When it rains, it pours.

Chris's friend helped him get to a place where he could put air in the tire yesterday. Last night/this morning I went out to Wal-Mart...and I almost turned back because of the sound the tire was still making. But I went ahead and went, because I figured it was like in Alaska where your tires would sag a little and you'd have to drive them to get them back to normal.

I made it to Wal-Mart okay, and did more shopping than I should have (but I can has cinnamon and spice oatmeal now! :D), and headed back out...and it was not good. I went slow and pissed off the people behind me, and kept asking the car, "please get me home."

Yeah...

I made it a few hundred feet from the Mt. Belvedere gate when I heard the tire bust and smelled burnt rubber and could hear the wheel itself on the road. I stopped and called Chris, who said to try to get to the mini-mall gas station thingy...though it wouldn't have helped since the tire was long past the point where air would help. It was gonzo.

But I did go ahead and slowly, slowly made my way to the gate. I got in and the gate guard said I shouldn't go as far as the mini mall because I might cause a fire driving on the tire like that. So I pulled in just past the gate and after a few minutes a guy who was coming in from off post pulled over and changed the tire out for the spare. The spare was low on air (of fukken course), so he followed me to the mini mall to put air in that...

...and the damned air thing was out of order. ARGH!

But I thanked the guy profusely and he said that I should go to Wally World or Firestone and get a new tire as soon as possible, and then we'd just need help putting the new one in since neither Chris nor I know how.

SO--

Now, aside from having to replace the whole windshield wiper array (it's the motor itself that's broken, which makes driving rather difficult at times), now we have to buy a new tire. We should probably replace all of them since they were bought at the same time. Not to mention we still need to get a washer and dryer, though I'm going to ask ACS if they have a set in the Lending Closet that we could borrow in the meantime.

And I was so hoping to get caught up with November and December's bills by the end of January!

And I want to do something to pay Mr. Niceguy's generosity forward. Not sure what, though.

Suggestions?