(no subject)

[vr_trakowski]

Well, to start with, my car is broken.  Not seriously, but the door handle on the passenger side front (outside) is broken off and the lock on the driver side front is stuck locked.  Since the back doors have no locks on the outside, this means that I have to leave my car unlocked so I can open the back passenger door, lean in to open the front passenger door, and slide into the driver's seat over the console.  This is irritating but not incapacitating, and affords great amusement to whomever happens to be riding with me.  *rolls eyes*  The trouble is that, according to the dealer, it would cost $250+ to fix just one door, and I simply don't have that kind of money to spare right now. 

This morning, I came out and realized, when I spotted the balled-up dirty socks in my back seat, that someone had spent the night in my car. 

I had to remove the socks, a pen, and three pennies, and roll down the windows to get rid of the smell--not a stench, thank you Lord, just the odor of someone who'd slept in a small enclosed space for several hours.  But now I have a dilemma.  Do I leave the car as it is, with the risk of this, or something worse?  Or do I lock the doors and go in through the trunk?  I can do that--the back seats fold down--but something in me rebels at the loss of dignity implied.   Not to mention the messiness of doing so in a downpour, for instance.

Hmm, now I'm wondering if I can rig some sort of device that will let me open the trunk and yank to open one of the doors.  Well, no, I'd still have to unlock the door from the inside.  *sigh*  And the car does not have those easily yankable stem locks; they're nubby little switches.  Maybe two tools?  One to push open the lock and one to open the door? 

What puzzles me about this is why the...male, to judge from the scent...chose to sleep inside a car anyway.  It was quite warm last night, and it must have gotten stifling inside the car.  He could have curled up behind a bush somewhere and probably been more comfortable. 

Oh well.  My weekend was lovely--I got errands done, I had a nice nap, I spent a terrific evening with laura27md and her Nikko.  Didn't get done what I needed to, but that's nothing unusual. 

Comments

[jenbachand.livejournal.com]

This might be a really suggestion, but here it goes.

Steve's new truck didn't come with electric locks, but he wanted to get an alarm installed. When we got to one of those stereo & alarm places they told us they had a motor to unlock the manual locks. I think it was like $150 for the motor for the locks & the alarm. Still not cheap, but a possibility, and then you'd know when some bum broke in.

Along the same lines but not the same. I had a Subaru hatchback that had originally been my grandmothers, but I had bought it when it was about 10 years old. I left it with my aunt when we went on vacation. We told her not to let her man drive it (6'3" 350 lbs easy). She let him. The seat broke. We had these huge couch cushions that served to hold the seat up so we could drive it around. Yeah fun. We evenutally sold it to same aunt & he drove it until it died completely & they sold it for scrap.

[vr-trakowski.livejournal.com]

Huh, thanks for the thought! The locksmith we tried told me that the locks on my car are an enclosed unit, which was why he couldn't pop the thing open. And, presumably, one of the reasons why it would cost so much to replace.

It's amazing the substitutes one can come up with to make things work!