On cars and Hogwarts, again

On July 27, 2021July 27, 2021 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy1 Comment

If you’ve been around for a while, it’s possible that you remember this story: my son attends a pricey private school, one that my wife and I are affording with financial assistance. When we first started sending him there, I was driving a Ford Escape that had a six-figure mileage and was, itself, old enough to have a drivers’ license. My current Kia Soul is an upgrade. However, there was a day, several years ago, when I was picking my son up during the winter in the Escape and experiencing a bit of class anxiety. I comforted myself with the existence of what looked like a station wagon in the parking spot next to me that also was covered in salt and muddy snow and looked kind of shitty, only to discover that I was comparing my $2000 Escape to a fucking $100,000 Porsche.

He’s at summer camp right now, and I just went to pick him up, and I found myself in the car line behind a Tesla– I don’t know exactly which model, but not the one with the weird doors. One kid got in that car and they stayed in their spot, possibly waiting for another kid. My kid came out and got in my car, so I waited for the lane to be clear and pulled out to drive around the Tesla that had been parked in front of me.

Only to find myself behind another fucking Tesla.

My wife and I do just fine, I swear, and I see the effects of actual poverty every day at work, and again, no one in this building has ever been anything other than perfectly nice, but damn, there is just no faster way to make myself feel broke than to look around at the cars any time I’m near Hogwarts. It’s ridiculous.

I suspect we’re going to be back up over 100,000 new cases a day nationwide by the end of the week, (EDIT: Ha, it happened today!) and the CDC just announced that everybody should start masking up indoors again. I just ordered a new pack of filters for my favored mask. I was really hoping to not have to teach in a mask again this year, but apparently only about 20% of 12-15-year-olds are vaccinated nationwide and I’m sure that number is lower in my district, so I really don’t have any choice. Indiana’s numbers are going up, but they aren’t spiking to the degree the nation’s are yet and St. Joe County isn’t as hot as the rest of Indiana, so I’m pretty sure the school year will be starting as normal this year. That said, I don’t think I knew on July 27 last summer how this year would be starting yet, so who the hell knows? I suspect everyone will just close their eyes and pretend Covid has gone away, but we’ll see.

LOUISVILLE: View from my car window

On April 19, 2019 By Luther M. SilerIn life1 Comment

Guess whose car got broken into last night? And has to listen to this for four hours on Sunday?

(Coulda been a lot worse. They took a pair of prescription sunglasses. That’s it. Didn’t touch any of my con stuff and the car didn’t flood in the rain.)

Meet Joey Car James

On July 31, 2017 By Luther M. SilerIn Photography3 Comments

Joey here will be conveying us around for the next several days.

Speaking of milestones

On June 1, 2017 By Luther M. SilerIn life, Photography4 Comments

I give you Joey Car Kristofferson II Green.

So, my car

On May 25, 2017May 25, 2017 By Luther M. SilerIn life3 Comments

Screen Shot 2017-05-25 at 5.02.01 PM I done fucked up today, I think.

My current car is a 2001 Ford Escape with nearly a hundred and seventy thousand miles on it. The fabric on the driver’s side door is mostly peeled off, there are big patches of rust inside all the doors, and there’s a big crack in the rear bumper. The radio intermittently decides it needs to take a rest and won’t turn back on for anywhere from a few seconds to a day. It leaks oil from a leak so deep in the engine that repairing it is an absurdity. And its gas mileage… well, leaves something to be desired.

That said: it turns on when I need it to turn on and it gets me where I want to go, and while it’s loud as hell at speed it’s not an uncomfortable ride by any means. It’s just that at 170K it is only a matter of time until something breaks that will be pointless to repair. To get ahead of myself a bit, I was offered $1200 for it as a trade today and I think it was probably a pretty generous offer, all told.

The boy has named the car Joey Car Kristofferson. I will very much miss having a car named Joey Car Kristofferson, to the point where I will probably insist that its replacement be named Joey Car Kristofferson II. (My wife’s car, incidentally, is called Lisa Car James. Don’t ask where the boy got the names. No one knows.)

So anyway, I took that car up there for a test drive earlier today. It’s a 2016 Kia Soul in the + trim level, with 28,000 miles on it. It’s immaculately clean and seems to run beautifully. It’s small– trunk space, in particular, is kind of a joke– but it fits my main need in a vehicle, which is that it rides high enough that I climb into the seat and slide out, rather than the other way around. I refuse to struggle to get out of my car, which means I’ll never own a sedan again. I’ve started to seriously hate them. I test drove a brand-new Ford Escape a few months ago, and loved it, but financially I think it’s a better idea to go for a lightly used vehicle right now rather than a new one. Unless I lease, which I might choose to do but <insert every website and argument about leasing ever> and my brain isn’t set up for that right now.

It’s just under fifteen thousand bucks, that car, and with the financing I’d expect to get I’d probably be making payments of just over $200 a month. Which is in the neighborhood where I’m thinking Yeah, I can swing that rather than I can afford that. To my mind, that’s a real difference; you can swing a new purchase if you can come up with some ways to cut costs that would absorb a lot of the new bill and figure you’ll be okay. You can afford something if you don’t have to think at all about what you’ll do to pay for it. For example, I can afford to spend $25-50 pretty much whenever I want so long as I don’t, like, do it every day. But if I want to buy a new shirt or something? I don’t have to think about that. A car payment means I’m thinking things like well, I do eat out way too often anyway and I’m spending too much fucking money on comic books every week while I’m considering what it would do to my budget. And the down payment would have to come out of our mutual savings, which my wife will likely have something to say about. We did just drop three and a half grand on a new bed, after all.

I’m not sure I have a point here, and I don’t know if I’m asking for advice or just talking. I just need to decide how quickly I think I need a new car, and whether I should buy a new one before I need a new one.

Go buy some of my books and make this easier, dammit. 🙂

In which reality and Twitter are both dumb

On July 20, 2016July 20, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy1 Comment

So seeing this tweet from Kirsten Gillibrand got me all het up at first. There is no way in the universe that Citizens United is going to be overturned in Hillary’s first 30 days in office. It’s a literal impossibility. Even with the most compliant Congress of all time, it’s not going to happen, because it can’t. It would require either another court case to make its way through the system that would challenge United (but would likely not result in an overturn, since the court’s not that much different now) or an actual amendment to the Constitution, which cannot happen in a 30-day timeframe.

I had the blog post composed almost immediately, all full of Dammit, if Trump said something this stupid it would be because he doesn’t know how the government works, but I know you know better, so this is just a lie and a bunch of other similar critical-of-the-person-I’m-voting-for sort of stuff.

Then I clicked on the link, which I had actually missed on my first read of the Tweet, because I was eating and distracted while looking at Twitter, and what Gillibrand means is that Clinton will call for an amendment during her first thirty days, and that the “working to overturn” will start within the first thirty days, not the actual overturn itself. Which is a perfectly reasonable thing and while perhaps not politically possible is at least a thing that the President is capable of doing.

So there goes that post in a puff of “do your reading, asshole” and Twitter brevity. Sigh.

I’ve paid no attention whatsoever to the Republican convention and don’t intend to start now. So I have nothing to say about that.

I actually went and looked at a car this afternoon, and pretty much ruined the salesperson’s day by refusing to buy anything. The 2017 Escape does ride really nicely, though, and while they offered me what I’m pretty sure actually represents a good deal. He said I wasn’t allowed to take the offer sheet they gave me home with me, but then left me alone with it for a few minutes so of course I took a picture, because seriously, dude, it’s 2016, don’t leave me alone with the damn thing if you don’t want me to have a copy.

Nonetheless, I will not be buying a car until I’m certain I can hand over the down payment in cash. Which I can’t do just yet. But maybe by wintertime? We’ll see.

We’re supposed to see a 110 degree heat index on Friday, so all this is entirely moot, as the world will have caught on fire and I will have died by then. So… I dunno, try to get laid in the next couple of days? Because you may not have another chance.

In which I spend money I don’t have

On July 14, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy6 Comments

No, I didn’t buy a new car, but I’m thinking about it: I’m at a Ford dealership right now getting a recall repair done (for free) and literally just as I was sitting down to write this post I got an email with an estimate for all the repairs they think the car needs and it’s roughly 1 1/2 times the actual value of the car. It’s running well for something that is about to fall the fuck apart, but even the shit that’s in BRIGHT RED SCREAMING HOLY SHIT YOU’RE GOING TO DIE font adds up to “may as well total the thing” territory. So I’ve been sitting here in the dealership for an hour already and there’s possibly as much as another two before I can leave, so fuck it, I’m researching new cars.

I don’t really need another SUV. I was driving a two-door Toyota Yaris (which I loved) when the boy came along, and upgrading to something with four doors seemed like a critical necessity what with several years of car seats in our future, and we’d been through a spate of scenarios where we’d had to borrow other people’s cars to move stuff right around the same time. The Yaris, despite being tiny, rode really high, and I quickly discovered that after driving that and then an SUV I don’t ever want to sit down in a car ever again, eliminating virtually every sedan on the market. I want to climb into my seat so that I don’t have to grunt like some sort of animal when I get out of it. Despite its age, I’ve been pretty happy with the current (’01) Escape, so replacing it with another seems reasonable. I just sat down and priced one out on the internet, and discovered to my mild amusement that I could put myself into a new Escape for a lower monthly cost than a Kia Soul (my other leading choice) would end up being, despite the Escape being a few thousand dollars more expensive. Plus: union-made, a big plus.

(The punch line is I probably could afford a new car if I could just curb my comic book habit and dial back on how often I pay for meals. That is insane, but true. Today’s post was very nearly about how comic books are better now than I remember them being at any point in my life. It’s crazy how much money I’m spending on comics every week. Crazy.)

I am aware used cars exist, mind you. And I know the current car was bought used and worked out okay. I just… nah. I know about driving shit off the lot and it losing half its value and all that nonsense. And every computer I’ve ever bought has been obsolete when I bought it, and my Xbox will eventually be on sale for half what I just paid for it, and blah blah blah. Shit loses value. Welcome to reality. I don’t plan on trying to resell anything I buy in two years; this is not worth worrying about at the moment.

Maybe I should get working on the new book before I do something stupid.

Dicks in cars

On May 21, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy9 Comments

I’m going to start walking to work. (*)

I don’t know what the deal has been lately, but twice in the last few weeks I’ve been the subject of angry tirades from dickbags who think the world revolves around them and, crucially, also don’t understand that if I don’t comply with your dickbaggery immediately then it is very unlikely that I’ll comply with your dickbaggery later if you decide to escalate things.

Examples? Sure. There is a Taco Bell near OtherJob (which, I suppose, I ought to start calling OnlyJob by now) where the drive-thru lane funnels you into about thirty feet where the building is on one side and there’s a curb encircling a grassy planted area on the other. In other words, once you’ve ordered food, you’re stuck in that line unless you want to hop the curb.

So I’m attempting to order food and it is taking ridiculously long for whatever reason. The car in front of me gets their food and an extremely apologetic employee tells me it’ll be another couple of minutes before I get mine. I wait. Sure, whatever. The car behind me is not so patient and starts honking her horn. I glance in my rear-view mirror and I see that, somehow, she’s yelling at me, gesturing that I need to move forward so that she can pull out. Now, I’m driving a small SUV, and her car dwarfs mine. She can easily get over the curb, she just doesn’t want to. And if I pull out of this line, the cars behind her are going to move forward, and then there’s going to be a clusterfuck, because I’m not going to be able to get back to the window.

So, no, lady, I’m not going to be accommodating you on this. So I ignore her and stay where I am, but continue to glance in the rear-view from time to time. Note that I can’t actually hear her, but I can see her continue to yell and gesture. No. You hop the curb. Or just be patient. This is ridiculous.

Eventually I get my food and she roars away.

Yesterday, again on my way to OtherJob, I’m second in line waiting for a red light in a left turn lane. I’m maybe a foot off the bumper of the car in front of me– not up his ass, but close enough that there’s clearly no way to squeeze in between us. To my left is one lane of traffic. To my right, the going straight/right turn lane and then an entrance to a parking lot for an apartment complex, which is probably closer to the light than it should be, so even though I’m only the second car waiting for the light it’s basically immediately to my right.

A bigass yellow pickup truck turns right off the street I’m trying to turn onto. He wants into that parking lot, so he just stops, the rear end of his car blocking traffic on the cross street, and starts hollering at me to back up. If he just completes his turn there are a dozen different places within a hundred yards where he can loop around and turn right into that lot, but no, he wants to turn left. Through my car, and eventually through the car to my right that wants to go straight. But no, we can’t do that, so I’ve got to holler at the guy who wants to turn left to back up so that I’m not inconvenienced for twenty seconds.

Again: um, no. Meanwhile, cars are piling up behind him, because he’s blocking a lane on the cross street.

At one point he actually guns his car at me and lunges a foot or so closer. This actually gets him eye contact. Go ahead, asshole. My car is sixteen years old and has 150K miles on it. It’s legally old enough to drive itself. I can handle a dent.

He literally sat there and hollered and blocked traffic for probably a minute or two rather than taking thirty seconds to complete his turn and find a place to turn around. Meanwhile, I’m starting to muse about how difficult it would be to mount a flamethrower where my running boards used to be.

Ah, humanity.

(*) There is absolutely no chance that I’m going to start walking to work.