card from home and put them in a motel for 2 days, but they are supposed to check out at 11 and the available mobile home requires credit than she has.
Mom told me to get it for her, but warned she could bleed me dry.
I wanted to put them in a cheaper hotel with better ratings, but each room opens to the outside, which is currently well below freezing, and we don't have the time to move them anyway.
I wanted to help out my friend, but not indefinitely! Can someone else take over now?! ��"

That still looks long. Oh well!

[Xist]

First of all, I need to determine that I have oil consumption, but my oil is going somewhere.

However, I know that I have a transmission leak, so improving the oil situation might not matter if I cannot fix the transmission.

I ran across the Champrius Instagram account, caught up on the thread here, and then started looking at a couple of threads that he started.

He mentioned catch cans and I watched several videos.

They seem recommended if you have a turbo or GDI, but generally people seem to agree that older cars may benefit from them.

I just don't think this would target the biggest problem.

[freebeard]

www.roadandtrack.com: Here’s How an Oil Catch Can Works, And Why You Might Want One
Have a direct injection motor? You might want to see this.

They are required for some race car class rules.

Your driveway would thank you.