I Suck At Driving

today, karen and i were invited to her parents for lunch (or what they refer to as supper which always begins at 1pm). turkey, green beans, carrots, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and stuffing were slated on the menu. karen was in charge of bringing dessert (which was a fruit salad with yogurt and granola). needless to say, everything was quite delicious as usual.

too bad i suck at driving. on our way to karen's parents' place, our car started rattling. we didn't notice the sound on the highway. the rattling seemed to start once we entered quincy (damn quincy!). apparently, as we pulled up to karen's parents' place, karen's aunt (denise) told us that our car was smoking. smoking is never good (whether it's of the tobacco variety or of the oh-my-god-my-car-is-smoking variety).

well, my brother-in-law (pj) came over as karen popped the hood of the car. we noticed that there was some fluid leakage somewhere. (leaking fluids is also never good, whether it's of the bowel variety or the oh-my-god-my-car-is-leaking variety.)

after supper, i drove the car to the local garage (dana's at the intersection of furnace brook and newport). unfortunately, the garage was closed so i had to leave the keys with a note explaining the situation. so hopefully, the mechanic can make sense of what we wrote tomorrow morning.

in the meantime, i asked my father if i could borrow their car for the time being. my mother is in hong kong, leaving the car with my father. he didn't need the car, so he was more than happy to help out. (he helped out the last time i had car problems too, so he must be getting used to this.) anyway, karen and i now have a way to get home.

hopefully tomorrow morning, i will have a more definitive answer as to the cause of the problem. pj seems to think it's the transmission. i am hoping not because it would really not be worth fixing the transmission on that car. oh well. i suppose the possible silver lining is that this could now allow me to get that hybrid vehicle i've been wanting...