I bought my car, a Subaru Forester, new in February 2004. Now, more than 7 years and 136,000 miles later, it's starting to show signs of age. Nothing serious is wrong with the car, but a few items just stop working. But not all the time.
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The first sign that anything on the car was wonky came when I noticed that the LED display on the stereo had faded on the left side. This stereo was one I had installed after market because it has both a CD player and a cassette player. Yes, I still play cassettes from time to time, dinosaur that I am. Not everything is destined for digitization, and I'm not sure this is a bad thing. In any case, I dealt with a semi-illegible stereo face display as best I could until, several weeks ago, it went out entirely. While at home, this is not such a terrible thing, since there are very few radio stations I listen to, and they're all programmed into the stereo. However, I'm away from home, and it would help a lot to be able to see what the station numbers are as I tune it. Well, maybe it's just easier to listen to other media--CDs and tapes.
...And then the face display on the radio came back again--faint, but still there. Until last night, when it went away again.
The lack of a readable display on the radio is almost but not quite enough for me to seek out a new stereo. The real stumbling block is that new stereos will certainly not have cassette players on them. Don't even talk about repair. Shops laugh in your face when you mention that these days. Anyway, maybe the display will come back again.
The other item that's getting wonky is the beeper on the keyless lock. For the past couple of months, it's even odds as to whether it will make a sound. I would prefer the beeper fail permanently, frankly. The beeper has always annoyed me.
In any case, my car has caught up with me, age-wise. My joints and my memory are only working intermittently, though I kinda hope that it's a long time before these faculties fail completely. As for the car, I'd really like to keep it at least until I put 200,000 miles on it.
Now, on to the comments!
From Yasuragi:
Onomastic makes a lovely comment for a summer morning in TexDem's Mojo Friday diary posted, um, Friday.
From Dragon5616:
In Trix/Silly Rabbit's Sunday Talk: It's just a flesh wound!, dyrrachium shared this powerful photo, the basis for a diary itself.
Who needs pie fights? I loved this informative comment by FishOutofWater and this respectful reply from Empty Vessel in FishOutofWater's rec list diary Fukushima 4 Spent Fuel Pool in Critical Condition.
From Julie Gulden:
This super comment by Chun Yang was in side pocket's wonderful diary about tipping the people who clean our rooms at NN11. Read it and do it!
From your humble diarist:
ItsSimpleSimon draws attention to E. J. Dionne's extension of David Brook's (!) observation that Republican policies are ignoring their working class base, in pollbuster's recommended diary Police Officers, Fed Up with Rick Scott, Leave Republican Party En Masse