My little car has had a couple of upgrades this week

First, new windshield wipers, which I got at AutoZone and my co-worker Tim put on for me. Here's to seeing out the windshield for a change. They've done marveously during our torrential downpours the other day; I'm waiting to see how well they do in snow. As far as putting them on, I can do a lot with my car--check the oil and transmission fluid, fill tyres, for example, and I can even change a tyre. I also recognise anything that's wrong that I've experienced in a car--on my Nissan Sentra I could actually disassemble and assemble part of the electrical system. The Taurus hasn't been a lemon like that one, so I don't have as much experience--although the things that have go wrong on it were expensive--a salvaged engine was put in and the transmission was rebuilt. My stepfather also put brakes on at some point, and I had all the tyres replaced with used ones about a year or two ago because I kept getting slow leaks that would make the tyres go down when it rained and the air pressure changed. But the clips on the windshield wipers totally threw me, until Tim showed me how to change them. Tim was going to change my tyre and put on my spare, but it turned out the spare was flat and my car didn't come with a jack (I've always called AAA with flats, since I can of course change one, but they're faster and why should I get all grimy when I'm paying for the service?) Tim also called the reason my car was shimmying from side to side (the steering wheel kept turning left and right quickly shaking back and forth). I had a tyre that picked up a nail and it went through the band, breaking it. I now have a new tyre (cheapest one that Goodyear carried, about $55, $80 once you factor in putting it on, balancing, and the disposal fee for the old one).