Getting back in gear

I finally got around to taking my car in to the shop yesterday morning, though I had trouble getting there. The car started up fine, but when I had to pause at traffic lights, I had trouble accelerating. That was unnerving, though fortunately it didn’t get bad enough to disrupt traffic or get me honked at, and I managed to make it to the garage under the car’s own power. This morning, I picked the car up. Apparently Uncle Clarence’s friend was right that the problem had to do with the transmission fluid — some sort of clip connecting an axle to the transmission was loose and the fluid was leaking. I’m not entirely clear on why that would only be a problem after the car had been sitting in cold weather overnight or longer, or why a loose clip that the garage guy attributed to an oversight in their previous maintenance work would explain the occasional sluggish starts I had before then. But it was a simple enough fix that he didn’t charge me anything, and the car seems to work fine again, for now.

And that’s good, because I finally got my last advance check for Star Trek: The Face of the Unknown, and now I was finally able to drive to the bank and deposit it, as well as picking up some much-needed groceries afterward. Though the car was almost out of gas when I left the garage, so I stopped to get just one gallon at the nearest station, to tide me over until I could get to Kroger and use my fuel discount to fill up the rest of the way. I probably had enough in the tank to make it there, but better safe than sorry.

Now that I’ve gotten all that dealt with, hopefully I can concentrate more on writing. I’ve just started a draft of a new Hub story, hopefully the first of several. And after that, I have a new Star Trek project to outline, but I can’t say much about it yet.