GeeCee's Not-Entirely-Original Miscellany

(Well, maybe not the worst, but right up in the top three, certainly.)

So not the week to be out of Zoloft.

Rainfall total for the entire month of May at National Airport: 2.21 inches
Unofficial rainfall total for the 24 hours ending at 7 AM this morning: 7.09 inches
At the time I started writing this, Warrenton was in the middle of another torrential downpour lasting about 20 minutes.

This morning, I'm reminded strongly of Kim Stanley Robinson's Forty Signs of Rain: at one point in the book Rock Creek floods (which isn't all that unusual, but not to the extent it does in the book) and the Potomac overflows its banks and floods the Mall and downtown because of large amounts of rainfall locally and an even larger amount upstream. We do need the rain, we were five inches below normal, but getting it all at once was...non-optimal. Two Three Four people that I know of on my f-list have flooded basements. Luckily for us, the roof repair done earlier this year seems to have held up so far.

nminusone and I got caught in last night's torrential downpour, which started right around the time we left Ikea at 8. Our dinner plans changed abruptly from "Let's stop at Busara" to "Let's go someplace that has a parking garage". It took about an hour to get from College Park to Tyson's on the Beltway, with average speed being somewhere around 25 MPH. I already have a hard time with vision when driving at night in the rain, but at night in the rain where the rain is coming down at around 2 inches an hour on average and in a new car I'm not entirely accustomed to yet is a whole honkin' lot of fun. Not as stressful as it could've been (the new car seems to have pretty good tires), but the beer at dinner sure was a welcome sight.

Other stuff from the weekend:

brian1789 is in Atlanta for his sister-in-law's funeral, if you could spare some good thoughts or prayers for him and patgreene and the rest of the family, I'm sure it would be appreciated.

Bought new car on Friday, which took about an hour longer than I expected thanks to the person in line ahead of me for the finance guy doing a sight-unseen trade-in without their current car's VIN handy. It took them a bit over an hour I think, it took me all of ten minutes since I already had my eLoan check in hand, didn't need financing and wasn't trading anything in. The finance guy bore a disturbing resemblance to a younger Christopher Walken, and got points for having a Demotivator poster on his office wall. New car is v. pretty: it's this in strato blue, with a moonroof. The color on my monitor looks much lighter than it does in person, it's a very dark, almost purple-tinted blue.

After finally getting out of the dealership, picked up nminusone and hauled butt over to the Arlington Cinema & Drafthouse for the completely-sold-out charity showing of "Serenity" with some friends. Jayne hats galore, and one woman came dressed in Inara's gold and black outfit. As other folks have said, it was fun to see it in a theater full of fans. Came >this< close to meeting jessicamelusine finally, but we all missed each other in part because our group was sitting in the very front row of the theater, down below the wall, and it was hard to see/be seen.

If I could shop for and purchase a car completely over the internet and have someone deliver it to my house, I'd be totally happy. At least I've gotten a quote from one of the local dealers for something slightly less than what they claim invoice is, and about $400 less than what Edmunds claimed was their local average. I have requests out to a couple of other dealers, so we'll see how that stacks up. I also have two "come test drive it tomorrow, I'll be here all day" notes, which I'm ignoring for right now. I may well go test drive tomorrow anyway, but I'm not going to commit to it. This is what I'm looking at, with the automatic transmission, side airbags and moonroof. I can live without the moonroof, but I really like the one in my Protege and figure if I'm going to shell out for a new car I might as well look for what I want; the first two are absolute requirements though. I've decided to be sensible and not commit myself right now to the payments that a Mini would require. Perhaps for my next car.

Part of the reason this is only the second time in my life that I've gone car shopping is because I truly, truly suck at price negotiations. A halfway decent car salesman could (and would) walk right over me. That's why I'm taking nminusone with me; any of you who've ever argued with him will know exactly what I mean. ;) I will sit down, shut up, and sign the check when it's all done. Last time, I took Don with me and he kindly did all the arguing negotiating. I know it's a skill I should learn (and should grow a backbone while I'm at it), but I'd really prefer not to start practicing with a car salesman.

Time for a new engine in my car, to the tune of more than the car is actually worth at this point. My decision now is: 1) drop the money to replace the engine and fix the leaking exhaust manifold into this car and keep driving it; 2) buy a beater for about an equivalent amount of money; or 3) suck it up and just go hunting for a new car and hope to get $250 or so for trade-in on my poor little Protege.

It's not completely unexpected news, but I was hoping that wasn't going to be the answer.

On the positive side, after the last couple of days I can recommend Ferris Automotive. You wouldn't think a mechanic would recommend buying a new car rather than giving them a several-thousand dollar job. I wouldn't anyway, not based on previous experience with different mechanics. Now I'm kicking myself for not having gone to them first.

Car's been sitting in the office parking lot all weekend because when I went to leave Friday night, it wouldn't start. Chris -- Hero of the Revolution -- brought out a new battery since the jumpstart approach didn't work, and spent an hour or so under the hood of my car in the pouring rain. When that didn't work, we bailed and came home, and he went with me over to the mechanic this morning to talk to them about it. At the moment, current working theory is that the timing belt is fine, but the ignition coil might be burned out. =/ They're going to come back and tow it over to the shop to check it out at some point.

Ah well. Nine years with very few mechanical problems in spite of my benign neglect. Guess it's time for things to start going wrong finally.

I did write something about this on Friday, but I went back and made two or three recent posts that talked about financial stuff, even indirectly, private. The reason why is a post all on its own, but that's for later.