For cryin’ out loud

OK. Life has been pretty much ok lately. And if it hasn’t been ok it has at least been a lot less sucky.

First things first – the water pump on my truck went out today. Fortunately I wasn’t in the middle of nowhere, I had just pulled up to Critter’s house to drop her off after the day’s adventures at Chick-fil-a and the local park. The park was for K, Chck-fi-a was for Critter and me. Both were fun. I got tons of pics of K, and when I didn’t have the camera Critter had it so today’s fun was very well documented. I dumped them all to a CD for Critter. I’ll give it to her tomorrow.

So, naturally, I’m a little freaked out that my water pump is busted. I’m thinking it’s going to cost several hundred dollars at the very least, but OtherGuy comes home while I’m there and calls his brother, who agrees to do the repair for a twelve pack of beer if I’ll buy the pump. Hell yeah! The first place I called had a new pump with gasket for about $60, so we ran down there to get it. OtherGuy, his brother, and I get back to Critter’s house, and things *look* promising. They are checking the actual path of the serpentine belt against the diagram to make sure they match, and generally scoping out the engine before they take anything apart. When they get the central pulley (behind which the water pump is housed) unbolted, they realize the fan is attached to the water pump, not the pulley, and they can’t get it loose. Through three or four very heavy downpours they tried and tried to knock that fan loose but it wouldn’t budge. We’re all fairly certain it’s just pressed onto the water pump’s turbine where it comes through the housing, and the pulley is bolted onto it as well, but we couldn’t get the fan off the pump. Things were loose enough at this point they might have been able to get the pump itself out, but with the fan still attached there would be no way of getting it out of the engine compartment. Crapola.

So I’m going to miss work today. Critter had offered to take me to work, hopefully she’ll be just as helpful when I tell her she can get away with following me to the dealer. I know I’m going to get ripped off, but I’m not sure I can get it to my regular guy without damaging the engine, and I don’t know of any shops over here I can trust. There was one OtherGuy mentioned, but I’m not sure where it is. He said they might even be OK with using the water pump I bought, but if not I’ve got a receipt and I can always take it back. If Critter knows where it is I’ll give them a shot. She has to work all weekend and if I don’t get the car fixed I won’t have a way of getting to work.

I know there’s lots of other stuff going on right now, but I can’t think of any of it, and I’m really kind of tired, so I’m going to call it quits for now and hope that tomorrow ends up being better than today was. Or today / yesterday. Whatever, I haven’t slept yet so my body still thinks it’s Thursday…