T Day, aka D Day

Holidays are always an adventure for some reason or another.  Maybe it's the regular family brawl.  Maybe you have drinking contests with your cousins.  It could be that someone regularly has a meltdown.  For us, it changes yearly, and is just as often unrelated to family as it is directly connected to them.

This year it was our car.  We drove down to Buellton last night, which ended up being about four hours.  Normally our Mazda has some power.  Last night it didn't.  The turbo went out for some reason and the car decided uphill was not a direction it wanted to go.  Instead, the fastest we could go was about 60, when normally 80 mph is our average speed.  I know, it's probably not the best idea, but if you were driving my car, you would go that fast too. 

So, today before dinner, Christian and his dad played around with the thing, trying to discover what the helicopter sound was every time the turbo normally would have kicked in.  Also, the check engine light has been on, and short of having OBD II  code reader to tell why it's on, it's unclear what needs to be replaced or cleaned.  Needless to say, the car needs some serious love.  Let's just hope that my latest attempt to get a job works out so that we can actually afford to fix the car and make it safe.  Cross your fingers for us!  Otherwise this could get really scary really fast... EEK!