As I’ve mentioned at least once, I no longer have my car, Malique, because FN is taking care of her for now.
It is with a heavy heart that I report that Malique has been hit by a deer. I’m sure she’ll make it through - she IS made of plastic, after all - but we’re all pretty broken up here at Brockstone Manor, and hope you’ll keep her (and the deer) (and, come to think of it, FN) in your thoughts.
As I may have mentioned, I got rid of my car when we moved into The Manor. My office is within walking distance (about a mile up the road) and we’re a couple blocks from the Metro, so I knew that I’d rarely need a car to get anywhere I needed to be.
ZipCar does a pretty good job of filling in the rest - you reserve a car for a few hours (or days) at a time, and pay by the hour. It’s perfect for the times that I need to pick up some groceries, or go out to a client’s office. Had I kept my car, I would have needed to get some stuff fixed to pass inspection, pay higher insurance, and $75 a month just to park it here. With ZipCar, I pay $9 - $14 an hour (depending on the type of car) and gas and insurance are included.
For the most part, the Metro, buses, and ZipCar get me where I’m going for a reasonable price. Totalled together, I’m spending a lot less on those than I would be for the basics on my own car. Every once in a while, though, I need to catch a cab home (like last night), and those add up quick. There have also been three different weekends that I’ve rented a car to go out of town for a few days, and those certainly aren’t cheap.
And then there’s the days like today; the Arlington Central Library is having a book sale (again), but I didn’t reserve a car yesterday because I didn’t know when I’d actually be up and moving today. The earliest I can get a car now is 2, which isn’t awful, but I wanted to go early (”early” meaning 11). According to WMATA, there isn’t a bus that goes past there (they’ve been known to be wrong), but I don’t want to try to get a big box of books home on there anyway.
When all is said and done, I know it’s a hell of a lot cheaper without my own car, but sometimes I really miss the convenience.
I need a new car. Malique has been dying a slow death, and I knew it was over when she failed the emissions test. Since I have no money, buying a used car from a private seller is pretty much out of the question. I found a few cheap cars at dealers, but most seem unwilling to finance a $3000 car. As much as it pains me, I’ve started looking in the $5 - 6K range, where the rides are a little smoother and the checkbook a little tighter. As long as I can get monthly payments at or below $250, I think I can swing it. I’ll probably be paying for the damn thing for years to come, but at least I’ll get where I’m going.
Right now, I’m looking at mid-sized sedans (Civic, Focus, Camry - that sort of thing) and smaller pickups (S-10, Ranger). I’ve heard good things about Carmax, but they seem to be on the pricey side (though the payment calculator certainly helped give me some perspective). I’ve had better luck on AutoTrader, but they’re search results aren’t as compact as they could be - there’s a lot to sift through to find the good stuff.
My plan is to have this all sorted out by the end of the month. Remind me to pick up a lottery ticket.
Reassuringly, my car passed a safety inspection. Not so reassuringly, it failed the emissions test, but the guy was revving it up something fierce - a Lexus would smoke if you whomped on it like that. So, I can’t register it in Virginia unless I have it repaired (which may involve a new EGR or catalytic converter), which isn’t something I can do right now. I only paid $500 for the damn thing in the first place, so it doesn’t make sense to pour a few hundred more in every few months. I’m starting to think I could get away with replacing the car with a motorcycle, but I have no moneys. I want to find a newer, bigger car, but that will cost even more.
As such, I’m going to my Contingency Plan, which depends on a Lottery win. I tried to buy a Lottery ticket today, but the gas station that does car inspections doesn’t sell Lottery tickets.
I had Contingency Plan B, but I forgot what it was. I’m pretty sure it involved more work, so that leads us to Contingency Plan C, wherein you all send me a dollar. You overachievers can send several dollars if you’d like - in fact, it’s encouraged! - but you don’t have to if you’d rather not.
Worst case scenario, I have to take the bus in to work. So, let’s all pull together, folks - I don’t like mingling with the commoners.
I think a Porta-Potty truck just went by, because it suddenly smells gross here.
I’m sitting on Central Ave. in Lancaster, about 2 miles from my high school. An old friend mentioned that a coffee shop here has free wireless, so I figured I’d hang out there and read for part of the evening. They’re closed, but the wireless turned out to be something done by the Chamber of Commerce in different parts of the village, so I can sit at this nice table and do Internetting.
A couple weeks ago, everyone realized that the summer was almost over and we hadn’t been making it as awesome as we had said we would, so things started picking up to make up for lost time. I’ve barely had a chance to sit down and consider the deep things in life, let alone write about them here. It’s been three weeks of beer pong, board games, Mark’s runs, and other drunken tomfoolery. People are starting to come back for fall quarter, which will just make it more intense.
I’m home for the weekend to take a break from it all. My parents were on vacation all this week at Silver Lake, right between Rochester and Buffalo but further south. I drove down there yesterday afternoon to spend some time with them and to bring my brother Shaun back home for the freshman mixer at St. Mary’s (which is why I’m sitting two miles from the high school with some time to kill).
I got to meet Roxy, who is the cutest thing in the history of ever, and that includes infants and baby ducks. She’s so well-behaved it’s unbelievable. The folks at the SPCA say she was brought in by people that found her abandoned, but my mom’s theory is that the owner’s just didn’t want her and made an excuse. They didn’t have to chain her much at the lake, because she’d always stay right with them. She doesn’t bark, she was already trained to sleep in a kennel, and she’s good on the leash. I’m not convinced that she’s part Siberian Husky, though. She’s definitely got the German Shepherd look to her, but she doesn’t have long hair or any other characteristics of a Husky. The vet said she had a Great Dane’s facial features, so we don’t know how big she might get.
Life is good. Things have been exciting, and it doesn’t look like there’s an end in sight. I’ve FINALLY got a car again - almost 19 to almost 22 is about the worst three years of your life to go without a car. I’m meeting with someone tomorrow about some web coding work. The summer’s been good to me.
Things have been going pretty well lately. Financially, I’m doing OK. I’m buying Becker’s Saturn next week, and I’ve got plenty of money set aside to buy, insure, and register it. The Apple loan is paid off, so I can put a decent chunk of my last couple paychecks to the credit card bill.
I’m working on a new project at work for the big plasma screen in the college lobby. One of the secretaries in the Dean’s office makes slides to show on it, but the system is pretty crappy, so we’re re-writing it to just show a web site we’re designing. I’ve been working on the client side, to make use of templates and styles that we’ll define so she can build slides. It’s been a lot of PHP and JavaScript, so I’m happy.
Classes are starting soon, which means people will be coming back from break in a week or two. I have never seen our parking lot so empty; apparently, most people go home for this break. It’s the calm before the storm; RJ showed up yesterday, and I hear the RA’s are starting to come back for their training. Another week or two and everyone will be back.
I’ve gotten over the whole graduation thing. Usually, I only get stressed about money, when I realize I’ve got $1.64 in the bank and a $50 bill due in four days. I freak out for about 10 minutes before I convince myself that everything has worked out in the past, so it’s sure to do so again. And it has - worrying about it has never fixed the problem, so I don’t bother. My anxiety about leaving for the real world was a little more profound than that, but I’m over it. Things are going too well to worry much about what will happen a few months down the road.
I felt that these guys deserved a special note. A bunch of us were helping Ryan and Cheston move into the new apartment this morning, and then we all went to Mark’s for lunch. On the way there, I was sitting in the front seat of Ryan’s car when we came up behind these guys on 15. Apparently these two don’t know anyone with a truck (or rope, for that matter) and were driving along hanging onto the mattress on the roof. The guy driving had one hand on the mattress, one hand on the wheel, and a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. The girl was sitting sideways so she could hang on with both hands. We pulled up alongside them and they seemed to be having a good time so I wished them good luck. I thought it would be rude to pull up next to someone and take their picture quick, but they seemed like the type that would find the humor in the situation so I wish I did. You can get a better look in the next two shots.
