i am not up to date because ...

The number one reason i havent been doing any work at all is because of my car. today,( sunday march 4, 2012) i worked on it from 6am to 7 pm. it first started when i was at ucla with my friends from high school. they invited me to check the school so i went with them to all of their classes. after we were done we headed out to eat and just chill. their last class was at 4pm. by the time we finished eating it was around 5. then we headed to their dorm room and where there till 11. i decided to take off so my friend walked me to my car and for my surprise it was missing. they had towed it because cars couldnt park there from 4pm to 6pm. i callled and they said the fee to take the car out was $250. i didnt have, neither of my parents did and i had no idea what to do. by the time i was able to get money to take the car out the fee had increased to $420. on top of that i still had to pay the ticket which was $88. since the car wasnt under my name i had to go the dmv and get all the paper work straight. the car had a ticket from the previous ower and the total amount to get it under my name was around $360. everything was all over one week before school started. then on the second week of school i decided to pump gas in the evening so that i wounldnt have to go early in the morning. while i was on my way i made it to the gas station and as i was pulling in my car got stuck in second gear. the transmission was obviously  broken, or so i thought. i look all around in every shop for a transmission for my car but didnt have any luck finding one. this one guy did have one but he wanted to muck money, $900. i then took my dads advice and took the transmission to a shop to get it repaired. i had to take out the transmission by myself. taking out a transmission is something ive never done before. i had zero experience and you can take out so much information from forums and youtube. i had lots of trouble taking it out. finally when i got it out i took it and it was ready the next day. the cost was $700. i had to come up with all that money. i sold my playstion on cragslist, borrowed some from my dad and family. then to put it in was also complicated. it took me around five days to put it in once it was in i was putting everything together and that was when i noticed that the shift linkage was broken. that means that the transmission was never broken but the linkage that moves the gears was therefore meaning that i repaired the transmission but didnt need to be repaired. again i went all around long beach and LA looking for that shift linkage and i had zero luck finding it. i actually just found them last week on thursday. to put it on the dash board had to be removed so i asked my friend to help me out and in exchange i would pay him. i payed him up front and trusted him he then took it all apart but when it was time to put it back together he didnt want to do it. he had lots of excuses. on top of that he broke my dash board. it really bad. so i had to put it all back together. i had no clue how things went and had to find out by myself. now that everything is back together i am having trouble getting the gears right. the car will not shift into 5th and reverse. i spent this sunday trying to figure it out but had no luck.