Seeing Signs

For those of you paying attention, you know that the past few days have driven me into a rather large period of existential angst. The whole "What am I worth?" question is never a fun one.

During such times, I find that I enjoy getting as many opinions as I can. I ask friends and family for their thoughts. And I occasionally check out my horoscope and cast about for any other signs I can find to point me on my way.

Christopher was off from work on Friday, and since that is one of my current days off as well, we decided to make the pilgrimage to see "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" with a friend of ours. Since we had experienced some technical difficulties while watching "Star Trek," we got to go to this one for free. We set off from home, and about half a mile along the drive, my dashboard came to life with the brightest dashboard light I had ever seen: the CHECK ENGINE light.

Since I haven't experienced that in the 10 years that I've had my car, I turned to Christopher and asked what I should do. He reached into the glove compartment and flipped through the pages. We had two options: "Steady CHECK ENGINE" and "Flashing CHECK ENGINE." Flashing CHECK ENGINE meant, basically, "stop what you're doing, don't use your accelerator, get thee to a repair shop." On the other hand -- the lucky hand -- Steady CHECK ENGINE simply meant "you may have something wrong in your fuel line and you probably ought to have it checked out."

So, we headed for our late afternoon matinee, and I breathed two sighs of relief. One that my car was parked. The other that the movie was free (and parking was only $2). As many of you know, I tend to talk about Movies on Movie Monday, so I'll get into that, tomorrow. For now, we'll jump to...

After we got home, I started looking online for the closest auto repair shop. I'd had really good luck with a Firestone when I lived in St. Paul, but after I moved southwest, they moved northeast. That put them out of my driving distance (especially when I was already questioning whether my car would make it). Luckily, there's a Firestone not far from us, so I checked with them. They're even close to food and a mall, just in case. And -- the most important thing -- they had an opening first thing on Saturday morning.

No surprise, I started Saturday dropping off my car. I hung out for long enough to have them present me with the "Recommended Service" lists. Sure. It started with 2 "must-dos" which were the things causing my CHECK ENGINE light to come on. But then it went on to some items which are periodic maintenance, and ended in a list of items that included such ridiculously small things as changing the wiper blades. The good news? I turned down about 80% of the list and saved myself about $900. The bad news? The other 20% was all about my fuel system and the anti-knock system, and comprised about 40% of the total originally recommended price.

Okay. That's a long story, all to circle back around to the idea of seeing signs. Horoscopes can be bad things. If you read them in the morning, they can be self-fulfilling prophecies. (You know... If it says "Today you'll have trouble focusing at work," you might end up spending your day at work thinking "I can't focus, but that's okay.") Consequently, I usually read them in the evenings. Here is the main line from my horoscope from yesterday: Today the troubles you have in getting from one place to the other are more likely to be self-caused. What do you think? Does dropping off my car to have it fixed qualify?

And, since I'm fine with giving credit where credit is due, I certainly know that the bill from Firestone was a huge sign for me regarding taking on the new project at work. What do you think?

** Oh. And on Monday I may also have my first John Barrowman story in quite a while! **