Well, Sh**!

Bad news about the poor Geo. As many of you probably already know due to the high-speed communication highway that is my family, the Geo is a little more (or a lot more) worse off than initially thought.
I felt very car-smart going into Midas saying that the donut gasket was probably the problem and where I thought the problem was...but all my car jargon went down the pooper. Unfortunately the problem lies in the catalytic converter. There is a hole in the catalytic converter, which seems bad enough...but wait, there's more! On either side of the converter the flanges are seriously rusted out. If they replace the converter, the pipes are going to need replaced due to the severity of the condition of these flanges. The Midas guy was very nice, he put the car back up on the lifts and showed us the problem. He wasn't kidding. He said that because of the salt up North the under-carriage can rust a lot faster.
So Ben checked the Kelly Blue Book value of the car...and it is actually worth less than it would cost to fix it and that's in "fair" condition. So we aren't sure what we are going to do. But we will keep you posted.
On a side note...i'm a girl. I cried when I found out how much the car was going to cost. I think it was a mixture of how much the car was going to cost, it wasn't what I had expected to hear, and that she's my first car. The Geo means to me what a man's first muscle car is to him. :) Listening to her V4 engine purr....heaven.