Why I wasn't in class tonight.

Above is a picture of my lovely baby car sitting on the lot. I love my car. A lot. Not many grad students have a Volvo, but I'm one of the privileged few who has the luck of driving a snobby liberal car while listening to MPR on the way to Grad School. I rule.

Snobbycar, as I sometimes call her, has been sick lately. I've had an inkling due to the fact that when I turn too far, her wheels scrape the body of the car and throw everything out of alignment. About two weeks back, she got real sick (yeah, bad grammar, deal with it) and I brought her in. My extended warranty covered the following:
Sway arm
Bushings
Ball joint
Steering Stops
Alignment

In all, it came to about 1500 dollars worth of work. I had to pay 200 because of a technicality and a deductible. In all, not a bad deal.
But one does not simply call a guy when Volvo parts are needed. Oh no. Mr Mechanic called Volvo in Minneapolis and they didn't have the parts. Nobody in the surrounding states had the parts. Nobody at Volvo North America had the parts. So they called Sweden. At this point I overheard Mr Mechanic talking to his other Mechanic worker bees in a panicked voice.
We don't speak Swedish, and he doesn't speak English! I heard. How are we going to order these parts if we don't speak Swedish?

Now pay attention, because this is where it gets good.

Upon hearing of their plight, I snuck into a phone booth* and changed into my Captain Awesome outfit. I stepped out of the phone booth and stood for a moment so they could fully drink it in.

Captain Awesome doesn't speak Swedish, but he speaks Norwegian! They're mutually intelligible! I'll save the day! I cried in a manly voice.

After speaking very slowly to the man on the other end of the phone, I managed to get across what parts we needed. I don't know what sway arms or bushing are, and I sure as hell don't know how to say "Steering Stop" in Norwegian, but with the help of the mechanics I managed to describe the parts to the man on the other end of the phone. After getting all of that straightened out, I asked him very casually (but in a manly way), How does one say "Sway Arm" in Swedish?
He casually replied Du sier det "Sway arm!" I guess it's good to know that in Sweden, they don't change the names of car parts.

But I digress. After waiting a week for the parts for Snobbycar to show up, they fixed it and I assumed that I would shortly be on my merry way. But when I got to the driver's seat and turned her on (as I am so adept at doing), I thought to myself My, that's a strange loud noise! And my, that's a strange surging sensation! And my oh my that's nowhere near the horsepower I had before! After hearing out Mr Mechanic's end of the tale on why it wasn't their fault that the engine didn't want to work after they did 1500 dollars of work to it. After sitting at home chewing it over and Googling the symptoms, I brought her to Tires Plus to see if she would even make it to the dealer in Minneapolis. 160 dollars later, they said yes. Yes she will.
Here's the damage:

One Mass Airflow sensor: 500 dollars.
Two Oxygen sensors: 1050 dollars.
Six Spark Plugs: 192 Dollars
One Timing chain: 600 dollars

* May be exaggerated. Maybe.