basic brown today

With socks, even!


My schedule this week:

Thursday (beginning of the State work week) 7am - 11pm
Friday 3pm - 11pm
Saturday 3pm - 11pm
Sunday 11p - 7am (yes, that is a shift in which i come in Saturday night at 11pm and stay until 7am Sunday morning)

Two doubles, a single and a double; 40 hours in 3 days. Yeah.

Picked up my "Nnew" car today. Took a bit of a drive. Came home. Tried to put my (e:strip) and Buffalo Zoo bumper magnets on the back; found out that the entire back part is composite, not metal, so they are on the driver's side near the back by the gas cap. For now.

Time to go to work.

Here are today's chucks:

I have been falling down on the job when it comes to the blogosphere. Life gets busy with its mundane complications and all i want to do when not dealing with it all is escape.

But, i must start with chucks. I have been deciding last minute lately, and today, this is the choice of 2 i have come up with.



I'm wearing my black cargo pants and a purple t-shirt. If anyone has any opinions, feel free to weigh in on this oh so important topic. tee hee.

(e:Tinypliny), i want you to know i remember you asking for a catalog of chucks post. I will do it someday. Or maybe just pile them all up and take a snap just to see what they all look like en masse.

As some of you may or may not know, i have been in the market for new wheels. My current car is going to need maintenance soon, and it just doesn't seem worth it to put more money into a 10 year old Dodge Neon.

First stop, Mini dealership. Test drive a brand new one with an automatic transmission (harder to find, but i do most of my driving in the city now, and, well, i can't drive a stick and there is NO WAY i am going to learn on my dream car!!). I loved that drive. I get it totally. Beautiful car. I envy (and yes i am jealous of, i admit it) you, (e:Jenks), 'cause i want one, too!

But the numbers are just too high for me right now. I can't afford it. We need to spend our money elsewhere -- repaying roof loan, getting new porch, fixing unusable bathroom.

So, we move on.

Then, i accidentally came across a used one at a West Herr Subaru dealership in the southtowns. They advertised it as having a manual transmission online, so i passed it by, but while there looking at what else they had, the salesman recommended it because it is an automatic. It is? Let's go then!

Took it to my mechanic downtown (Russo's Auto i really trust them!) for them to take a look. No good. They think it was in a front end collision of some sort.

Even though it was still under warranty (boot to bumper for the first 50,000 miles) someone replaced the radiator a fan and perhaps parts of the grill and/or front bumper with "junkyard parts". They may have been Mini parts, but they had numbers written on them that mean they used to be in another Mini. And when the new hood or existing hood was put back on, it was misaligned and was scraping on the headlight and in other spots.

Dealer dudes disagreed, said we were being overly critical of a minor thing that could be adjusted and maybe our mechanic was trying to get some money out of us. Nope, dude, they looked at this car for nothing and don't do body work.

So, the dealer manager Tony said "This hood has not been painted, as sure as i am standing here". Yeah. No one said it was painted. They/we said it is misaligned. Maybe it is a scrap part. Maybe it was removed for other work. Why would the radiator be replaced? Lots of reasons having nothing to do with an accident, maybe it leaked they said. Well, why replace it with junkyard parts if it is still under warranty?

And why avoid reporting it so it will not appear on the Car Fax report, huh?

I told them i wanted between 1 and 2 grand off the price and for them to fix the hood issue and they said they "can't do that" but really wanted to work with us. The last, of maybe about 5 or 6 times he said, "this hood has not been painted" i lost it. I believe i said, "for fucks sakes, for the last and final time, no one has said this hood was painted!!". Then i turned to the salesman and asked for the key to my Dodge Neon back and we left.

(e:Uncutsaniflush) thinks they have another sucker ready to buy it. Good luck to them.

Fast forward to yesterday. We decide to look at Paddock Chevrolet. I was considering a new (or nearly new) Cobalt or Aveo hatchback. But they had a used car i was interested in, too. Test drove all 3. Decided. Negotiated. Ran into a glitch...

See, i thought i was negotiating the price PLUS my trade-in. First numbers we pushed across the desk on the page had "+ trade in " written. Last one didn't. I assumed that it did since it was always on the table. When we had to go fetch papers from (e:Uncutsaniflush)'s car, he told me that they were just taking 200 more for my trade and i thought that meant that instead of 1000 for my car, they were taking 1200 for my car.

Nope. When we talked to the financing guy, i learned different. I felt like a moron. Still do. How stupid can i be? Math is so not my forte and anything more than a phone number confuses the hell out of me. I thought i did well, but they were basicly still at the same list price minus my trade, not the negotiated value PLUS my trade.

They understood and split the misunderstanding down the middle. Was a good deal to begin with, i was just trying to get more of a good deal.

All that aside, i still signed the deal. Tomorrow i pick up my "new" car. A 2006 Toyota Prius. In grey.

Me and the hubs have the same car now. Mine is just a later model. Both will have (e:strip) and Buffalo Zoo bumper magnets on them. Mine, however, will have a collection of orange bibs and bobs (e:Ladycroft) got for me hanging from my rearview mirror.....