2001-08-10
feeling kinda
birthday countdown: 9 days.
oh. my. god. ohmigod. i just bought a car! i bought a car, completely by accident.
yes, there's a story behind that. i was over hanging out with my best friend and her mom and girlfriend the other night, and her mom was in problem solving mode. when i appeared, she had a whole fresh set of challenges to work with. so she looks directly at me and announces that i need a car. okay, i can work with that. i've been carless by choice for a while, and i'm okay with it. but having a car would make life easier in some ways. she says 'you should buy rob's car.' (rob is the next door neighbor.) laughing, i do a little quick mental math, and decide that figuring in insurance, sales tax, and registration, i could buy it for $1000. which i tell her, never in a million years thinking that this would fly.
8 o'clock the next morning, my phone rings and it's my best friend's mom. 'he'll sell it to you. so you need to make a decision this morning. i know this isn't how you work, but you need to decide.' i'm standing in my living room, dripping, in a towel, trying to wrap my non-caffeinated brain around what she's saying. finally, i say that i'll call her back when i get to work, and hang up. then the brain kicks in to over drive. i call up my boss and ask his opinion. plus, he was already logged in, so he looked it up on Edmund's to see the blue book value.
people, i would be *stupid* not to take this. it's such a steal! a perfectly good car, one owner, no major body work, no visible rust... for a thou. so i did it. i told him i'd buy the car.
by accident! completely by accident! i didn't even ask the usual questions about mileage and maintenance, because i wasn't really trying to do this. but man oh man...
what's wrong with the car, you ask? why is he willing to let it go for a song? there must be something horribly wrong with it. well, yes. it has (and i quote) 'bad psychic energy'. it's his ex-wife's car, and he thinks it has negative vibes from her. so he just wants to get rid of it. hey, a little smudge, a few crystals - presto! no more bad psychic energy.
the real catch, as i see it, is that it's a standard. i swore up and down that i would only learn to drive a standard when i bought my MG to rebuild. that's one of my goals - i want to buy an MG, with its dumb-as-dirt, straightforward, rip-it-out, rebuild it, have three spare parts left over but it still runs fine, basic engine. i want to strip my MG down to the bare bones and restore it from the ground up (which isn't all that far, if you're familiar with MGs). and for that, i'd learn standard. *deep breath* well, looks like that plan went right out the window. now i have a more immediate reason to learn. mind you, i do know a little how to drive stick. i've worked on learning at various times, because it seems like a good thing to know in case of emergencies - say, everyone else gets hit by a cement truck and i'm the only one who can go for help, and all i have at my disposal is a standard. whoofdy. now i have to learn it all, for real.
so i'm nervous about that part. but i figure, if i completely can't handle it, driving stick in the city, i'll trade in the car for an automatic, and i should still come out even. and i'm very excited about naming my car. it's an important thing, the naming of cars. i think i have one picked out, but i have to try it out on the car first. and i can put all the bumper stickers i want on it! whoo hoo! this was a big sticking point with fritz with the other car. i claimed since i owned half i could put bumper stickers on it. he said i didn't own that half of the car. grrr. this is but one of the many reasons he's my ex husband.
i can put the monkey in the fez hat on a spring on the dashboard, if i want, or make it into a hood ornament. i can put the Parking Carma doo hickey on the dash. i want to vacuum it out, and wax it down to cover some of the little scratches (Turtle, i think, makes colored wax to help with that). it's mine! all mine! whoo hoo! i have never ever owned my very own all mine car, and this makes me incredibly happy. for this, i can learn to master a standard.
in other happy news... i came home from the show tonight to find a package from Tanya - how sweet! out of the blue, she sent me an interesting article on C.S. Lewis, some kitty stickers, and a beautifully bound blank book. i'm thinking hard about what to use that book for, because it's so pretty that i want to put the Right Words in there.
oh, the show... Sugar Ray, with Uncle Kracker and some nondescript other band opening. it was crazy insane but fun. this was a general admission show, with a mosh area down front. i worked a gate for the pit, with pat and sue. not hard work, really. wristband? come on in. no wristband? see ya. tampered wristband your friend clearly passed over to you? definitely see ya, and i'll keep the wristband. and that was it. the music was pretty good, altho pretty close to the album versions, so no great shakes seeing it live. oh, wait - except for the point where the lead singer for Sugar Ray decided to take a little romp thru the audience. apparently, the security staff wasn't quite ready for that. i don't think he exactly endeared himself to anyone by doing that. i was off by that point, standing in the audience, so it was just fun for me. he's such an Irish boy, that singer... when he did the song about his mom, he actually knelt down on stage and said a novena. and i don't think it was for effect, either; he seemed very sincere.
what killed me were the people who got pissed off that they couldn't get into the pit. 'i paid money to see this show, and i should be able to go down there!' dude... you paid the same money as everyone else, and you paid it to walk in the gate. period. end of story. get out of my face. and the Grammar Queen in me was going mental every time i saw the disclaimer that said 'the staff, artist and building do not encourage...' gah! a building is an inanimate object! it does not encourage or discourage anything. at all. nothing. *grumble*
i stopped by CBC on the way home and caught up with CV, which was nice. had a beer or two, and talked about physics and football, more or less in that order. he's good people, makes for easy company when one wants to decompress.
pardon me as my entry dribbles to an end...
