i'm thinking an american traditional swallow with banner saying "tweet through it" how terrible of a person am i? i don't know. but i like tattoos that are funny. upper thigh? i don't know, i basically can't put anything more on my upper arms and this doesn't strike me as a back tattoo
I've mentioned the neighbors before. I have security cameras up because the neighbor kid doesn't get his medicine sometimes and tears up their disability checks. he came into my yard and cut my christmas lights with scissors, he came into my house, stole my daughter's boots and threw them on his roof. At one point there were seven of them (five adults, two children) in 1100sqft with one bathroom. One of them is in a wheelchair. Two of them are on disability. Pretty sure the patriarch overdosed on fentanyl or oxycontin. They bought the house in '86. Paid their last payment in 2016. And in order to get around the "seven people in 1100sqft" problem they took out a $240k HELOC, $30k in personal loans and built a 1200sqft addition. Well, first they hired an unlicensed, unbonded contractor to do the job. He took their $10k deposit, got busted for drunk driving and is currently in jail on a bench warrant or some shit, despite the fact that this was 18 months ago. So they went with a second guy who took $20k and did such a bad job of the design part that he couldn't get a permit. They didn't get that money back, either. Third guy? Third guy was flat rate! Agreed to do it all for a price! Got a permit and everything! So. $30k in the hole already, they somehow manage to find an AirBnB for $5k a month that... oh wait, that one has stairs in front which they didn't look into before putting down a one-month deposit on a place their wheelchair-bound daughter has to live for three months (and get in a cabulance for therapy four times a week). So I helped walk them through the process of getting your money back from AirBnB. But then they found another place for $6k a month... So they were supposed to break ground around Halloween, and the family was supposed to be out of the house from a week before Thanksgiving until New Year's. But then the contractor discovered the decommissioned septic tank by accident and also excavated their sewer pipe all in the space of six hours. So they're out of the house from Halloween to Valentine's Day. So that's another what? $12k? They're back in the house on Valentine's Day. But the cabinets are in the garage, the drywall isn't entirely up and worst of all, 3/4ths of the exterior is Tyvek. And the contractor is out of money. And he needs more money to keep going. And there's no money to be had. They told me last week that the estimates for finishing the siding range between $35k and $45k. They're HELOC'd to the hilt, their personal credit is all used up and their 120 day Tyvek is at nine months and counting. Rainy season starts next month. They had a blue tarp keeping the rain out on one side already and they redid the siding badly about ten years ago on the other side. I have no idea what horrorshow these contractors are seeing but I know that there's still a porta-potty out front which leads me to believe the contractor who did the addition is Tango Uniform. I think he lowballed himself out of existence and this family of five, occasionally seven, occasionally eight, isn't watertight in the pacific northwest. Got a neighbor. He's remodeled maybe five, maybe six houses in the neighborhood. Born here, grew up here, mother lives here, friends live here. He doesn't flip so much as he rehabs because he's still pissed at the couple who bought his first remodel in 2004 for not finishing the driveway like they promised after he gave them a credit. He offered this family a deal to just buy the place and go somewhere else but they dropped $270k on an incomplete remodel. Meanwhile the permit that remodel was done under has expired. To get another, to get the place inspected to meet civil, insurance and fiduciary obligations, another contractor has to sign on to this thing. Was talking to a property manager/flipper buddy of mine last night. He pointed out that nobody will work on this thing because it's nothing but a giant liability downside. Will my neighbor take it on? I doubt it; he was remodeling another place for his mother that, last I checked, was undergoing a new roof and had been taken down to the studs out front. I think he found a leak a decade or two after it started. So I think I get to watch this family melt out of their house and become homeless. I think this ends in a red tag. And I think the bank will seize it as soon as they get around to it because they're owed $240k on a structure that probably won't improve prior to demolition. My buddy suggested that the offer price should probably be $370k; it was worth $430 before being expanded to 2200sqft but probably needs $70k worth of violence to get it back to livable (the back yard is a construction site, for example). If they took it, they will have taken a house that was worth $430k free and clear, thrown $300k at it and walked away with $100k. Assuming someone offered. Assuming they were smart enough to throw in the towel. It's like watching your neighbors give their futures cancer and knowing you can't do anything to help. Meanwhile I've managed to beg more money out of the government for my wife's business than the network pays me to work in a year. It's deeply troubling to me how much easier life is when you have a little money. I'm a long way from rich but sweet holy jesus just the benjamins they're waving at me are appalling.
I mean I don’t get it, why not just diy it? The scaffolding can be rented or built. There are videos on the internet it’s not that hard. If you can live with mismatched siding you could probably get nearly free shit off cl and put the kids to work. The permit department will probably work with you to renew your existing permit if you explain the circumstances and bring 2 kids to the permit office those people aren’t monsters. The meager government bailout money might buy enough material to get stuff done. The end game is to finish it all and refi everything into a nice low 2% payment although with automatic approval I could see trying to apply for a refi and hoping it just clears without appraisal. I’d also be selling everything I owned doing odd jobs eating rice and beans from the free food pantry to get that shit fixed. That being said I dont think that people that put themselves into situations like that really have the tools to get out. And if I were your contractor buddy I’d probably wait till forcloser and pick it up on the cheap then. Bailing these folks out is unlikely to improve there situation for more than a couple years
Oh I know. I keep their lawnmower running. They DIY'd the siding last time which was a three week adventure I don't care to watch again. And that was just one wall. I think the real difference between liberals and conservatives is that liberals want the world to be safe for people like this, while conservatives want it to be lucrative for people who aren't.
I get it from a public policy perspective letting people like this continue to make terrible mistakes is not good because they and all their dependents end up wards of the state. That being said crafting public policy around them creates a nanny state that won’t allow for shoelaces because the are a trip hazard. Finding a balance between the two is truly difficult. Besides there isn’t really a liberal or Conservative party anymore there is just the republocrats and the fascists. Both of them think the best place for your neighbors is in jail stamping listener plates because then they can’t make poor choices anymore and they will generate more money for the corporation.
Yeah not sure if it's gonna be me or the rehabber up the street. He's certainly got more experience with it. I'm gonna have to broach the subject with 'em. It's been suggested that maybe they could go after the contractor's bond, assuming they can find a retainer for the lawyer. If nothing else, make it clear that getting out before it's started rotting is gonna be best for everyone. Gddamnit.
Geckos seem to like us: Saw that one on our back door a couple weeks ago. We found a few tiny baby geckos inside, barely an inch and a half long including the tail. Apparently they like to squeeze into tiny crevices to hide during the day, like the gap in the doorframe weatherstripping I found. I found another baby one last night in the bathroom, caught it with a container and sheet of paper, put it outside. Unfortunately the big guy was hanging out on the door again, but not on the window part. So he fell off the the door inside and ran under the couch, and we spent almost half an hour moving furniture and trying to catch it before we lost it completely. So we've got a full grown gecko hiding somewhere in the house. I'm not a fan of letting wildlife in the house. I would definitely rather keep the grown lizards on the outside. But it doesn't bother me too much to return a lost baby gecko outside, or if a few crane flys and jumping spiders get in in spring, and nobody likes cockroaches but we've had less than one per week all summer. I think we're doing great. Do you really expect nothing to get inside? My wife was pretty freaked out even before yesterday though, so hopefully we find it soon and not months from now.
We've got one visiting at the moment. I haven't seen it, but I keep hearing the occasional "clack clack clack" at night. EXTREMELY LOUD So we've got a full grown gecko hiding somewhere in the house.
I don't care what anyone thinks, I whole heartedly believe that The Sixth Generation Toyota Celica and the pre-facelift SN-95 Mustang are some of the best looking sports cars to come out of the '90s. Even when they're faded, busted up, and rotting in someone's back yard, I still think they got lines to admire. "But buteos," you interject. "What about the NA Miata? That car holds up really well too!" You're right. It does. It truly, truly does. But it came out in 1989, so technically, it's an '80s car. Maybe you disagree that that's a disqualifier, and that's okay. I think we can all agree that The Fourth Gen Camaro looks ugly and GM should write us an apology letter for green lighting that design. Got a new phone recently. Another flip phone. Somehow in the effort to try to copy the phone book from my old phone over to my new phone, the SD Card got corrupted. So now I have to copy everything over manually. It's a chore, but I'm okay with that. Interestingly enough, when I "downgraded" from a smartphone to a flip phone a few years back, the people at the phone store had zero poker face and were kind of baffled that I was making that choice. This time around though, they seemed to be pretty enthusiastic about getting me all taken care of and they all actually thought both the old phone I was getting rid of and the new phone I was getting were pretty nifty. Either they have different attitudes towards ludite tech, or they have much better poker faces. I think maybe the second, but I still appreciate it, it made for a more comfortable buying experience.
I must be older than you. Because holy crap I hated the "marshmallow curves" design trend that you seem to have loved. I honestly can't see any difference between the Fourth Gen Camaro you despise and the Mustang you revere. And that Celica was just the most ridiculous thing I'd ever seen... I thought the design had gotten melted in the oven, and nobody bothered to fix the droopyness. Born in the 60's, I came into cars in the 1970's, so my idea of the perfect cars was way pointier. The Dodge Dart is still the one I'd do almost anything for today. My grandmother drove this very model - same color and everything - and there was a chance it would go to me. But I already had a car when she stopped driving, and my cousin didn't, so she got it, and destroyed it in a year. Despite being brought up in the 70's with a Dad who was a (retired) race car driver, the muscle cars weren't my thing. My first car - and it was AWESOME - was the GMC Jimmy. It was better than the Chevy Blazer in every functional way... but just didn't get the cachet that the Blazer did. The back seat was raised 4 inches, so the people in the back had a GREAT view. The tailgate and rear window worked better (and more reliably) than the Blazer. The top came off more easily - and more importantly, it went back ON better, and reformed a watertight seal between the removable top and cab, unlike the Blazer which would leak. There's a photo of me somewhere from High School, where I am sitting inside the engine compartment, ass on the radiator, feet on the opposite wheel wells, adjusting the carbs or whatever. There was plenty of room to work under the hood, and everything just made sense in there. When I blew up the original 350, we dropped in a 400 ci engine, and it just got better. Oh. And after I moved out and got married, my wife had a Mazda Miata that was an amazing little vehicle, and I'd have another one in a second. No question at all. Finally, we agree on the Nissan 300zx. The Z32 model was kleinbl00's Porsche, but done RIGHT. Every line is perfect on that 300zx, while the Porsche always looked... odd to me. I hope never to ever drive the 300zx, because it can't match up to my idolization of it. Nowadays, I am utterly thrilled with my Chevy Volt. Haven't used any gas since, like February, and the batteries are getting better and better. My model - the 2015 Volt Premier in white - is the epitome of the Volt design. The other models - Gen2 specifically - have some klunker elements that just gak the design, like the black trunk lid, or non-contrasting interior colors. (The contrast colors look amazing.) But mine looks like it came directly out of the Apple design studio that built the original iPod. It's gorgeous./stories/2013/10/19114588-700-0.jpg)
I am saving this comment to succinctly discount any aesthetic choice you champion at any point in the near or distant future. mmmmmmmmmdelicious. Me and my done-wrong Porsche aren't even offended because you had a damn MGB GT in the carport and you're here pining after a - say it with me - Dodge Dart.The Dodge Dart is still the one I'd do almost anything for today.
Something about that ridge down the front fenders, the grille, and the bench front seat. Oh, and that straight-6 motor. I also love the way it sits... a little tall... a little proud... And I'm not saying anything about your lovely little Porsche that you didn't already know...! :-)
Slant 6 love is the QAnon of car fandom. It's a joke that grew out-of-hand and became a cult. And I mean... I made fun of friends with Ford Mavericks. You could get those with V8s. I made fun of friends with AMC Javelins which, in retrospect, wasn't a wretched car. I had a friend with a Pacer - he wasn't entirely rational and it was best to let it be. And I was saddled with a Falcon Futura, one of the least-appealing deathtraps to emerge from Detroit. But do please go on. I would love to see an image of your platonic ideal of Dodge Dart. Remember, this is for posterity.
That straight-6 in the Dart is just a good engine to work on. Simple, straightforward, ubiquitous parts, aftermarket upgrades galore, reliable, and can be worked on with basic hand tools. A good friend of mine in high school had the Dodge Dart Swinger, and we were always monkeying with it... and no matter what we screwed up, the engine forgave us, told us what we did wrong, and let us fix it before blowing up anything expensive. I just have an affection for that motor....
This is true of literally every American V8 made between 1948 and 1990 with the notable exception of the Cadillac 8-6-4. Clearly. So long as we both agree that it doesn't make it objectively good.That straight-6 in the Dart is just a good engine to work on. Simple, straightforward, ubiquitous parts, aftermarket upgrades galore, reliable, and can be worked on with basic hand tools.
I just have an affection for that motor....
The 305 in my El Camino ran like a top. The alternator, distributor, radiator, and a bunch of other do-hickies on the other hand . . . Project cars are money pits. I know this. That said The Tercel sold for less than three grand. If there wasn't an impending economic apocalypse, that's a pretty decent starting point leaving enough financial room to make a mistake or two.
Thee and me will never have to compete for cars, clearly. Gen4 Camaro is best camaro. Which, admittedly, isn't saying a lot. In the land of "affordable" the best sports cars of the '90s are the Gen3 RX7 and the Gen2 MR2. In the land of utterly unaffordable sports cars of the '90s, you've got the Diablo, the McLaren F1 and the shoulda-been-a-contender Jaguar XJR220.
I owned an 02 base model firebird, which differed from the base Camaro by only the headlights and trunk lid not-quite-a-spoiler lip thing. The pop up headlights are a pain, and I kinda hated it because by the time I had it every plastic trim piece was cracking and every rubber hose or seal was rotting. But the firebird's trunk lid was the best thing. Throw a blanket on there, recline against the back window, and it was the perfect spot for watching a meteor shower or fireworks.
There was a time in my life that I wanted a Firebird SO BAD I can't remember which of Edward Abbey's books it was that he suggested any young man willing to trade a vasectomy for a brand new Mustang or Camaro should be given the opportunity. He wasn't wrong but I mean...
I love both the RX7 and MR2 for different reasons, but by '90s pay, they'd be just outside of my budget, much like the Z32 300zx (which like the Miata, came out in '89). Though of the three, I really like the RX7, cause it kind of has these classic '60s/'70s lines on it. I look at it, and it reminds me of the Toyota 2000GT or Jaguar E-Type. It's just got that low roofline, those sleek sidelines, and an engine compartment that really commands your attention. I think what a lot of people don't see, that people who like cars often see, is past the faded paint and dents and rust. I think if a lot of people see a busted Lincoln or Toyota from the '80s drive down the road, they'd say "Whoever thought those cars looked good?" But if they saw the same car, sans dents, fresh paint, new windshield and headlight covers, they'd say "Oh, yeah. That's not bad looking." Well, usually. I mean, does anyone ever think of The Virage when they think of cool, memorable cars?
I drove maybe three of those vintage 300Zs. they were delightful. At one point Road & Track declared it the most beautiful sports car ever made. Thing of it is, though? That vintage put big nerfy plastic bits everywhere. I built a 4x4 TR-7 a good 30 years before "battle wagons" were cool. The only place I could find one in New Mexico was a junkyard that was also the official Aston Martin repair shop for the mountain west; the guy who ran it was a raging drunk who had a number of interesting critters lying about (2 dead Lotus 7s, a Lotus Sprint, a whole bunch of Abarth stuff). Occupying center field was an Aston Martin Lagonda that he had apparently been working on for two and a half years without getting it back to its owner. One of the things I hate about this timeline is the Aston Martin Lagonda I didn't buy in the early 2000s is now a $350k car, despite the fact that everyone acknowledges what an utter and total piece of shit it is.
I mean, does anyone ever think of The Virage when they think of cool, memorable cars?
Yeah man I remember when you could get into an e-jag for less than $20k. They're positively stratospheric now. I think if I were to pick one horrifically-impractical parade float of unreliability from that era it would be the Ferrari Dino 246. Have you ever really thought about how much fun it must have been to have been Roxette? Like being Abba but there's only two of you and you have power chords. Shit. The girl died in December. I guess I have to spend the rest of the day listening to Roxette and dreaming of Ferrari Dinos. PROTIP: if you set your sights on truly unattainable cars, you will never be tempted to murder.
that little Dino is.... cute? it makes me think of those Fiero Ferrari kit cars people assemble. It's awesome in all the right ways. the shot of the jag's mechanical throttle made my heart race. What a beautiful car.I guess I have to spend the rest of the day listening to Roxette and dreaming of Ferrari Dinos.
unattainable cars
I think without the Fiero the kit car industry would have died in '84. SO many different flavors of "almost" are based on that chassis. To me a Dino is a mid-engined sports car that isn't trying too hard. It was supposed to be like the Ferrari Lite of the era; if you truly wanted to go fast, you bought a 365 like a real man. They're stratospherically expensive for what they are, too. 2.4L of Italian unreliability for a mere $250k? Sign me up please! But they're the curviest little creatures. If I could buy one for a tenth what they go for I'd sure think about it.
I've talked with two different people before that both say they regret selling their Acura NSX's about a year or two before the prices sky rocketed. I can't say I have any regrets, but the two special cars I came closest to buying was a used 2003 Mach 1 Mustang that I decided was way too much car for me and the guy at the dealership was overly aggressive in trying to get me to buy it, so I wasn't comfortable and a first generation Toyota Celica on Craigslist that I could have afforded to buy, but it was in no way a practical daily driver and buying it would have emptied my savings account. To this day, I regret selling my El Camino, especially for so cheap, but you know, when rent is due in two days and your roommate at the time is unreliable, you gotta do what you gotta do. I loved that car. It was rusted and ugly and beaten up and barely ever worked, but it was awesome.One of the things I hate about this timeline is the Aston Martin Lagonda I didn't buy in the early 2000s is now a $350k car, despite the fact that everyone acknowledges what an utter and total piece of shit it is.
I was at a trade show in Vegas in 2000 or 2001. That's back when the Imperial Palace still had a "car museum" in their penthouse; it had been a Duesenberg museum and was in the process of converting to a used car lot before the whole thing went away. Up at the top, tucked into a corner, forgotten and ignored, was a Lancia Stratos. This Lancia Stratos. I think they wanted $30k for it, but they said they'd take $25k. Which was definitely more than I could afford, and substantially less than the $475k it went for in 2018, and substantially less than the $1.5m several models went for in 2003-2006. A $25k car bought in 2002 and sold for $475k in 2018 would be a 19x appreciation factor. That used to bug me a bit. Then I bought Ethereum at Frontier and decided that regret never gets you anything. My auto shop teacher had a 1931 Mach 1 with the Boss 429 Hemi in it. It sat there rusting away, year after year. He drove it every day but never did anything about the salt damage. Still breaks my heart.
Why did you have to remind me that this awesome website exists? It fills me with "wants" and "gimmes" and nothing even extreme. I mean, look, at less than $2,000 currently, I really, really want this Toyota Tercel. Dala, baby, this car will fix 2020 for us, I just know it.
The cars I lusted for and couldn't afford, contemporaneously, were modest. A friend's little sister was straight up gifted a Subaru XT Coupe at sixteen while I was running carbs through the dishwasher to try and get my donor RX-4 running. We used to haunt the car lots because it was something to do and there was just something about the perpetually-unattainable Mazda MX3. DOHC 1.8L V6, y'all. A kid showed up at college. His dad had bought him one for graduation. He was a nice enough guy but forever a spoiled brat in my eyes. Another kid in school had a family tradition where Grandma and Grandpa gave them $15k towards the car of their choice the minute they turned 16. I had very carefully calculated that to be more than enough money to buy a 1982 Lotus Esprit and put a Rover/Buick 215ci V8 in it with either a Porsche or ZF transaxle. Fucker bought a Prelude. I drove a '77 Buick that I had purchased for $125 because its oil seal was leaking. Ended up fixing the oil leak and driving the fucking thing because the car the mill was supposed to go into took a whole lot longer without the promised parental support. Another buddy got a cherry '67 Camaro that he wrapped around a lamppost within a month while racing his buddy with the '67 Mustang Fastback that he wrapped around the same lamppost a month later, rebuilt, and wrapped around a different lamppost six months later. Meanwhile the TR-7 I spent forever fixing was eclipsed by a different kid whose dad gave him a choice between an '81 TR8 convertible or a '74 Elan. TR8 was dead in eight months, so he also got the Elan. I probably drive a Porsche convertible to avenge my high school self. I doubt I'm the only one.
I briefly worked with Steve Wozniak in the early 1990's when the NSX first came out. He had one in each color, and two black ones... he said he accidentally bought a second black one because he thought he didn't have one, so he let one of his team drive it every day. Woz was driving me to his office in his favorite NSX, and he'd wired up the car stereo to a cellular radio scanner, and we were driving around listening in to people's cell phone calls... It was surreal. Woz was the most careful, meticulous driver I have ever ridden with. The NSX was completely wasted on him. I've talked with two different people before that both say they regret selling their Acura NSX's about a year or two before the prices sky rocketed.
I can't believe summer is almost over! I've been busy, but I can't shake this feeling like i've been wasting my time too much. Time has just been melting away the past few years, in a way it wasn't before. Is this what getting older feels like? I feel I will wake up being 60 years old in a few moments and didn't realize half my life has slipped away already. Somehow, I need to have some concrete accomplishments under my belt, some progress to feel good. I've learned a lot, done lots of random eclectic tasks. But it's all pretty directionless in general. Time to bang out some items off the bucket list and maybe make some more concrete plans for the rest of the year. But what I actually want to do with my time right now is take 1000 classes about all the random skills I'd like to learn. Screen printing, develop photos the old school way, learn to weld, build fire art, fire spin, pottery, sewing, basic programming, electronics, CAD software, get good at identifying wild mushrooms, fishing, butchering... all very doable things to learn at a basic level but all requiring a certain time/money investment and most importantly prioritizing. Some of these things I'm almost ashamed I don't already know how to do, as it seems so simple.The free government money's over - so it's time for my biannual "what am i doing with my life" review :)
I have never felt like my time was particularly wasted, but I have felt like it moves faster with age. One byproduct of the quarantine, for me, is that I am using my time to serve me more. I am allocating it to things that I actually enjoy. But time really does go by more quickly the older you get. Good luck with the life review. It’s a good exercise. Knowing you, you’re on the right path and I am sure something exciting is around the corner. Onward! Time has just been melting away the past few years, in a way it wasn't before. Is this what getting older feels like?
there is a body of literature about this. some of it even may be true
However, because there are 365 days in a year no matter what, how fast or slowly time passes is merely perception. And it's actually kind of cool that you have the power to create your own reality by feeding your brain new information and adventures. So, if you've been putting off traveling to a new place or learning a new language, you now have a great reason to stop procrastinating.
It's interesting that the trips I take seem to be remembered as longer than they were. I was just at the beach with my family for 5 days and it felt like a month. New surroundings, new activities etc. But I have a really warped sense of time. I literally can't measure it well. I recently moved and I couldn't tell you if I've been in this house for one month or 3. Isn't that weird? I just don't care. I've been married for 15 years but it feels like 9 or 10. I am 43 years old, but I feels like I am 35. I am bad at measuring time.
Won’t preach or over-praise, so I’ll leave it here. I’m glad to read this. Truly. Thanks for humoring me.I got over it though. I applied for a job in another city, had a telephone interview, got it, got in my car and hightailed it out of there.
I've been recently introduced to iNaturalist. It's a good way to catalog your finds and crowdsource for information on the plants can't ID yourself yet....get good at identifying wild mushrooms,...
If you’re looking at taking any kind of college level certificate or diploma stuff they doubled the grants you can receive for this year ! So usually a full time student can qualify for $3000 in grants when they apply for Canadian student loans but now it’s $6000. It’s paying for both my semesters fully so I’m pretty damn stocked.
It's pretty standard anywhere in post-grad science, especially in maths and physics. Not ideal, but I'd kill myself if I had to click out those formulas in MS Office and make Feynman diagrams in Photoshop or what have you. EDIT: I don't hate those other programs, but they simply aren't well suited for what I'm doing. Writing a grant proposal or pretty much anything without heaps of math? That's MS Word. Heaps of math? LaTeX.
I bought the wrong tires for my wife's car. I work for a subsidiary of Continental, so I get tires at a discount. I went onto the employee portal, selected my make/model/year, bought the tires, they arrived, and I brought the car to the dealership to have them installed. (Because we like the dealership, they are straight shooters, and I had to show them that their tech that did a full inspection of my wife's car a month ago completely missed the oddball tire wear on the rear tires that shows the rear end's camber is completely out. It's good to be a long-term customer and catch the service tech's being sloppy... the dealership will bend over backwards to make sure you are VERY happy for a very long time.) Got 18" tires, which definitely did not fit my wife's 17" wheels. So I ordered the RIGHT sized tires - arriving today - and UPS will be here tomorrow to pick up the old tires and take them back to the warehouse. But I got a discount on the tires because employee discount... so i have to pay the shipping to return the wrong tires... which might have been an error in their automatic online configurator, and not my mistake... but I'm also getting a $100 Visa gift card for ordering a full set of 4 tires. Now I'm getting a second $100 Visa card because I just ordered the right set, rather than doing a whole return-and-replace dance. So I saved about $200 on the first set, and about $150 on the second set, but I'm paying $180 to ship the first set back, but I'm getting two $100 Visa gift cards for my two orders... and then paying $150 to get them installed at the dealership, which - if they'd caught the alignment problem last year when my wife bought her car - we wouldn't have to be replacing the tires anyway, because they'd still have plenty of life in them, but the off-camber made the inside edge the tire wear out faster, so it's almost bald... ... and my wife is REALLY sensitive to chemical smells, and now her car smells like the inside of a tire shop ... so we left the windows open all night last night, and now the spiders have moved in and made webs ALL OVER the inside of the car, because it's TOTALLY INSANE SPIDER SEASON in Seattle right now... And it's all good. Water off a duck's back, as they say. In other news, I don't think the shit-hot tech company wants me. It's been a week, and they haven't contacted me yet. So despite the internal referral, I don't think I'm gonna be hearing from them soon. And I'm organizing some MLR rugby fan club partnerships tonight in a Zoom call with one of the leagues' newest teams, despite the fact that I think there will be no North American rugby in 2021, and that will probably be the nail in the coffin of the fledgling Major League Rugby league, which looked oh so promising when it started up its third season in February of this year.... sigh
Three weeks into the first curfew in Melbourne's history. Currently we're recording 200-250 new cases per day. On the other hand, we appear to have eradicated the flu in Australia. In a few weeks we'll be leaving the life of renters behind and moving in to our own place.
I have much to write about in the future. Until then, here are vague and not-so-vague updates: Took a job offer, but still searching for others. I'd likely be staying with 'rents to bank some cash before moving out. It's absolutely the logical thing to do, though hard to swallow at times. I've hit a couple life goals early. But looking at what would naturally be the next steps for me is bewildering - both since "it's about that time" and time it takes to acquire the resources span over years. Began my deep dive into r/personalfinance (what feels like years late), and picked up J.L. Collin's The Simple Path to Wealth for my weekend readings.