April 3 – “Up and running”

We have been trying for several weeks now to get our truck inspected.  We are so lucky to be among the first to experience the new law about matching up inspections with registrations.  Some kind of deal so the state can save money in printing costs and only have one sticker.  You still have to get an inspection, but it links up automatically with the state’s computers so they can check for it when you go to renew your registration.  No inspection, no registration sticker.  Only thing is, if your stickers don’t presently match up month-wise, you have an extra year before the inspection is required.  And of course our truck had the honor of operating with matching stickers that expired in March.  Both due now.  Well, then.  It’s already April now.  Sounds like somewhat of a complicated mess to me, so I guess it’s the perfect government program.

Now it’s not that we haven’t tried to get this taken care of.  I took it to four different places.  The first one didn’t do inspections on such old automobiles.  It’s a 1992.  I did the math.  23 years old.  So “old” is now 23?  So I’ve been “old” almost three times longer than I was young?  Well, that hurts.  At least I don’t have to have an inspection sticker every year.  I just have to pass Chris’s inspection.  Hmm.  Maybe the sticker wouldn’t be such a bad idea.  Anyway, the next two places indeed did do inspections of antiques, but it just so happened that their machine had broken down and they had no idea when it would be repaired.  At least one place was kind enough to take my phone number to call when it did get fixed.  The last place I went assured me they could handle it, so I sat down to wait.  After about twenty minutes or so, the salesman came up with that look in his eye which could only mean one of two things.  They found something incredibly horrible wrong (which I knew couldn’t be the case, since I could see the truck and no one had even gone to look at it yet).  Or two … and this was it … “I’m so sorry, Mr. Vaughan.  But we don’t do inspections on such old vehicles.”  But that was why I asked when I arrived … oh, well. 

Nathan even gave it a try.  He was a bit more successful.  He at least found a place that did the inspections, but when his turn came they informed him that we needed an entirely new muffler.  Of course we do.  He stopped at a different place and got a bid on a new one.  Not as much as I thought it would be, but it’s just another inconvenience.  So that is on the schedule now for … I have no idea when.  Nathan has offered to handle it from his end, and I am more than happy to let him.  Oh, I did get a call back from the place that took my number.  Their machine is up and running again …

Psalms 17:8 says, “Keep me as the apple of your eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings.”

Father, that sounds like such a fruitful, safe relationship.  I’m in.  Amen.