I'm a mechanic

I drive a 1993 Nissan Sentra (oh, what a beauty, eh?). I bought it about a week after we moved in to our house (in 2005). I paid cash for it and have driven it back and forth to work and graduate school for nearly 4 years now. It's been a decent car: every year and a half I have to put a few hundred dollars in to replace things, but that's about it. It gets ~35 miles per gallon, even after 15 years. Jen doesn't drive it because it has a manual transmission. The biggest problem is that when I get in the thing, I feel like Chris Farley: "Fat man, little [car]!"

Yesterday night after I left work, I was driving on 2700 West heading south. I was at the 4100 S. intersection stopped at a red light when my car lost all power. It felt like it was out of gas but I knew what it was: my alternator gave out. I had to hop out of my car and push it across the intersection to get out of traffic. It was awfully cold, but at least the road was dry.

I had Jen's brother jump my battery so I could at least drive the car to a better overnight parking spot. This morning, I took Jen's van to work and was thinking about how to get my car to our house so I could work on it. Jen called me and said her Dad called AAA and they were going to tow the car to my garage. I left work early and got home just as the tow truck driver was dropping my car off.

After spending all afternoon with a good friend from college who was in town for the holidays, I went to AutoZone and bought a rebuilt alternator (still $100!!!). After dinner, I spent about two hours in the garage working on the thing. I'm happy to say the car is back in operation and I hopefully won't be pushing my car through any intersections any time soon.