Put the smoke back in.

Someone let some of the smoke escape out of my car. In truth I suppose it has been gradually leaking out for a while. But late last week I happened to glance over and wisps of smoke were floating up inside my car. Yeah, you heard me right. INSIDE the car. Not in the obvious the car is on fire kind of way, but more like how hot food lets off steam that you can see in the just right light at the right angle. Then it got a little worse. It wafted up and got sucked into the return vent in the dash - a lot like the vent on on the stove. Only then it was recycled - out of the floorboard to now also being spit back out of the ac vents. So I turned off the ac. Which fixed the problem for all of a day or two. Because come Monday morning there was now smoke coming out of the ac vents whether it was on or not.

So I finally did what any rational person would have done days ago and took the car in to have it fixed. In my defense I knew that the problem was - a coolant leak doing something bad to my heating coil. And per the shop that first took a look at the problem it would eventually get worse, but in the meantime driving it wouldn't case anymore damage. Other than probably cancer from all that inhalation of toxic fumes. But then again when we had this conversation smoke wasn't one of the symptoms. And since I am in theory in the market for a new car I wasn't sure whether I wanted to fix it or not. But since I still don't have a clue what I want I decided I should go ahead and get it fixed so that I can take my time and get exactly what I want.

So yesterday we dropped the car off at the shop so they could start on it first thing in the morning. Because of course it couldn't be a $10 fix that takes 10 minutes - duct tape anyone?? Oh, no... It was the pull the whole dash out, take all day, muy labor intensive kind of problem. Which of course translates to ca-ching, ca-ching.

Tonight, as promised the car was done and ready to go. They put the smoke back inside the car, and other than an awful smell (way worse than the smoke) which I hope will fade in a day or two everything seems to be working. Hopefully I have seen the last of the smoke...