Day 99 - Am I being pranked by the universe?  
[Warning todays post is going to be a long narrative story of the events of today, and little to do with job hunting.]

This morning Corbin went to go pick up a friend in town to take to see a movie.  

At ~9:30am my phone rings.  It's Corbin.  He reports the car engine started making 'grinding noises' and he has safely pulled it off freeway.  On the shoulder of one of the off-ramps in town.  

Fuck.  Alright, I tell him I'll be right there, inform Laura what's going on, and hop in my car to go help him/investigate.  

Get to where he is, engine ran out of oil.  Shit.  
I'll note that he is 20 and should have noticed the oil sticker on the windshield and maybe thought/asked when it'd need it's oil changed.  
I'll also note that I am older and should have also been aware that the shittier of our two van's was probably due for an oil change/check in the past 3 months.  It's almost like I've been stressed/thinking about other things though...sigh.  

Corbin is very upset.  He and his friend have been planning this for a month.  He doesn't get to see his friend very often, and the movie they were going to see just came out so he bought reserved tickets a month ago, and it pretty much meant all that planning was now worthless.  

Try to calm him down while explaining life is shitty like that and I'm sorry it happened.  Now to try to resolve the issue.  First lets go get some oil to put in it and see if the engine will start/run (He said it was running when he pulled over, so it most likely is not seized).  

He hops in my car with me, I go to start my engine and it doesn't.  You. Have. To. Be. [censored]. Kidding. ME.  
It clicks on, but seems to not want to start.  

I can't use his car to jump mine, and they're in places where trying to maneuver that wouldn't be safe or good.  So I pull the battery out of his minivan and try to jump my car that way thinking that might work.  It does not.   So I try just hooking his battery up to my car directly.  Still won't turn over.  

This knocks Corbin down emotionally harder because we went from "maybe you could still make it a little late" to "We're fucked and no way are you getting out of here on time."

I call Laura.  Inform her to go get some quarts of oil and bring them to us.  If his minivan can still run, then we'd only have to deal with one broken vehicle instead of two.  This now sucks for everyone.  

While waiting for her I google symptoms of my cars problems, I try an ODBII scanner (because my lights/radio all work, so it doesn't seem like a dead battery...and I started the car 20 min before driving to where Corbin was without any issues).  I check the fuses.  I google a weird error that pops up sometimes when trying to start it.   Internet tells me it's most likely a broken battery or a dead one.  But it doesn't act like it's dead dead, but obviously something isn't right.  

Decide the best course of action is: Pull my cars battery to take to an Autozone/somewhere.  Once Laura arrives with oil, if van works, he can take Emma home, and me and Laura can go get the battery tested and go from there.  

Laura arrives with Oil.  Fun fact:  While going to get the oil she stepped wrong and twisted/popped/did something to her calf, so now she's in a bit of pain on top of all this nonsense! 
Oil is placed into the minivan.  I have Corbin start the minivan.   IT STARTS!  But oh god what is that noise?!  Have him turn it off.  Start it one more time (to ensure oil is getting everywhere), noise is there.  Gets a little louder when he taps the accelerator.  

Something is broken.  Thrown rod? Bent Valve?  Spun bearing? Who knows. But driving the minivan the 15-20 minutes home is not a great option.  

Laura has already at this point contacted her mother.  Who has AAA (Since like 1976).  She will drive to where we are so we can call a tow truck and have it towed under her name.  See: AAA will tow a car for the AAA member as long as the member is there.  They don't check to see if they own the car, or if they drove it there.  As long as the member with photo ID is at the location, they'll tow it.  

So we all wait for her to arrive.  Then I call AAA using her member number.  
Then we all wait for the tow truck.  This combined was at least an hour, of sitting at the side of the freeway.  

Tow truck arrived, gets info from Laura's mom, double checks where they are towing it to (back to my house), and mother in law takes Corbin and Emma home leaving me and Laura to deal with my VW and it's battery.  

It is now about 12:30PM. So Laura and I and my VW Battery go get lunch. While having lunch the kids made it home safely thanks to Laura's mom.  

Then we go to an Autozone to get my battery tested.  
I miss the entrance to the Autozone.  The business driveway I pulled into just past the Autozone is not connected to the Autozone parking lot.  
This is perfect and makes me feel so much better.  I said things that were not nice.  

So we get in the Autozone, I take the battery up there, they slap a tester on it.  
They can't fully test it.  It needs to be charged.  Meaning it's not fully charged?  So probably something wrong with it.  
But, instead of having them put it on their charger, he notices the battery brand is one of Walmart's and the sticker implies it is less than 3 years old and the battery literally says on it "3 year free replacement warranty." And suggests I take it to Walmart because if something is wrong with it they will replace it for free.  
  
In hindsight he didn't say anything wrong or meant harm, but I should have had them charge it and check it before going to Walmart.  

I go to Walmart.  Walmart's aren't that great to begin with, but this is in a very populated area, very busy, and not a rich neighborhood.  I know this sounds judgemental, but the Walmart in Boerne and Leon Springs are in less economically depressed populations and not near major city centers and therefore seem to be nicer and less crowded.  

It takes almost 10-15 minutes for someone to acknowledge me...sorry I mean SHOW UP in the Auto area with my battery.  
They test it, same result as Autozone, tell me they have to put it on the charger to see what happens.  

So I spent 30-40 minutes in a not pleasant Walmart auto center (The waiting room area they have for people getting tires/oil changes was filled with a few people and some very rowdy not really being supervised loud children, so I stood near the batteries nearly the entire time).  

Laura was out in her minivan because of pulling her calf early and no reason for her to have to be in a battery waiting room.  So I tell her via text how long it's going to be and that she can easily go to a nearby culvers to get a treat while I wait.  So she did.  :)  

Walmart dude finally comes back with my battery and...it's fine.  There is nothing wrong with my battery.  It is now at full charge. It does not need replaced. This means something else is wrong with my car.  Maybe the alternator is dead.  Maybe some loose connections. Maybe a wiring harness.  Who the fuck knows at this point.  But I do know this:  When I arrived, the battery was at too low of a charge to be tested.  Now after 20 min on a charger it's got a charge.  So theoretically I should be able to pop it back in my car, start the car, and get it home.  

We did have contingency plans.  I could attempt to use mother in-laws AAA for a second tow.  Or drop $50 at a nearby U-Haul to rent a car dragging trailer (like the one I used when I bought this car in McAllen TX 1.5 years ago) and tow it home myself.  

SO back to my car on the side of the road.  Pop in the battery.  Go to start the car, and viola! It starts!  Laura and I drive our vehicles back home, getting home at about 3PM.  

Come home to find that my son, Corbin, the CornDog Bandit, had put Ramen in a special Ramen microwave cooker WITHOUT THE WATER and ruined the cooker and made the house smell like toxic burnt popcorn from Satans anus.  Thankfully the microwave appeared to be unburned and will just emit a small taste of horrible odor over the next week or so.  Just fucking great way to top the day off I tell ya.  

Now the fun part!  
What is wrong with my car? Is it the alternator? Something else? Is it an intermittent problem that'll be hard to track down, or a constant problem?  
(After I got my car home, I turned it off. Waited a minute, and it fired right back up...so...???)  

And more importantly: What do we do about Corbin's minivan?  
Is it worth paying a mechanic hundreds, if not thousands of dollars to tear it apart to find out what is broken?  Once we find out what's broken will it be fixable?  Will the cost to find the problem and fix it be more than it's worth to get done?  Do we just buy him a different car?  How is he going to get to work?  What do we do?  
  
OH AND BY THE WAY I STILL DO NOT HAVE A JOB OR INCOME COMING IN SO I DON'T REALLY HAVE MONEY IN SAVINGS TO SPEND ON A MAJOR VEHICLE REPAIR OR PURCHASE.  

So, what advice do any of you have?  
Anyone have a free or cheap reliable car I can get off them?  

I will say, at least until I land a job, I can wake up at the ass-crack of dawn and drive my son to/from work in either my car (risky, requires it to start and stay running) or Laura's minivan.  Giving us a few more days for me to solve my cars problem and decide how to proceed with is van.  

And yes the selfish in me does not want my son, who does not take care of things, to be able to drive our nice minivan or MY nice car to/from work.  

Job hunting wise, I didn't do anything because my entire day was filled with this bullshit series of unfortunate events.  

I'm really hoping this is the universe shitting on me so it can justify repaying me with landing the better paying of the opportunities I have lined up.  Karma?  CAR-ma?  idk.  I'm so tired.