And the Bad Car Karma Continues...

So I took my car back to Walmart the next day. After another hour, they told me they were unable to get the light on my car to go away. But they did show me the instructions from their manual on how to fix it. Honestly, this is what it said:

1. Turn the car on.
2. Put the emergency brake on.
3. Hold down "the button" until the car radio beeps.
4. Leave the car running for 20 minutes.
5. Drive the car over 15 miles per hour.

I wouldn't have been surprised if they had something that said "then, turn around five times, stomp your right foot three times and hold your breath for twenty seconds."

Just to add humor to insult, my car did not have "that button." And when you skip that step it really would be about as useful as stomping your foot or holding your breath.

Anyways, that night I went over to a friends for girls night. On my way home I realized that the light had finally turned itself off. Not sure why my car decided to turn the light off after so much driving, but whatever, the light is off. And that is all I really care about.

Friday night we went to another Haunting Oboe Music show. I am going to hopefully revisit that part of the evening in another post. For now I am focusing on the car thing.

We parked in a garage we had never parked in before. And since I know parking garages in Austin can be wacky, I decided to ask the guy working in it if A) my car would be towed if we left it overnight and B) would they still only charge $10 like the sign says when you come in. The man told me that it was fine and that I would only be charged $10 maximum in that garage.

After the show, Emily decided she was fine to drive. So we get to the ticket machine (the guy working was gone by this point) and it says $13. WHAT?!?

So in my rage and frustration, I called the number on the side of the ticket machine. I wish I would've recorded my conversation with that man because it was hilarious! My intention was to be nice, then if that didn't work, rude. But they had the most perfect guy working there. I am not even sure how he did it. But when I got to the part where I was trying to be rude, he just made me laugh.

Anyways the reasoning for the three extra dollars was because my car was considered to have stayed "overnight" because it passed midnight while my car was there. And basically the man I asked earlier had given me a wrong answer. And if I really felt like, I am sure I could get those three dollars back, but let's face it, it's three dollars.

But I told the man I was mad about the principle of the matter, not the three dollars, about a thousand times. Finally, I told the man that he was too nice and was going to let me keep talking forever and we will still accomplish nothing. So I let him go.

The next night we got downtown and realized that none of us had cash to park in a garage (now if we would've had those three extra dollars, maybe we could've scrummaged up another three). But Emily found this parking lot that she's parked in before and you don't have to pay. We were so excited and I might've even said, "this totally makes up for having to pay three extra dollars last night!"

Well, that was until we got back to the lot and Emily's car was no longer there. There was seriously no signs about towing to be seen, except for a really tiny one on the way into the lot that no one with any sort of normal vision would notice.

And apparently nobody did notice because there were hardly any cars and they tow truck guy said, "yeah we towed a bunch of cars from that lot tonight." Which angered me that he said it with such pride.

So I let him have my rant on the size and quantity of signs in the lot and this and that and the other that I was mad about.

But in case your are unaware, arguing with a tow truck man is about as useful as stomping your feet three times and doing that whole bit to get a light to turn off.

So the next morning we showed up at the tow truck place. Emily, Kristin and myself all decided that we would split it three ways since it could've been any one of us that got towed. Emily was just the one that unluckily got stuck driving that night.

We called before we got to the tow truck place (what do you call that place?) and the recording said they took credit cards. But when we got there we found out the machine was down. So we went to five different ATM's before we found one that would work and we finally got Emily's car back.

So now we are all about $65 more broke all because we didn't want to have to deal with paying $6 collectively. Lesson learned.

That's two for Austin's horrible parking and zero for us. Well played parking lots of Austin, well played.