Did you hear the one about...

...the car that died? It's a pretty amazing story, actually.

Last night I took my friend Ambre home after rehearsal. I was feeling pretty crappy and I was ready to be home in my jammies with some soup I was going to pick up from my friend Claire's house. I called Fuzzy before I hit the road to see if he wanted me to pick him up from his German shooting club in Lincoln Square--I was downtown West Loop. As I was leaving him a message, I smelled something funny coming from the car and wondered what was up.

I got a little turned around and was on some dark streets I'd never driven on before. Finally I made it to Lake Shore and took the exit up to Montrose.

Turning onto Western from Montrose, I suddenly had a hard time getting into second gear. As I drove the few blocks more to the Dank Haus, I stopped being able to get anything into gear. There was a spot across the street, so I pulled in and turned off the car.

Now, let me just say--Thank the Lord Jesus Christ for having this happen at the exact time that I was meeting up with Fuzzy, and not when I was alone downtown, or on Lake Shore Drive. I am very thankful for this timing.

I tried to start the car several times, but kept just chugging forward and stalling out. Fuzzy got behind the wheel and found a way to drive it, so we set off for home and I called Claire and told her we weren't going to stop by. We get to a red light at Foster and Western, and when it turns green, Fuzzy can't get the car into any gear. We're rolling foward, directly into the intersection and just stop. We turn our flashers on, we are blocking all traffic on Foster, everyone is honking at us. If you don't live in Chicago, you need to know that this is a pretty major intersection for 2 very traveled streets. After about 2 red light cycles, a nice man in an SUV pulled up beside us and told us to put it in neutral and he would pull behind us and push us through. What a Godsend!

We pulled into a bus stop, and pulled out our phones to look up the number for a tow truck. As luck would have it, we were either at a no-signal zone or AT&T lost service in the area, because neither Fuzzy nor I could use the internet, or even call out. We had lots of quarters in the car, so Fuzzy made a series of pay phone calls while I sat in the cold car. It was 25 degrees. When he came back, I ran to the ATM to get the money for the tow truck, and then I took a cab home. Fuzzy was home shortly.

This morning the auto shop told me that the clutch needs to be completely replaced and along with a few other things, it is going to cost us $2200.

Ironically, as I was taking Ambre home, I mentioned how much I loved my car and how I was completely dependent on it. Even more ironically, I mentioned to Fuzzy the other day that "now that the car is almost paid off it will probably die soon."

We are 2 weeks away from having the damn car paid off.

Hilarious, right?