Changes

Vincent and my car going through some changes. You’ll recall that Vincent his grandparents’ long stay at his father’s and his one-bedroom apartment in Columbus got them in hot water with their landlords. His father had talked with us about him trying to buy a house in Upper Arlington (?!). Then Franklin County had pushed Vincent’s father to pay child support.

Vincent called Saturday and we got out of him that they lived their place near Easton, tried moving into a house and something like asbestos in the house made his father sick, and so they’re staying in a motel while the landlord cleans it up. Vincent didn’t say where in metro Columbus they were staying or arre staying now. Vincent called us putatively to try connect the WiFi on his father’s family’s laptop from a Bob Evans near where they’re staying (putatively to work on his classes). Apparently they can’t afford to pay the extra WiFi charge at the motel. (We weren’t able to help him figure how to get it connected.)

We’ve been working on Vincent to try to get him to go to our cousin Dustin’s wedding, at his mother’s house in Canal Winchester. We got the surprise news that he and girlfriend Jamie are getting married next month, via Facebook message. We met Jamie earlier this spring at cousin Corey’s wedding to Brittany.
Vincent says he’s been working six days a week at Bob Evans.

Ever since we got the brown Nissan back from my sister a couple of years ago, I’ve almost never locked it because the alarm system goes crazy when I try to unlock it. Twice this month – including until almost midnight Thursday – the alarm system has gone off and these times it just wouldn’t quit (even if we got the sound to stop, the car still wouldn’t stop) and so we had the car towed to a nearby mechanic. Whatever they did the first time obviously didn’t entirely solve the problem, and so back it went Friday night. Friday Stephanie got it back: They didn’t charge us, but said if we wanted to fix we’d have to take it to the Nissan dealer (presumably expensive), but gave us some advice on how to keep the alarm off. We decided to risk it and not take it to the dealer – yet, even though this is a good time to take cars in since Stephanie is not working.

One of the reasons I’m sometimes tempted to lock the car is that the trunk – which worked some until a few months ago, when my key broke off into the trunk when I was parked at a metered spot downtown – doesn’t work. A couple of months ago I took the car to a local St. Matthews locksmith. They got the remains of the key out and oiled the lock, but we still couldn’t get the trunk open. They recommended I try taking the car not to the dealer but to another locksmith on the far end of town. Friday – on the way from the doctor’s to the track for the Friday night under the lights – we decided to drop the car off at this locksmith. Saturday lunchtime we went back and got it. They said the oil must have seeped in by then and the trunk lock was working fine, and sure enough it was. They said we’d need to oil it regularly. No charge. So we got some advice from folks at both of these businesses and no charge, although we had to drive to the southern part of town once (although we’d found time to do it).

Hopefully Vincent will get into their apartment soon, and we’ll stay trouble free with my car’s alarm system and trunk lock.

-- Perry