I'm not really big on the seven virtues, though I do aim for most of them in my life. One of them, patience, is what I consider my strongest. I am a very patience person, looking at the long-term things and willing to wait days, months, or even years to get something I want done.

Which works well with the plans on being a published author.

One of the most recent tests of that was Fluffy's car. The 2001 Saturn had seen better days, but many of them were behind it now. During the heat wave a month or so back, I was driving back and forth from work without A/C or a working fan with 100+ heat index. Somewhere around there, we decided to get it fixed.

Six weeks ago, I brought it into Tuffy's who called back an hour later and say "we open the dash, took one look at put it back. We can't fix it, no charge."

I already knew there were issues, the fan didn't work. Half the dash didn't work. Hell, the seat adjustment didn't work. Tuffy's recommended a local place so I made an appointment there.

I thought it would be a week to repair. We had a budget set and everything was ready. It took much longer to do. Actually, 4.5 weeks to finish repairing. That included getting it back at the 3 week mark and having it die in th driveway the next day. And two weeks of renting a car because I had to go to work.

In the end, I got the car back. It's been working a week without problems and more things were fixed than before I brought it in. I got lucky, the repair guy was an honorable sort and didn't charge me for fuse boxes #2 through 5. Even with the repair, we came under budget.

Throughout the process, I had more than a few people tell me they would have been yelling long before me. It was strange, because they were almost proud that they would be screaming at the guy. Yes, I was frustrated, but yelling at him won't make him fix it any faster. If we pushed, he would probably have started cutting corners (like he did the first time and the repair place before did). And fixing something to last a few days won't make any of our lives easier.

I'm glad I didn't yell. The most I did was ask for status updates every other day. However, it can be a trial when you are driving a rental car, knowing you're blowing $50 to go 12 miles.

It took me a bit to decide if I would recommend them. On one hand, it was over a month with "tomorrow for sure" for just about all of it. And they did give it back in obviously not working condition. On the other hand, they did make it right, didn't charge me an arm and a leg for it, and I'm happy.