Baltimore Diary

Starting from Zero for the New Year

Ralphie as Adult [narrating]:  [T]he Old Man loved it. He had always pictured himself in the pits of the Indianapolis Speedway in the 500. My old man's spare tires were only actually tires in the academic sense. They were round and had once been made of rubber.

—A Christmas Story (1983)
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On Saturday evening, GF and I started looking at cars, since my Hyundai (R.I.P.) is about to be torn asunder and its parts sold off. I'd done a little research on the Web to see what was out there, and so it was that we went to Jerry's on Joppa Road. The people there were pretty nice and quite straightforward, once they realized that GF wasn't fooling around with the whole "How much were you thinking about paying every month?" routine, or the "write down a number" bit. They also learned (as did I) that GF's parents are neighbors of Jerry himself, and that one fine evening a few years ago, some of his cows(!) got off the property and were wandering around the road. (Snay, have you seen any wandering cows while on the Franchise job?) They had a fairly attractive offer on a 2008 Chevrolet Cobalt (coincidentally blue), but since it was the first car I'd looked at, I didn't want to jump on it right away.

I wanted to see what Hyundai was up to (the damage to the Accent was my fault, not theirs; I still really like the cars), so this morning we headed over to Schaefer & Strohminger to see what they know. Not much, as it turned out.

I was teetering between the Elantra and, if I could afford it, the Sonata. The first one we looked at was the Elantra. So the salesman went to find a key for one of them. This took several minutes. To be fair, the one they usually use for test drives was already out, so this is why he couldn't locate it right away. Anyway, he located a key and got the car out of its parking space.

I pull the car out of the parking lot and immediately we hear it: "Wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa". GF thought it sounded like a flat tire. That's when I noticed there was an indicator light on the dash for the tires. "I guess we have a low tire, or a flat," I said, although it wasn't handling like a flat. I make the U-turn and go back into the lot. The guy goes to get another car. We look around it and none of the tires appear flat, or even especially low. He returns with a second key and fetches the car. As soon as I sit in the driver's seat I see that this car has the tire indicator lit as well. He gets out to get another key, handing me the dealer plate so he doesn't have to keep track of it.

While we're waiting, one of the other salesmen, who didn't realize that we were being waited on, started to chit chat with us. We noted the problem with the tire light, and he started to say something about how cold it was. "It's not THAT cold," I said. "We had rain last night, not snow." His response went something along the lines of "Uh". Thanks, bub.

When the FOURTH car had its light illuminated, that's when I handed the plate back to the salesman, telling him, "OK, I think we're done, here." Either something is substantially wrong with the tire sensors or there's something wrong with the way the tires are mounted, or something. At any rate, I was very disappointed, because the Accent was my second Hyundai, and until today I had no questions about their reliability.

Earlier today, GF had called another Chevrolet dealer (Koons, I think) and they had a 2007 Cobalt with the same features as the '08, so it would have been a few thousand cheaper, so we started to head over there. On a whim, we stopped in at the White Marsh Carmax, which has a Nissan dealership. GF didn't want me to simply jump on the Cobalt just because it was there, so she had me look at the Elantra and the Versa.  The Versa is nice, but just a wee bit too small for me, so we started poking around the Elantras.

Surprise! It's a pretty nice car, and it gets decent mileage (25 city/33 on the highway). There was a small problem with a blemish on the passenger front door that they couldn't manage to buff out, but it was nearly invisible and they offered to knock $200 off the price. How could I say no?

So now I'm up to here with the car payments again and practically zero in the bank (and by "practically" I mean I'm likely to be late on most a few of my bills), but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. Another few weeks and I swear I'll be in slightly better shape.

Bloody (heh) Good Fun

Mrs. Lovett: You're barking mad! Killing a man what done no harm to ya!
Sweeney Todd: [polishing his razor] He recognized me from the old days. Tried to blackmail me. Half me earnings.
Mrs. Lovett: [relieved] Oh, well that's a different matter then. For a moment there I thought you lost your marbles.

—Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)
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As a means of helping us to break out of our December funk, our neighbors insisted that GF and I join them on a grownups-only night out. So we asked (translation: "dragooned") GF's mother into watching all of the kids so that the four of us could see Sweeney Todd at the Charles Theater. 

For the uninitiated, the film is adapted from the Stephen Sondheim/Hugh Wheeler Broadway musical about a barber who is deported to Australia unfairly, then returns to London under an assumed name with revenge on his mind. It's a little on the graphic side, not unlike this:

And I get the feeling that it was material like this which tended to distance us from the material a little bit. Early on, Sweeney is a guy you might be rooting for. As you get inured to all the casual blood, you start to see the ending coming. But overall, I think Tim Burton has put together a darkly comic film which, while you won't necessarily take the kids to see, you'll probably enjoy. One more caveat: you may not like it if you saw it on stage, because there's definitely a different aesthetic involved.

After the movie, of course, we went to The Brewer's Art, where I had a nice rare cheeseburger and some of their Resurrection beer. Heh.

$20 vacation

Carl Evello: What does matter is that your work has been interrupted, your car wrecked, your life has been ruffled, to put it mildly. If you had not stopped to pick up Christina, not any of these things would have happened. So let's pretend you did not pick her up.

—Kiss Me Deadly (1955)
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You know, there are just some times when you have to walk away from certain parts of your life for awhile. This is why I took a three-week break from writing here.

Of course, since I'm one of the schmucks who doesn't have a free blogging service, I still get to pay for the domain, the redirect page and the Typepad fee, so either I was going to quit altogether or I was going to come back. Sucks to be you that I came back.

On the bright side, these last few weeks would have been little more than complaining. The short version is that my car did indeed break down for good, so we've been working through the logistics of using one car (with a little borrowed-vehicle action here and there) until we can put a few bucks in the bank, because...

...GF is finally back to work, following her TWO surgical procedures. The bad news is that she'd burned up all her sick days to a much greater extent than she thought she had. So her most recent paycheck (before the break), instead of being short by about two days' worth of pay, wound up being six dollars and change. Thank goodness we'd started putting some money into a savings account, but that's nearly gone now. Her last couple of weeks' pay will be about half of what it should be, since she's been working half-days. In addition to that financial hit...

...the renters on the Morrell Park house have decided to stop paying rent. (Yeah, I know what some of you told me. You were right, OK? Now shut up.) So I've been forced to go the eviction route again. Off to court, where they didn't show, and today I have to call the Sheriff's office to schedule the actual eviction, assuming they don't bail out of the house before that. I did get to use their security deposit, so that partially made up for the lost income from GF. However, we'll have to do some deep cleaning on the house to get it in shape for the next person to come in (you know, the one with actual references and stuff), so there won't be any January income from it either. And, of course, all this financial hit means that...

...I didn't get to visit my family for the holiday. So I've spent two consecutive Christmas Days in Baltimore, along with what's going to be my second New Year's Eve. GF's family was very nice and gracious and welcoming and stuff, but face it, it's not the same thing at all. Plus, it didn't help with my mother going the "this may be the last time you see your grandmother alive" routine. Which may be true, but that's not really the best route to go when you've got to watch nearly every dime for the next several weeks.

Anyway.

I'm back, and with a little luck I'll have stuff a little less whiny next time around. But don't count on it.

Brokedown Mountain

Randy Peone: Good morning, this is Randy Peone on KREZ radio, the voice of the Coeur d'Alene Indian Reservation. And it's time for the morning traffic report on this rainy Bicentennial Fourth of July. Let's go out to Lester Fallsapart in the KREZ traffic van broken down at the crossroads.
Lester Fallsapart: Big truck just went by... now it's gone.
Randy Peone: Well, there you go folks. Looks like another busy morning.

—Smoke Signals (1998)

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I had a problem with my car not long ago, with the battery starting to go bad. After almost exactly 80,000 miles and almost exactly six years, I wasn't complaining. And since GF has been at home recovering from the surgery, there was no hurry to get the battery replaced; I could just use her car for awhile.

Yesterday was finally the day I got it done. I went down to BJ's on Belair Road and poked my head into the Auto Repair department. The guy there told me that I had to buy the battery and then, for another $15, they'd put it in. Since the car was back in my driveway, I figured I wasn't going to use Step Two. So I went to the back of the store and looked around for someone who might know what they were doing. Failing that, I asked the employee at the Tires 'n' Batteries counter for some help. She simply pointed me to a manual hanging from the battery rack. Swell.

I picked out my battery, put it in my cart and made my way to the front registers. I make that sound easier than it was; as though I didn't have to contend with about nine thousand morons wandering the aisles aimlessly, just sort of milling about and stopping for no apparent reason. Hey, dumbass, these batteries are heavy. This cart doesn't exactly stop on a dime. I nearly crashed into several people and they would have had it coming if I'd succeeded.

At the checkout lines. The lines look busy, but as they say, 'tis the season, but I spot a self-checkout with a single person behind the one checking out. That's for me. I go over there and the people in front of me realize that this particular lane can't take cash, so they have to move to another lane. Now I'm next in line. Which is pretty sweet.

Until this woman in front of me, and (I think) her mother decide that this cart with about ten items in it will be split into three orders. I may have audibly groaned when I saw that two orders were turning into three. They were actually slow enough that I was able to scan and pay for the battery, and hit the exit before them.

I get home and put the new battery in the car. While I'm doing this, it occurs to me that they may have needed to charge the new battery. What if the car doesn't start? GF is out driving for the first time in weeks, and she isn't due home for hours. It's not like I'm going anywhere, but still. Fortunately, the car started right up, so I ran to the store to get gas and some stuff for dinner.

Just as I get back to the house, my cell phone rings and it's GF. She's on her way home, blah de blah. While I'm taking stuff out of the car, I realize that I forgot a key ingredient for dinner, so I get back in the car and head to the SuperFresh on Harford Rd, near Taylor Ave. Get my stuff and back in the car. I start the car and it runs for a few seconds, then simply dies. Attempts to start it meet with no success. I call GF and she's just gotten home, so I tell her to come get me.

Today we went back to the car and I had GF try to start it while I watch the engine. Originally I thought a belt had broken, but that wasn't the case. The belts appear intact, the wheels are turning but it doesn't sound as though the engine is trying to catch. Plus I'm hearing a relay-like click when the key is shut off again. Fortunately there's a Merchant's Tire & Auto nearby, so I simply walk in there and hand over the keys.

Even if it's a major repair, it would really be the first one for this car, with the exception of the clutch I had replaced in April. I have no complaints in the long run, although doing this in the middle of Holiday Season is a little on the inconvenient side. Still, I've driven the hell out of this car (over 80K miles since Halloween 2001) and it owes me nothing in the long run.