Do-goodery

I have so many things I've been meaning to write about, but, I don't know - I've been so tired, or so busy, or there is such good TV on again...

I'll save some of those stories (reminders: Santa Monica, camp, nails, Jay Leno) for another time, so I can focus in on a few that fall under one common umbrella - giving, generosity, and the kindness of the human spirit.

To start, my car recently surpassed the 100,000 mile mark, and Acura has been telling me - since about 75K - that I need a new timing belt. The price they quoted me was a lot - about $1300 for the belt and $900 for the cooling hoses that go along with it. Hello! Who ever advised me that owning a car made good financial sense? I am totally leasing next time.

Anyway, I decided I wasn't going to take it to Acura, at least not before getting a quote from somewhere else. The problem was - I didn't really know anywhere else. Most of my friends here lease, and the ones that own cars seem to have daddies that take care of these problems. Finally, I got a recommendation from a friend at work who is the most meticulous, Type A researcher you could want recommending these things, and was backed up by another coworker who got work done at the same place. They both told me the guy was uncommonly nice, trustworthy, and basically a diamond in a coal mine. So I called for the estimate on Monday, and you know what it was? $600 for the timing belt and $200 for the coolants. SOLD.

His auto shop was by my office, so I could drop it off in the morning, and he assured me it would be done by 5:30 at night. Ideal. This week has been crazy for me, with something either every morning before work or evening after, but I decided to drop it off today when he assured me it would be finished, and if there was a problem, he would know by 10 or 11 AM and call me so I could make any alternate transportation arrangements. I made a very big point of making sure of this, because I had something at 7PM tonight in downtown LA that I really couldn't miss.

I was getting ready to leave the office at 5:30 when he called to say it would be at least another hour until the car was ready. That was unacceptable, and I told him so. Not only did I have this meeting at 7:00, but I had asked a friend at work to drive me back to the auto shop, and I wasn't going to ask her to wait around for another hour. New York Lori made a bit of an appearance. I wasn't mean, I wasn't irrational, but I reminded him of our conversation and I told him in no uncertain terms that this was not acceptable.

He recognized his mistake for not calling me sooner, apologized profusely, and offered to book me a rental car for the night, at his expense.

And then I felt like a royal asshole.

But seriously? That is good service.

Enterprise picked me up, and I was on the road myself by 6:20. The "meeting" I had downtown was actually an orientation for some volunteer work I plan to do this season through a company called Taproot, which basically pairs professional people like myself with non-profit organizations to provide pro-bono work in the area of our expertise.

My expertise, in this situation, is as a copywriter. I was accepted to the program in December, but had to attend an orientation to be matched with a project. Basically, if I missed tonight's orientation, I would have to wait until March, which I feel would be a big waste of two months in which I have a lot of free time. And yes, I had to be accepted. Apparently they only accept 10% of applicants so it is a fairly big deal to be part of the program. There was a ton of talent in the room tonight, and for the first time in a while, I actually felt quite young. The majority of the people there had 20-30 years of experience. I won't know for a few days or even weeks what kind of project I'll get put on - they approach me based on my skills and I can accept or decline - but I hope it's something that excites me and I can find some passion for.

So, all of this do-gooding brings us to the situation in Haiti, which no one needs me to opine about. Instead, I suggest this: for every comment left on this post between now and 11:59 PM on Sunday night (1/17), I'll donate $5 to the Red Cross. (Don't worry - I don't have a lot of readers!) (Though just in case, let's say that I'll donate $5 for each comment up to $100/20 comments, and $1 per comment after that.) Here's my only request: Please no anonymous comments. You don't have to go whole hog with a Blogger account if it's too much trouble, but leave your name (or any name) along with some line about how you know me, or how you found me. Feel free to repost or reTweet or do whatever you can to raise the amount. I'll post the final donation receipt on Monday.

Think of it this way: I just saved $1400 fine-tuning my car. I can pay at least a fraction of that forward.