what's with this fortune?

Long story short, I blew a head gasket in my car a few weeks ago. White smoke, erratic engine behavior and cold air coming from the heater was the tip-off, and it was obvious I wasn't getting through this winter without some major auto headaches. In our age of planned obsolescence, the majority of car owners in this country would simply scrap the car and get another, due to the cost of repair compared to book value. Well, I happen to like this particular vehicle. A '94 caravan 2.5 means fixing a head gasket isn't as easy or as cheap as it was repairing the same problem in a 318 or slant six. This fix requires removing the head and taking it to a centralized shop that specializes in magnaflux and checking the head for warp and microscopic cracks these little engines are famous for. Gone are the small shops in the rear of auto part stores that do it while you wait. Now, you need to take it to a larger shop that will keep it at least a day and up to eternity simply because they can. After the testing they determine if the head is still good, in which case you can spend a couple hundred to rebuild it, or if it's bad you can buy a remanufactured head for an average of $450. Even if I found a remanufactured head, this process could take 3 days, at the very least, with a cost of around $750. Ouch!
The yuppie garage I took it to first gave me the impression they didn't need my business because "It's the busy time of the year" and they have enough SUVs, Hunmmers, and bourgeoismobiles to keep them going with tune-ups, oil changes, tire sales, and other easy, high profit jobs to keep their sales staff in good position for bonus time.
A little bit about where I live... Rural yuppie central. Picture Green Acres with half the farms bought by the Douglas's friends, and Hooterville still has the same one-room post office and you can't get ahold of the police department until after 4pm., 'cause there ain't no crime in the valley, but town meetings are still filled with Oliver Wendell Douglas clones wanting more cops to protect their estates and better roads for their $80,000 off-road SUVs and a full-time fire department to instantly put out fires in their McMansions in the remote possibility of emulation from chestnuts roasting on open fires. And these are the major clients of the garage I took my car to for engine work. What was I thinking?
Ralph told me Chas knows a guy in Berwick who can do this kind of work without a backlog of bullshit, so I gave him a call. After discussing my options and cost we settled on a plan. I always figured rebuilding the head without rebuilding the bottom end of an engine was asking for trouble. If the engine is wearing uniformly, rebuilding half the engine will only increase the other half to go 3 times faster, and the last thing I want is to do a ring job six months from now -- and I know there's been damage because of all the water going through the cylinders, and half my oil is water. Another engine is the only fast solution and the least cost. The funny part is an engine replacement will be almost $300 less than just doing the head gasket. Go figure.
Wednesday night I got Mary to follow me to drop off my car in the dead of night and to get us home. Needless to say, the ride through town in this smoke-making machine was interesting. I had to take side streets to avoid going down the Christmas boulevard, which meant stopping at every light and stop sign in town. Just sitting at the red light at 2nd Street created a cloud so thick you couldn't see the light, let alone the cop car on the corner. By the time I got to the shop and shut off the engine I could see this undissipating mass of white the size of a city block gently floating west. I was expecting the fire department to show up.
You may be wondering what all this has to do with the title. Be patient. I'm getting to that, ok?
We decided to get some Chinese at Jumbo Buffet, and after a half dozen plates of stuff we got out fortune cookies.
I'm not sure what the odds of this is, but this was the first time I got a fortune cookie sans fortune. I mean, just a cookie without a fortune. What does this mean? Do I have no future? Did the cook spit in my food? Was that really pork I ate? When the Chinese waiter came over I asked if he was spiritual. He gave me this look like, "I'm an athiest. What do I know about spiritual?" I then told him I got no fortune in my fortune cookie and asked what he thought it meant. I guess I was expecting some sage Chinese philosophy such as no fotune means vely, vely good luck. You open to all possibilities. But in a very good English accent he said, "Would you like me to get you another cookie?" I suppose expecting all Chinese people to be philosophers would be like Chinese people expecting all Americans to be Elvis. I said, no thanks. This non-fortune is perfect. I took it as an excellent omen and expected the best in a completely unexpected way.
I called the mechanic the next morning, and he had the engine out. It was just nuts and bolts now, and I fully expect to be driving my baby before the weekend.
I guess that WAS a good fortune after all.