sakon76 | Entries tagged with car

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Got rear-ended on the freeway earlier today. Squiddle and I are fine, the insurance concluded the accident was not my fault, waived the deductible, and I'm already booked in to get my rear bumper repaired. Interestingly, though it was only a bump, the insurance still has to replace Squiddle's car seat.

...And Squiddle has apparently been rooking strawberries out off the kitchen counter and snaffling them down.

'Scuse me while I get a damp washcloth and deal with his hands and face.

So, yesterday. Yesterday evening I had my final writing class of the term and now we're off on our summer break. Which for some of us is going to include a writing retreat weekend next month, and possibly a couple of us continuing to get together and plough through critiquing one another's work over the summer. And on the last class, we all bring in snacky things and do a potluck of sorts. Which was good.

Except for the part where after his class and mine, Wonderful Husband and I walked to where I'd parked my car. Where I have been parking my car for two years. And it wasn't there.

Apparently sometime in the last week, the medical facility across the street from the community college has changed their parking/towing policy.

So we called the number on the sign. No answer. Called the police, who confirmed my car had been towed by the company. Called the company again. Still no answer. Gave up, started walking home. (Fortunately home is only a mile from the campus.) Enroute we got called back by the company. They gave Wonderful Husband the amount and their hours (9-5) and hung up on him. They then returned my call, and I managed to get the address before they hung up on me too.

When we went this morning to get my car, it took forty-five minutes. They didn't answer the door; we had to call them. We were never allowed into the office, the guy disappeared with Wonderful Husband's credit card and driver's license for ten or so minutes, and he looked them up on the Better Business Bureau website and determined that the "BBB Approved" sticker by their door was, in fact, a bald-faced lie. "Night Star Towing" should perhaps more accurately be named "Fly By Night Towing."

Fortunately Jazz-car seems undamaged.

When I finally got into work, I discovered the aircon unit in the office (which the manager had guys working on last week) had malfunctioned overnight. It's positioned over David's desk area. It was apparently leaking water onto his work area all night long. David was the one who yelled at me in front of customers a few months back. Karma?

In other news, magenta petticoat done and tucked into petticoat box. ^_^

Have Jazz-car back. The bumper looks better than when I bought the vehicle! Caliber Collision does good work. Next, Jazz-car gets to go in to my uncle/mechanic for an oil change on Monday. Next week's writing class has gotten switched to Monday again. Timing may be tight; dinner may not happen until after class.

Wonderful Husband mentioned he had seen a gray Pontiac Solstice with the "Solstice" decal removed and a "Jazz" decal in its place. (Win!) Thus, I am now pondering getting in touch with a Honda dealership in the UK and getting a "Jazz" decal from them and figuring out how to swap it out with the US-only "Fit" decal....

And, to end the TFs riff, happy birthday to Megan Fox! Love to Mikaela; BV Carly simply does not exist. (DotM, in its entirety, does not exist. Also, Michael Bay does not exist.)

Changing topic, I work in the funeral industry. I have a terrific sense of gallows humor. One has to, or at least one develops it. That said, there are two things I have trouble parsing. The decals in the back windows of vehicles, with "[name], [birthyear] - [deathyear]". Why do people get those? And, also, twice now I've passed carwashes being held "In Remembrance Of [deceased]". I'm assuming they're to defray funeral expenses, but, just... somehow it doesn't quite compute.

And I must be more careful about where I leave mostly-pinned petticoats. I may see the giant green amoeba on the floor; Wonderful Husband may not, and thus step on a pin.... :(

There should be some sort of cosmic rule in place that your new car is not allowed to be in an accident for at least one week after the purchase date!

Got rear-ended on the way in to work this morning. Looks like just cosmetic damage to the bumper, if anything. Still irksome!

My mum-in-law has let me know that my new car, a Honda Fit, is called a Jazz in the UK.

You hear that? That is the sound of naming possibilities falling into order!

Spent part of the day poking at various car sites, figuring out what I wanted, what I did not want, reading reviews, etc. Found a couple likely suspects at a local CarMax; after Wonderful Husband got home from work, we went over and test drove a couple. We ended up going with my first choice and buying a light blue 2008 Honda Fit with manual transmission and 35K miles.

It's impressively cavernous inside for something its size. Wonderful Husband's hair doesn't even brush the roof, which is kind of impressive, tall as he is....

After a good crying jag about vehicle things, I came back and looked at car reviews and prices, and then the CarMax search engine broke.

So I edited, finishing the page set from Tuesday. Concluding for the night at page 208/617, and word count 124,668. I didn't lose many words because I had to rewrite the shark attack. It's better now. Still not fabulous, but it'll do for tonight, because my thoughts are not getting any more coherent at this point.

Current Mood: tired

F* F* F* F* F* F*!

Car dead. Mechanic uncle thinks it's the alternator. Parents' spare car not available for borrowing to go to work tomorrow. Truck is, but the idea of commuting in it terrifies me.

Need a new car somehow. Have no idea how we can afford one.

GDI

Current Mood: upset

One of my crowns popped off last night while I was brushing my teeth. Eating and breathing very carefully until I can get it glued back on.

ETA: Crown firmly reaffixed to tooth. Have spoken with uncle-mechanic regarding car's continued oil leak and it looks like a full engine replacement (expensive) is the only option. May have to reconsider that new car thing. Obviously it's a Monday.

My little sister moved up to the Seattle area about a year ago and is happily building her life there, having a career, buying a house, etc. In the last week she's upgraded her still very new sedan to a extremely new Jeep. Which is all well and good; it snows there sometimes, and she drives over to Spokane sometimes to visit her best friend, and it definitely snows in Spokane. So it's probably a better vehicle for her needs in that respect.

This, however, renews the bug in the ears of the rest of the family (ie, our parents and my husband) that I should have a new car. I started driving nineteen years ago and am only on my second vehicle ever (neither of which was new when I bought them). It's a 15-year-old 2-door Civic. It's dented and dinged in various places and the headliner is starting to go and currently has a mysterious oil leak that my uncle the mechanic doesn't seem to (yet) be able to fix. The headliner I know I need to replace, and plan to do so by the end of the year. The dents and dings I got priced, and repairs will be around 2K. I could maybe make a claim on our insurance for that and only have to pay the $500 deductible, but I don't like thinking about what that will do to our insurance rates. But that's merely cosmetic and I can live with cosmetic flaws. I've plenty of them myself.

The thing is, though, a new car costs $18-20K. Even a moderately used one is pretty close to that range. And we just bought expensive windows and have gaping holes in the master bathroom. (I'm also not keen on the fact that current vehicle designs mean I can't see the end of the hood.)

All of which boils down to the fact that I am politically liberal and financially conservative. And while I suspect there's something dark buried in my psychology which says you don't get to have nice things, I still don't like feeling pressured to trade up. Even if it's by family. Not for things I don't really need.

I have my car back, which is something of a relief, since while my parents' "spare" car is definitely not bad (much nicer than mine, in fact), it's also a bit too big for me.

Inlaws are going back to England tonight, and Wonderful Husband and I depart to Fanime at roughly the same time. Of the three sewing projects I had on my slate, one got finished, one didn't (just as well; we maxed out luggage room and weight; I'll finish it later and ship it to its recipient), and the Transformers dress for Botcon next weekend is getting dropped. I just haven't had the time to get everything done. At least Wonderful Husband was able to get the ConOps cookies baked this year....

Car going back into the shop today because the oil leak which my uncle forgot to fix while he already had it disassembled to put in the new transmission has gotten significantly worse. So I am feeling very, very poor moneywise at the moment. Which is kind of silly because I know that we have enough money. It's just that car repairs come out of our personal accounts. Maybe that ought to be reconsidered? But I have enough to cover it, anyway.

Wonderful Husband and I went ice skating last night. It's been a few months since I did it, but it was good and despite the dire quality of the rental skates I ended up not hurting after an hour or so on the ice. We went into the shop afterward and I tried on a pair of skates. Given that they'll cost about $200, though, I opted to wait on purchasing them. I should go skating more often. Maybe I'll pull my roller skates out of my closet tonight....

As the subject line indicates, after two weekends of looking at cars, test-driving cars, looking at specs on the internet, comparing, comparing, comparing... we went into a dealership today, and we just can't make it work. Not without either totally draining our savings and/or making payments into forever. So we're getting my 1996 Civic repaired and I'll continue to drive that until needs must.

But thank god we're not going to be as close to the edge as I was stressing about.

So after talking with my mechanic uncle and crunching numbers (both financial and things like safety stats, MPG, and cargo capacity), it's currently looking likely that my next car will be a Toyota Yaris. While I really love my Civic, even a used one would end up straining our budget. And while I intend to drive whatever vehicle I get for the next ten years or more, there's also a certain matter of how much we can afford now.

Depending on exactly how much the final numbers end up being, this may take about a quarter of our savings and all the money we would have been adding to savings next year. Which means that getting a new car may very well impact (1) both my and Wonderful Husband's Roth IRA contributions for this year and next, (2) my ability to attend CostumeCon, and (3) my ability to attend BotCon. And possibly other things I haven't realized yet, but those are the big ones for varying reasons. I've already had and gotten past my crying jag about this.

Have applied at my bank (Chase) for a car loan. Waiting for them to get back to me sometime in the next 24 hours so that we can move on to the next step.

Had Mark, my parents' neighbor and the electrician who's done some work for us in the past, over again finishing up some electric work today. Our laundry roon now has light, the attic has a fan, our living room fan works independent of a switch, and most importantly, we have a doorbell! (Yes, Virginia, we have lived in this house for 18 months with wiring where the doorbell ought to be. No longer.)

Whilst Mark was going about his job, I harvested ripe tomatoes and got Wonderful Husband to help me with applying newly-purchased 8' stakes to all the plants that, cages and 6' stakes or no, were going flop and deciding to be much more horizontal than vertical. Everything looks so much better when they're upright as they ought to be.

Then we inquired with our bank and our mortgage holder as to what rates they might be able to give us, and then went looking at cars. Test-drove a Nissan Versa (not bad, but not for me, I think), a Honda Civic (the model my current car is, so I found it quite comfortable), and a Toyota Yaris (also pretty good). Other cars on our list of maybes are the Nissan Sentra, the Hyundai Elantra, the Hyundai Sonata, and the Scion xBox. The Nissan Altima felt like too big of a car, and the Honda Accord and Toyota Camry even used would be more than we want to pay. And the Toyota Corolla I have already ruled out, being familiar with my mother's and Wonderful Husband's; the interior is just not laid out comfortably for me.

Anyone have any yeses/nos/recommendations on the six maybes above?

So, over the weekend commute to and from Costume College my car's engine began to make a slight rattly noise. Monday, during the car shuffle when Wonderful Husband's car went into my uncle's shop for R&R, Wonderful Husband confirmed that I wasn't just imagining it. So last night I picked up his car and dropped mine off.

It's NEVER a good thing when your uncle/mechanic calls you and says "It's a good thing you brought it in when you did...."

Transmission is shot. Given that my current car is a 1996 Honda Civic with 160K miles on it, this is probably not a surprise and is just normal wear and tear on the vehicle. My uncle's having no luck yet finding a used transmission to replace it; if he has to do a complete rebuild, it's going to be around $2K. This is hitting my tipping point of "get new car."

At least, I suppose, this wasn't happening a year and a half ago when all our money was tied up in buying and fixing the house.