Get in the Zone, AutoZone.

As I said in a previous post, we were down to one car for two weeks. We were able fix Stephen's car on Friday.

We were pretty sure that the problem was with the alternator. We talked to A LOT of people. Everyone said that having an alternator go out was typical and "not that big of a deal".

We called to get quotes on how much this "not that big of a deal" would cost us.

After several quotes from different repair shops we found out that this typical problem was going to cost us around $300-$400. Yeah. I was not very happy with those numbers. Who has $400 lying around that they can drop on a car repair? Let me rephrase that...Who has $400 lying around that they want to drop on a car repair?

My amazing Dad found me an alternator to purchase for $45.

Stephen's amazing co-worker, Tyler, offered to help him put it in.

All we had to do was get our alternator tested just to make sure that the alternator was really the problem.

On our way to Tyler's we stopped at an AutoZone to get the alternator tested. The woman that came out brought a battery tester. She didn't believe Stephen when he said that the alternator was the problem. She said the battery was bad.

OF COURSE THE BATTERY WILL READ BAD! THE CAR IS RUNNING STRAIGHT OFF OF THE BATTERY RATHER THAN HAVING THE ALTERNATOR CHARGE IT!

The AutoZone lady then had us hook up my car to Stephen's to charge his battery and get it started. The lady left the jumper cables on for a total of three seconds and told me not to turn on my car. She said that if I turned on my car with Stephen's car on, MY car would get whatever problems Stephen's car had.

Wow.

Stephen was going to strangle that lady for being stupid.

As soon as she left, Stephen commented on her poor knowledge of vehicles. "It's not like cars have STD's!"

Without the help of our local AutoZone technician, Stephen's car is now fixed and running beautifully.