got the car back - it sounds like I'm driving a clothes dryer full of rusty pennies, scrape scrape k klink k klunk scrape - so here's the plan: I'm gonna take it back and bitch my head off and/or cry, depending on which my gut tells me will get me the rental flea for free as a loaner for my trouble, and I'm gonna keep taking it back until it has cost Allstate the equivalent of $7k, which will put us even (minus, of course, the years' worth of pointless premiums); then I'm going to buy a new car, probably the same kind, cz even though it's f'd up now my Suzuki feels WAY better than the rented Kia Flea that I've been driving for a miserable month . . .

. . . and now I'm going to drink a glass of wine and then another glass of wine, then feel sorry for myself for the car f'over I'm getting and the pervasive dump-on at work and personally I've gotten lately and for the armpit I'm missing which would be nice to have just for once when shit sucks which 2011 has nothing but done, pretty much.