• Woke up before my alarm went off at 6:30. No snooze buttons were harmed.
• Went to the Campbell Clinic way out east to get pictures taken of my bones and let a resident feel me up (just my arm!). The doctor told me these elbow shenanigans amount to classic bursitis, which is a pointless and insulting affliction, in my estimation. That’s right, America, I got injured FROM SITTING ON MY ASS AND LEANING ON MY ELBOW A BIT AWKWARDLY FROM TIME TO TIME. The doc hooked me up with the sweet little elbow maxi-pad-in-a-tube-sock you see up there and a prescription for some anti-inflammatory medicine and told me to lay off the elbow checks. Just kidding, he totally didn’t say that, so watch your tone with me, mister.
• I drove out to Bartlett to catsit Stinky and Sammy, who, for the first time ever, were actually more than marginally interested in my existence.
• Drove back in to Midtown to pick up my (mercifully generic) pills.
• Drove back toward the U of M to make it EARLY to my tire rotation/oil change appointment at Firestone. Decided that sitting in their waiting room might not be the best use of my time, so I left my car with them and darted across traffic to the Fantastic Sams, and was delighted to find myself their only customer. Snip snip. $20 later, I feel much much much lighter and less Pentecostal. Sadly, they only took off six inches and apparently you need ten to donate to Locks of Love.
• Hopped across traffic in another direction and hoofed it to my gym. Former gym. Where I was told that in order to reinstate my membership (which expired in May 2009), I’d have to pay $205 to get me back on track, and then another $130something to renew from May 2010 until May 2016 or something. Unable to wrap my mind around that horse shit (are all gym memberships this borderline criminal? there are only four ways out of this one: Moving to an area not anywhere near this chain, paying off the $700 two-year balance, terminal illness with doctor’s note, or death), I had them sign me up for a new membership. Because my ass? Has gotten way out of hand. They were all butthurt (god, I hate that word but I need it in this instance) when I balked at scheduling a time for my complimentary fitness assessment. It’s just that I know better than to try to get motivated by having some muscle-bound dude watch me huff and pant on a treadmill, and then tell me that I just need to spend more time on the treadmill. I’ve got it, dudes. I’ve done it before, I’ll do it again, and then I’ll get fat again, and come pay you even more money to re-re-join!
• Hopped back across traffic to pick up my car. Which wasn’t ready. So I sat in the waiting area. At some point, some dude came out to tell me all the shit supposedly wrong with my car, including something about a PCV valve and my alignment being borked. Which is insane, since Sig’s minions fixed up my alignment, like, a month ago. And I haven’t hit a single moose since then. Not a single one! So I don’t know. I told them no thanks and then sat there for another damn half hour so they could wrap things up and come get me to check out. I got sucked into Jerry Springer for a while. Then, while getting a cup of coffee, I noticed that my car was outside, ready. No idea how long it had been there. I stood and waited for a desk dude to help me, at which point he realized who I was and called me before I could be all “WHAT THE HELL, DUDE, IT’S 12:30 AND I BROUGHT THIS SHIT IN AT 10:45!” I noticed that my janky-ass hubcaps seemed to be in the same position I had left them, and I asked how they had rotated my tires — diagonally or front to back. Front to back, I was told. I paid up and went outside and I began to continue to kind of be suspicious, because the tires didn’t appear to have been moved; the front passenger side was hubcapless and looked low. Just like I’d left it. I went back inside and told the guy that, and said, “Are you sure they rotated them?” He was annoyed, of course, because I am a stupid girl with an AWESOME haircut, and went to ask the mechanics. There was some confusion, with one mechanic even accidentally being all “well maybe not” before another one jumped in and was all “I helped him do it!” I don’t know. They told me they moved the hubcaps so they would be in the positions they were before. I wish I’d marked a tire with a grease pen or something so I’d know for sure. The only way I’ll be able to tell is if my right front tire shows a slow leak. That tire (which, incidentally, that same shop was supposed to have patched several weeks ago, but it still leaks) should be the back passenger side now. We shall see. Oh, we shall see. God, I hate getting my car serviced. Hate hate hate.
So, that’s it, really. I’ve now been awake for a really long time, and my day hasn’t even really begun yet. I’m just inside that window of time where taking a nap would be a bad idea, but I can’t go in to work just yet because people will look at me funny.
Guess it’s fat pants and coffee ’til then.
Dude, you gotta quit going to Firestone. They are notorious scam artists.
Go to Gateway. I’ve bought tires at Gateway, but never had them serviced there. (I just don’t do tire service) Anyway, the purchase process at Gateway was much more pleasant than some of the other places I have been.
Totally in agreement about Firestone and Gateway. W have used Gateway on Poplar several times and they are always easy to work with.
Yes, all gyms are that criminal. Trust me, I worked for a huge chain for a few years…and there, depending on how rich / gullable you look to your salesperson, an 18 month membership can vary from $369 paid in full, to $599 paid in full. No difference in service, no difference in anything other than what they need to sell that very day.
(You know what I’m gonna say next!) If you live in a warm climate, take up running or jogging. Seriously. The road is free. Enroll in a yoga class for working your muscles. Gym memberships are ripoffs.
Late to the party, but yes, all gyms are like that; they all have those same stupid rules and it pisses me off. I will never join another gym. I think Curves might be different, though?
And yes, Firestone sucks. They had the tires I wanted, so I went. And I got the lifetime alignment, which is rarely right. And they gave Chris a handy LONG list of everything I needed done to my car. Which I was certain was bullshit until there was this gawdawful noise in the front end. So I took it to the dealer. They left a vice grip attached to the tie rod. Idiots.
Before I read any of these other comments I’m going to use my psychic powers to divine some information. The tire spirits are telling me that you went to the Firestone on Poplar and Highland. Those dudes suck, are basically full of shit and will take you for whatever they can get from you. I dropped off my car there many moons ago and walked back home. (This was when I lived on Poplar and Prescott) They never called me so I called them to find out if it was ready. They said it was. I showed up and not only was it NOT ready, but they hadn’ even started it. I’m sure they tried right after I hung up the phone, but the problem…the tiny tiny problem…was that some idiot tried to use someone else’s key in my ignition to start and to move my car. That key also got stuck. I got all pissed that it hadn’t been done yet and the guy offered me some fucking bullshit excuse about some “new guy” and I told them to give me my car. He said if I could wait 30 minutes they’d get it done and I said “fuck it.” I had places to be and I wanted my car. He finally broght me my key which didn’t look right. It was all gnarled. Turns out the same dipshit that used the wrong key in MY car used MY key in someone else’s car. They had to fuck it all up to get it out. So I made a big stink in front of all their other customers and called them out on all their shit, opted to wait while they made me a new key and then left. Downtown Tire next to the Commercial Appeal is pretty good. They’re kinda good ol’ boys, but all they do is tires and oil changes. Less of a chance they’re going to “find something seriously wrong” with another part of your car so as to get more cash from you. It’s also really convenient for dropping off on your way into work and then walking right over to pick up. You can ask if they carry your kind of tire and if they don’t I think they can order it.
and I don’t understand how the gym membership was so much? Had you signed a contract for like two years, but only paid for one? That’s the only way I can make sense of you having some kind of existing balance. I did the two year membership for 250 a year (which they didn’t tell me about until my 2nd renewal of one year memberships. After the 2nd year it dropped to 150 a year. I did, however, have to pay a “30 dollar new equipment fee” so it was $180.
Was just about to say don’t ever go there again and go to Gateway instead and see others have already said so. I used to go to both for a while but was growing quite tired of the questionable and “suddenly discovered” diagnoses and other issues with Firestone and one time when I was waiting and fell asleep in the waiting area, they plain forgot about me & when I woke up, I discovered my car hadn’t even been worked on yet (seven hours after I brought it in).
The last time I went there, I had a tire that needed repairing and they were going to be too short on staff to get to me for hours and hours (even though there was no one waiting & few cars in the garage).
So I drove down the street to Gateway. They had actually put four new tires on my grandmother’s old car for me about five months before – the car that got totaled by an uninsured driver in 2007. The tire that needed repair this time was a tire on the new car I bought after the wreck, that I’d only had a few months.
Not only did they have me done and out of there within an hour – they didn’t charge me a cent. And that tire’s still good almost three years later.
I have never once received an unexpected “surprise diagnosis” there, everything they’ve ever done has been perfect and lasted as it should, and their price has always been fair. And really, it’d be a little bit of a hike but you could walk to and from there to your house if you ever had to.
And yes, gyms are insane. I have a friend in Canada who is paid up at his through the end of June, yet a few weeks ago they started calling him wanting more money even though he is paid in full through then. Apparently “paid in full thru (X date)” means nothing. Probably needless to say, June 30th is the last they’ll ever see of him. He might have renewed for the rest of the year or something if not for that, but they blew it by being greedy.
1. Springtime = run outside = free. Youtube = yoga/pilates videos = free.
2. Barton’s all the way. Oil change, tire inflation, wiper fluid, new wipers. Any make-work goes to them. They have given us exceptional service. Every. Single. Time. Except for the tire rotation thing, which they don’t do there. Not sure about where to go for that. There’s the newish place across from India Palace but they were kind of weird once when I took my car there.