Interesting night with the car

My car's low oil light came on tonight, which was weird, in light of the fact that it was only about 4000 miles since the last change and my car doesn't burn oil (or didn't), and there aren't any oil leaks. I'll be either changing my own oil or finding a new place, currently leaning to changing it myself (it's easy, and then I know it was done right).

I stopped at a gas station to pick up some oil to top it up. I'm pouring in the second bottle and the color wasn't right. I had about a quarter of the bottle in when I noticed the problem, and quickly checked the label. Which said Automatic Transmission Fluid.

For those not familiar, transmission fluid does not do good things to things to the engine. Not all is lost though. If I get the fluid out before I run the engine, it won't wreck the engine. Sadly, my attempt to change the oil, with my dad's help, failed, owing to the drain plug being over-torqued by the oil change shop (see a trend?). And the fact that we were doing it in a parking lot at 10pm didn't help.

So my parents let me borrow their Saturn to get home, and very early in the morning I'll need to call a towing company to haul it to the garage and change the oil without starting the engine.

Oh yeah, did I mention that I was in East Lansing when this happened? That's about an hour from Flushing. Which isn't really a problem normally, but I have jury duty tomorrow, and can't exactly be running back down to East Lansing to deal with this. Fortunately my parents have my back here, and they'll run a car key out to the mechanic.

Anyway, not particularly frustrating, because at each point I've known what to do and had a good workaround available. But it's an extra wrinkle in my life that I didn't really appreciate. And an important learning experience, because I shouldn't be paying other people to do work I can do, especially when I can do it better.