sad day

So our Saturn, dubbed 'the golden oldie', is experiencing difficulties... grave, grave, difficulties.

When we bought the hud three years ago (yup. you heard me. the hud.) it didn't have AC. We steamed through an entire summer, drenched in our own sweat; gross but true, and when we finally saved up enough the following summer we got the AC fixed. And joyous day! It worked even better then our newly-leased Mazda ($700 some odd dollars later.... geesh).

However, this last Saturday our AC began to feel like I had a blow dryer inside and it was viciously trying to fry off my face :( Come to find out, after taking it to the dreaded Firestone, they told us that a cruel little rock decided to jump into the AC condenser and ruin our sweet, cool, rockin ride in the golden oldie (something that happens rarely, almost never, I'm told). Oh and the total to get it fixed, nay not fixed - completely replaced, per their recommendation: $860. Whaaa???? It's true.

Needless to say a second opinion from our good, true friends Haugen's in Farmington was in order. I can not sing their praises more highly - they have saved us bukoos of $$ time and again. Why didn't we go to them in the first place? Well they're a tad farther away then we would like when dropping off the car on the way to work. We think that they are THE only honest and true place to go to.

We took it there, he gave it the same diagnosis but instead of replacing the year old AC in it's entirety, he said he could patch it up for $70-90. Um, yes please. Turns out that when he got in there he did end up replacing the whole unit because it would cost about the same with the labor(which hopefully means it will last longer as well). Total: $390. Bleh. Heckuv a lot better then $860 though {still a low blow when we just got it replaced last year...}.

Oh well! That's life and all it's ups and downs I guess. I'm just glad we have someone to go to for car troubles that we can trust.