Phew!

It's like a Breathe Right strip for my wallet. This is only about the 5th time I've taken my car into the shop this year, and I've already spent over $1600 in fixing/maintaining it. The last time I took into the mechanic a couple weeks ago, they said they couldn't fix it and that I needed to take it into Honda because it was something to do with the Emissions Control Board (sounds like a government agency inside my car - they were preventing my charcoal canister from making any headway in the quest to be "green" by saying it didn't meet the required zoning regulations - or something to that effect - I did really well on the analogy part on my SAT's, if you can't tell).

The mechanic who last looked at my car told me that I was looking at roughly another $800 in repairs, mixed in with a bunch of other jibber-jabber, gobbeldy-gook, & flim-flam. Thankfully, I speak all of those languages, so I could filter them out and listen to only what I wanted to hear.

After being freaked out for having to take my car to the dealer, and expecting them to come up with a laundry list of things that are wrong with my car, not to mention it having to take 3 weeks for me to get it back, I was pleasantly suprised to be wrong. I got a phone call today from the mechanic at Honda who told me that the repairs would only (ONLY!) cost me $325 and my car would be nearly perfect thereafter. Given the fact that the dang thing has 190,000 miles on it, I was ecstatic.

Despite the fact that in an hour or so I'll be $325 lighter in the wallet, it sure as hell beats $800+ additional issues. Praise God!