This week has confirmed for me something I already knew about myself. I am anthrax for cars. It seems no matter what I do right, I still find a way to ruin even the most perfect of cars. Earlier this week, I caused one car’s battery to die. I only drove it 10 feet, turned it off and when I went to start it 30 minutes later it was dead. Then, miraculously enough, 4 hours later I try again and it worked.

But tonight was the real kicker. The one that’s going to cost me $200. About halfway home from work, my car started to shake. At first I thought maybe it was just from debris on the road. After all, they’ve been doing construction there for about 4 months. But it’s a freshly paved road so there was no way it was causing that much shaking. So I pulled over and what do I find but this:

That’s a pretty decent size gash. So I go to the back and pull out the donut and the jack and get to work on changing it. (My daddy’s a mechanic and I might not know a ton about fixing cars, but at least he made sure I knew how to change a tire.) As I’m jacking up the car, a nice guy pulls over and proceeds to help me change the tire. Well change it for me that is. (Hey, just because I know how to change a tire doesn’t mean I’m not going to accept help when it’s offered.)

So I finish jacking the car up and the guy takes off the tire. And this is what I see on the other side:

To give you a point of reference, I can stick my whole fist through the hole. Not cool at all. First this tomorrow morning I’m going to the mechanic to get a set of new tires (might as well replace two since I have to replace one) and get them rotated. I’ve been putting this off a little while anyway, so it’s not that big a deal. Well, except that whole part where it’s an extra $200 expense I wasn’t expecting.