I am teaching today at T.J. Rusk Middle School in the Bachman Lake area of Dallas near Love Field. I am teaching a computer literacy class in which kids are not allowed to touch the computers! Go figure... Something deep within me instinctively rebels at the policy of this class. The children are well-behaved though. The teacher I am subbing for has a reputation as someone who I don't want to trifle with, which probably explains why the children are so quiet - they're terrified.
I spent all day yesterday fixing my car. The alternator belt had snapped the night before and in the morning as I was driving to my next sub assignment the radio began to blink on and off until finally the car died quietly and rolled to a stop on the shoulder of the road right at the Tollway South exit on 635. Fortunately cars are not like people and they can be resurrected after they die - especially since we kill them almost everyday. My Dad went to Auto Zone and got a loaner battery for me and Nosa (my brother) and I drove out to pick it up. The car started right up as soon as we put the battery in and we drove it to Autozone. The helpful store employee immediately noticed that the belt was gone and I used the refund from the loaner battery to replace the belt. THis part should have been easy but since this is my life and not a story from somebody else's life it was not. The alternator had a bolt we needed to loosen that had been worn almost completely round. No amount of profanity and elbowgrease could loosen it using the adjustable wrench I had brought with me. Chris, the store employee, and I struggled futilely for the better part of an hour. Finally, another store employee came out and removed the bolt in 30 seconds using the same tools we had been using. Replacing the belt from here was easy or should have been. As soon as we got the belt on, adjusted the tension correctly, and replaced the worn out bolts, I charged the battery and tried to leave. The car began to shake, smoke, and screech. I started to just drive home and ignore the problem but good sense prevailed over sheer exasperation. Chris had left by this time but I popped the hood anyway and begged a store employee to tell me what was wrong. He immediately diagnosed the problem as a bad air conditioning compressor. AC compressors cost around $200 to replace with around $500 dollars in labor; but since I could do without the AC he recommended just getting a shorter belt and removing the old AC compressor. I could do this myself he said; but who should I see outside of the Autozone? My new friend Chris! Chris and I rattled back to my house and wrestled the compressor out of the guts of the old Camry and replaced the belts once more using my Dad's shiny new ratchet set - something we could have really used about an hour before. I took Chris back to his apartment with the promise to get in touch in the future. So I spent a grand total of $20 dollars (Dad's money) that day fixing my car, could have been worse, but I also lost $70 dollars of income by not going to my sub assignment. Public transportation looks really good right now.