the day stella lost her groove (some stories need to be told in full detail)

don't ever say something if you can't live with the consequences.

my car insurance payment is due this summer, and i was starting to think that my car (lovingly named stella, so that when i lost her in parking lots i could bellow a la streetcar) was getting a bit old and unreliable, and although she and i have been together since grad school, maybe it was time that she retire. i looked into blue book values for stella, realized she'd be worth $600 in trade-in, which means about $400 on the street or $100 in the salvage yard, and decided that all of that was not worth the $900 i'm paying in insurance.

now shift gears (no pun intended) to my excitement as being asked to be the stand-in date for our friend dwtacc as she attended the wedding of one of our co-workers. as we got ready to go to the ceremony last night, i volunteered to drive, thinking i knew hyde park better to find the chapel... but as we headed afterward toward the downtown reception, one of those creepy inner voices started hinting to me that maybe my unreliable stella was not the best choice for this adventure...

the reception was fabulous. cheers to our usually quiet friend jt for such amazing one-liners as "hey, i think gramps wants a piece of the reverend" and his smooth post-running-man dance moves. but on leaving the reception and attempting to pick up my poor stella, a fairly tipsy but apologetic valet apologized that my car was not starting. i figured he just didn't know the key-jiggle required to get my car going (i suppose the lexus suv's he normally parks there don't have this issue), shrugged, and dwtacc and i laughed as we noted his empty malt liquor bottle and slight waver in his step as he led us down a back alley toward my stella. sure enough, no engine-turnover for my baby. i think the tipsy-valet-guy was a little surprised that i didn't shout or throw a high heel at him (maybe a little more high-maintenance clientele downtown?) and just said, "well, i work in seven hours. where can we put this car so i can come deal with it later?" and he was so relieved that soon a legion of red-vested men were pushing my car into a mysterious back lot to wait for me until after work today.

so feeling a little suspicious that my car and car key rested with a red-vested drunk guy who i only knew as hamed, dwtacc and i hopped into a cab, and i thanked dwtacc for being the next (last?) of my friends in chicago to get stuck in a car adventure with me (twinset and my blogmate already have many stella tales under their belts). when the driver asked if we'd been having a good evening and i answered that the night had been great until my car died, the driver proceeded to interrogate me about the details of my car and its non-working-ness. i figured the best thing that could happen to me was that someone might steal the car so i could file an insurance claim, so i obliged with as many details as i could barring my name and social security number and all that. first he offered to buy the car from me outright (how do you negotiate a price with a cab driver who's driving you because the car he's trying to buy doesn't run???) then he decided i should have the car fixed, then he promptly announced that the only people who should fix my car were the mexicans. dwtacc, who shall hereafter be referred to as la mexicana incognita (lmi?), calmly asked the cabbie why only mexicans could fix my car: "because they're cheaper." and when lmi asked "where are these mexicans?" we were, i think, initially told "everywhere" but then were provided an address for (i can't actually believe this) "automex."

needless to say lmi and i were fascinated. first drunken red-vested hamed, then the mexican-virtue-extolling cab driver... the cab driver spent the whole ride to hyde park so engrossed in a conversation in some unrecognizable language that i was sure my car would be gone from the red-vested parking lot long before i got to automex...

(to be continued...)