A funny thing happened on the way to Iowa City...

As many of my loyal readers (all 10 of them) know, I drive back and forth to Rockford from Iowa City every weekend to see Nicholas. It's a low-stress drive with no traffic, which makes the three-hour trip easy. And my trusty Ford Explorer is a comfortable way to travel, even if the price of gas is prohibitive. Thank you economic downturn, for the drop in oil prices!
But anyway, last night I was driving back when the engine started making a funny noise. A rattling noise. At first I thought it was exhaust, but when I pulled over to check, it sounded more like a valve pinging with the hood open. Being a moron, I kept on driving. About 120 miles into the trip, the truck lost power and I limped it off of I-80 near Bettendorf. I didn't make it very far toward town and it quit completely on a dark, lonely road. A cheerful tow truck driver picked me up about 11:30 p.m. and took my now useless vehicle to a Ford dealership. He dropped me at a nearby hotel. When I talked to the Ford mechanic the next day, he informed me that the engine block was now a 1,000 pound paperweight because the crankshaft wasn't moving at all.
Waah-waah-waaaahh.
So he wanted almost $5,000 to put a rebuilt long block into it. I took a pass and found a friend in the Quad Cities to point me to a reliable mechanic who's going to charge me $2,800 to replace it with a used engine. Thanks to the relative comparison, that price sounds like it's not so bad even though it's a disaster. Right now I'm waiting in the hotel lobby for a ride to the car rental place so I can get back to Iowa City.
Good times, good times.
Highlight of the story? When the tow truck driver pulled up and jumped out of his cab. Before he started working the hydraulic controls, he looked up and pointed out a cloud above us in the crisp night. The moon was creating an areola of light around it. Sublime.