I took the morning off to get the oil changed and the tires balanced on the car this morning. I scheduled an appointment online at the Toyota place for 10:30. I went about 10 to see if they could take it back early. The guy at the desk is friends with derek from school and he recognizes me (he also goes to our church) so he decides to mess with me and tell me that they are closed and they can't help me today. :-. Then he laughs and asks what I need done. I told him that I had scheduled an appt online and apparently that doesn't work. Oh well. Oh, and the balancer machine is broken so I can only get an oil change. No problem. Derek said he could get it done cheaper somewhere else anyways. So, I'm sitting in the waiting room balancing my checkbook (at least something got balanced today) and I hear a car alarm go off. I didn't think anything about it because we haven't used our in over two years since the clickers broke. A few minutes later Josh (the aforementioned schoolmate) comes in and informs me that my battery is completely dead. He shows me a print out from some diagnostic thingy that should have some black in the scale and mine has none. They had to jump it off to even get it in the service area. So I call Derek and get Josh to tell him what's up and Derek says, no, just jump it off and we'll take care of it since batteries cost a zillion dollars at Toyota. We get Steve on the phone and he says to wait there and he'll come and meet me to take care of things. We ended up switching cars so I could go ahead and go on to work. Now, apparently when they jumped the car off it burned some sort of wire that goes to the alarm and its going to be much more labor intensive to get the dern battery replaced. Derek even had to leave work to come home and tinker with it. I am just so glad that I was in Clanton when it happened and not trying to drive down 280 or 119. That would have been horrendous. I can just hear the traffic report now "sorry folks, there are major delays because some chick in a camry is stalled out in the left lane of 65, you might want to find another way home". Are you sure today isn't Monday?