The Fishers’ Shmedifying Guide to Van Maintenance

Drips, smells, rumbles, squeals, groans, blinking lights, shudders, tremors, mice, hiccups, spasms, heat that won’t turn on, heat that won’t turn off, heat that smells like dolphin meat, the unpredictable squirting of fluids, and the occasional refusal to acknowledge who’s in charge here. This is just what it’s like having a car that you aren’t making huge monthly payments on, and if you can’t live this way, then you’re overdue for a fancy pants check, Mr. Fancy Pants.

Read the rest at the Register. 

I’ll just say it for you: AWESOME!

Since as many as two of my readers have asked for pictures of my van (which I described here), here are some pictures of my van:

You know what, I think one picture is enough.  You get the general idea.  Contain your jealousy!  If anyone deserves to tool around rural southern New Hampshire in a vehicle this awesome, it’s me.

As you will see, it is an intimidating vehicle, weighing in at two-and-a-half tons of pure kid-schlepping menace.  If you are unlucky enough to find yourself stuck behind our van in traffic, you’ll have this stonelike visage to contend with:

So what we have here is not so much a picture of how the decals under the back windows resemble the mustache of Muammar El Qadaffi, as an illustration of the law of diminishing returns, exacerbated by the husband who brings around gin.  That is to say, the harder I worked on this stupid picture, the stupider it got, until my husband came along and asked what I was doing.  So I explained it, and then he decided to bring around some gin.

Oh, the time stamp on this post that says 7 a.m.?  Don’t think about it too hard.