Naturally, in a week when I am jammed up with lots of extra tasks, my Escape, “Change Engine Oil Soon”, notice came on and the AC people called to schedule a service. Hubby could have taken the Escape in as usual, however, I needed him to do something else. He couldn’t be here for the AC service which is going on as I type this. Now, when the AC runs approximately 360 days per year, skipping a service is unwise. That happened last year because it was when Daddy was failing and during one of my trips, they left a voice mail about setting up a time and quite frankly, I forgot to do it. Skipping the service meant the drain did back up which later led to a leak. It’s just one of those realities to be dealt with.

Back to changing the oil. Again, with today’s digital features in vehicles, you no longer have to do the thing of, “Okay, I’ve driven X-number of miles or in the case of low mileage, it’s been X-months since oil change”. On the other hand, when the notice comes up, that gives you only 2-3 days before the notices switches to “Change Engine Oil now!” Anyway, we usually combine that with some other service that needs to be done and go to the dealer. In other cases, such as yesterday, we use Jiffy Lube. I’m old enough to remember when Jiffy Lube first opened as a company. It was a startling idea and naturally, there were people who didn’t think it could work. This is one of the reasons capitalism and free enterprise are great. They proved the concept and then, as is almost always the case, other similar companies sprang up although Jiffy Lube still has the greatest market share.

The techs were efficient and polite and while I was there a bit longer than at other times, I did have my Kindle with me. Oh, one slightly amusing thing. The guy finishing the service had to talk me through re-setting the Escape’s “memory” to let it know the oil had been changed.