I finally got my car back today. The call came in around 8am that my car was ready, in fact it ended up waking me up. I didn't actually get my car until after 4pm because I didn't feel like taking the hour commute. Roughly one week after dropping it off and $400 dollars later, it runs pretty good. No more harsh jerky shifts, no more rough idles, and it actually starts up on the first crank. It turns out the big cause of my headaches for the past couple of months was the
timing belt tensioner.
In other news, only one more day of work until my vacation. I got three paychecks at once and I should be good to go.