drat, no car for me... yet!

Doggone it. The car we checked out needs a lot of repair. I don't think we're going for it. However, we have two other possible leads, and will be following them up next week. All we want is an old beater, but we don't want to double the price of the car in repairs, nor pay for a check up too many times. It is, after all, $100 a pop to get a car looked at by our mechanic. We think it's worth every penny.
This is a very important lesson for anyone who has not yet learned it:

No matter if you know the person, love the person, work with the person, or have heard the person is reliable, you ALWAYS take the car to a mechanic and have it looked at. NO EXCEPTIONS. NONE. Not even your own parents or siblings or your very bestest friend ever. We have refused cars now three times from people we know because we had an inspection done and things like brakes or struts needed replacing. Once we took a car, and it died very soon after. Really died. We knew it was coming, we just thought we had more than six months til it's untimely death. And that's ok, because we already knew what we were buying. But it's not nice to find out the hard way.

Someday, I really am going to become a certified auto mechanic. Just so I can say I know something about cars. I give up on algebra, but I do want to know about cars.