got me some tires

so I've mentioned that I've had some bad luck with my car this month---well, in addition to my recent parking spot snafu where I swiped the door and mirror, I'd also been observing a slow leak in my rear passenger wheel. After filling it with air a few times, it would deflate much too quickly...so I brought it in to be looked at it. Turns out: there's a nail in the tire that's awfully close to the sidewall, so a patch wouldn't hold because of its proximity to the sidewall. As a result, I needed to replace the tire. Unsurprisingly, the dealership quoted me something ridiculous for ONE tire---about $300! One tire! So I made an appointment at Discount Tire upon recommendation from a few people (Costco would've been the next choice)....and going there, I was anticipating needing to replace all the tires because I'm around 38,000 miles and have never changed the tires. As I suspected, the tread on all tires was around 4/32" which was getting dangerously low. Figuring I'd need to replace the rest soon eventually, I got 4 new tires. *gulp* So now, with the recent tax bill, the new tires and my pending auto body work, my bank account is not happy.

Until the last couple days, I've never known anything about changing tires on cars---i.e. when to change, what tread depth matters, good sites to shop at, etc. It makes me wonder how dangerously run-down I let the tires on my old Acura Integra go considering I owned the car for 8 years, drove it back and forth between Kansas and Massachusetts for at least 3 of those, and never changed the tires. Ha.