The death of Lucy

Lucy started acting funny a few days ago. The readouts on the climate control and the fuel information centre stopped reading out about half the time. The diagnosis from Deol Auto: BCM failure. Part: $400. Labour: $400. Oh, and the shocks and struts are going to need to go as well. Plus there's some kind of mysterious problem in the electrical harness. Then on thursday morning, the car died completely and wou;dn't take a jump. No power. the whole electrical system apparently dead from terminal. age and general bad design and workmanship. Total cost to get this vehicle running for another month: $4000 and up.

Tax Receipt from the Alberta Cancer Foundation: $50.

All the money we had set aside for furniture at the new house and all of our tax return money for the year: 2001 Hyundai Sonata with a quarter million fewer kilometers than Lucy.

The problem with the kind of car you can afford to buy when you are broke is that it costs more in the long run than the kind of car you buy when you are mostly not broke. Now, of course, we are broke again, but at least we have enough transportation to get me to work and Jenn to school (in St. Albert). On the up side, this car uses about half the gas, so over the course of a month, I am saving about $100 on gas, which helps. Hopefully these vehicles will carry us far enough that we can be in a much healthier financial position the next time we are looking for transportation on short notice. Or perhaps, might I even dare to dream, that the next time we buy a vehicle we would still have a running vehicle to trade in. What must it be like to _want_ to buy a car instead of needing to buy one...that day.