While I save enough to buy a decent used car, my dad has been generous enough to let me borrow one of his two fine autos – a jet-black 2006 Lexus sedan.

And while I feel a tinge of shame about being an adult male who drives his father’s car, it’s easily overpowered by the ego-boosting charge I get out of pretending that I own a Lexus and that, for all you know, I could be a government agent.

One disadvantage of driving a Lexus, however, is that when you ding the body, it costs some serious moola to mend.

So, I’m leaving my dad’s new house – his hobby is remodeling homes from the mid-century modern period – and slip into the front seat of the Lexus. I press the ignition button and watch the control panel light up like James Bond’s Lotus in “The Spy Who Loved Me.” This car actually has friggin’ radar — otherwise known as “Park Assist” — that warns you when you’re getting dangerously close to an object. It reads all clear, so I pull forward, only to hear a sickening scraping sound on the right side of the car.

I had rubbed against a decorative boulder at curbside, lying low enough to avoid the sensors. The car’s body now has a four-foot-long, chalky scrape across the side.

Here’s the part you don’t see in James Bond movies: the secret agent checking Angie’s List to find a good body shop. Hardly a cautious driver himself, my dad had a recommendation at the ready: Langford’s Collision Repair Inc. I vetted the shop on the List, and found stellar grades and several Super Service Awards.

The repair estimate wasn’t cheap, but at least I felt like I could trust the quote. I’ll be back on the case in no time.

In 2008, Angie's List expanded into new territory – accepting reviews on doctors and other health care professionals. This move has been met with much success as members of our service have shared thousands of reports on their health care experience.

This month, the Angie's List magazine department is debuting its companion to the health ratings. Angie's List Health is a new publication devoted to reporting on topics that will help our members make smart choices when choosing a health care professional. Plus, this new publication will tackle stories about health care trends and findings, plus give a glimpse of members' experiences.

In our premiere issue, we take a look at electronic medical records and how they're transforming the health care industry.  We also talk to dietitians to learn more about the "sun vitamin" – vitamin D – and why it's important to your Health.

Angie's List stand apart by bringing you relevant and timely information on how to be a smart consumer of all types of service.

Check out some of our Health content at magazine.angieslist.com. Health stories are denoted by the blue medical bag, just as health reports are at AngiesList.com.

I had never expected to have my groin palpated by a middle-aged woman, but there’s a first time for everything. That first time came last week – during a routine medical check-up – and it was surprisingly less than awkward. 

I had a lump down there and feared the worst. But, my doctor’s careful examination ruled out cancer and led to another experience I thought I’d never have: joy at being diagnosed with a hernia. Given the alternative, a regular old hernia left me feeling giddy.

Credit goes to my doctor, with help from Angie’s List. I’m new to Indianapolis and didn’t have a general physician here. So I went to the trusty List and, after a brief search, found a doctor who was close to home. Other folks had good things to say about her.

But I was a tad nervous being a dude and knowing my visit would involve an extremely close inspection. I wasn’t sure how I felt about a female doctor doing that inspection, but I finally decided to trust what others had said – and trust her to be professional about it.

She was. And she was good fun to talk to and gave me confidence she knew what she’s doing and genuinely cared about me. What I read about her was true.

Then I filed my own report about her. And I saw how, at its best, Angie's List works.

We really love our pets here at Angie's List.  We definitely talk about them in the Blue House Blog quite often. We even have an issue of the magazine dedicated to then every August that talks about things like pet heroes, puppy lemon laws and pets on the job.

Besides the fact that we all love animals, there's another good reason why we talk about them so much.
 
Angie’s List members are also pet lovers. We receive hundreds of reports each month on things like veterinarians and animal grooming.
 
I know that when I got my dog, Gizmo, a rescued Shih Tzu, that Angie's List really did a lot to help me out looking for doggie assistance. I had recently moved to Indianapolis to work at the List and I could barely find a grocery store, much less a quality groomer or veterinarian.
 
Fortunately, the Angie’s List is chock full of pet ratings and I was able to get Gizmo's hair done and a full check-up with no problems and no worries about who and where I was taking the little guy.
 
So even though you hear about our pets a lot, it's all about giving you the best information about taking care of your best friends.

It’s summertime. The kids are out of school. The sun stays out until nearly ten every night. It’s great. Except for some reason summer also means more robberies in my neighborhood.

On Memorial Day weekend, my next-door neighbors were out of town at their lake house. They came back to find that their home had been broken into and all of their electronics and jewelry was gone.

Yesterday, the neighbor on the other side of my house had furniture stolen right off her front porch in the middle of the day. Then another neighbor down the street saw a SUV pull into her driveway, open the hatch and put her concrete garden bench in the back and speed off.

The police officers told them that a lot of criminals are stealing things to put into garage sales. Garage sales have always been one of my favorite summer pastimes, but now I’ll view them differently. Am I getting this picnic table for a real steal? Literally?

All you can do is be as smart as you can and protect your home. Angie’s List offers tips for making your home more secure by using outdoor lighting, keeping bushes in front of your house trimmed and of course, getting an alarm system.

I’m so happy that my husband and I found a great alarm company from Angie's List. While I realize we aren’t immune to thieves, I feel a bit safer knowing that someone else is looking out for my security and safety.

A few of us have blogged before about the quirkiness of working in an old Victorian house, but nothing brings out such heated debate amongst the pub department as when we discuss the temperature.

The very nature of this old building lends itself to leaky windows and troubles with the A/C. Some of us are made to suffer and sweat as an Indiana summer sun streams through the oversized, outdated windows and bakes the air to a stifling degree. Yet others of us sit bundled in fleece jackets because the thermostat doesn’t know when to cut the A/C off.

There are internal battles for thermostat dominance as well. It’s funny to watch. “Nobody’s watching…click click…two degrees up. Ah, much better.”  Fifteen minutes later: “Man, it’s hot in here! Click click… three degrees down. Ahhh, much better.” Hmm, I wonder why the A/C is confused?

Rest assured we have a highly rated HVAC company from Angie’s List on speed dial. And, bless their hearts, they come out, take a good look and give us a stern warning about fiddling with the thermostat.

“Who? Me? I don’t touch the thermostat. It must be someone else. Certainly not me.” Wink wink. “Ah-hem! What’s that over there?” Click click… ahhhh.

Some people are lucky when it comes to games of chance, contests and the like. Me, I’m a loser.

As a result, I’ve given up buying raffle tickets, playing the lottery or going to Vegas. Those activities lead to only one outcome: the disappearance of my hard-earned cash.  

So it was a thrill to win one of the top prizes last month during the third annual Angie’s List Soap Box Derby.

My team’s car, a classically designed buggy that would have made the Little Rascals proud, broke a rear axle coming off the ramp and never finished the race. But that didn’t matter.

Winners were declared in several categories, including one called “Bill’s Pick.” This is perhaps the most coveted of prizes because the Bill in question is none other than Angie’s List CEO, Bill Oesterle, who presided over derby day activities dressed from head to toe in black-and-white checkered apparel. Lucky for us, he took a shine to our car and awarded us First Place in this category.

It helped that we had determined his favorite beer was Schlitz and that we had named our team Angie’s SchLIST Racing. It also helped to have a graphic designer on our team, who reworked the Schlitz logo to create professional-quality T-shirts emblazoned with SchList.

I’m certain we clinched our prize at the start of our run, before our engineering inadequacies were revealed. That’s when we presented Bill with an extra T-shirt and a frosty bottle of Schlitz. One thing I’ve learned, if you’re not lucky, it sometimes helps to offer a bribe.

When my son fell ill recently, it rewrote the map of the world around us – and left us with a lot of important errands that took on a newly urgent dimension. And that’s not to mention the time constraints when all your free time is spent at the hospital.

So we turned to Angie’s List even more than usual to handle the small details, whether it be housecleaning or lawn mowing. It’s one thing to spring-clean and another thing entirely to scrub your house of germs, which is what we had to do since our two-year-old’s treatment temporarily wipes out his immune system.

Fortunately the good people of Custom Clean turned in a stellar job, cleansing every surface and even steam-cleaning the carpet to rid every possible source of contamination.

Equally useful was my longtime mechanic, the highly rated My Car Doc. Since even the van needed to be sanitized before my son could ride home in it, he made a “house call” to the hospital and sanitized the interior. And since security takes a dim view of people working on cars in their lot, the Car Doc took the van to his place to finish the job. You can’t ask for better service than that.

All this doesn’t directly impact my son’s health – but it makes an enormous difference in easing our minds about the little things and getting to focus on what’s really important.  

Next week will be my last at Angie’s List.

I came here – both to the company and to the city – with little to no knowledge of Indianapolis or home improvement. I knew two people who lived here. I got lost driving either to or from work almost every day my first week.

And even though I heard the words more often than you might think as I put together content for Pages of Happiness, Conflicts of Interest and other sections of our magazine, I still wasn’t quite sure what a soffit or fascia was.

Now, two and a half years later, I’ve learned more than most 20-something women know about carpet installation, siding, appliance repair, roofing, and all kinds of other services the companies on our list provide. (I’ve learned what fascia and soffits are, too!)

I’ve made some great friends, I no longer get lost (OK, I rarely get lost—and my GPS does help) when driving around town, and when I finally buy a house, I’ll know how to find good companies to help me take care of it.

Sometimes an opportunity comes along and you know you have to give it a chance. That’s how this new job is. I’ll miss working at the List, and I’ll miss the people I’ve met here, but fortunately, I’ll be staying in Indy, so I’ll be able to stay in touch. And I’ll be keeping my Angie’s List membership so I can check the List whenever I need to.

With the arrival of summer, it always seems like all those little repairs and services I can’t or won’t do myself all unanimously clamor for my attention.

I just bought an annual pass to the local bark park, but before I could, Simon and Clem needed to visit the vet and get up-to-date on their annual shots.

Now that I’m riding my bicycle in to work again, I notice it’s in dire need of a tune-up.

With my recent road trip to Kentucky, my motorcycle could use an oil change.

I’m putting more miles on my truck helping my parents with yard work and taking weekend road trips. Its squeaking brakes sound horrible, so I’ll need to invest in a brake job and some new tires soon.

Together, all these services represent a significant investment, but its one I’m willing to make because, through Angie’s List, I’ve found some great companies that deserve my repeat business. Getting these “to-dos” done gives me a sense of completion, despite having a much lighter wallet.

As an Angie’s List member, I get an added sense of satisfaction receiving superior service when I submit reports on service providers. Not only do I get to give great companies the credit they deserve for their hard work, but I also get the chance to tell other savvy consumers about the companies that can help them get their “to-dos” done too.