Thursday in brief:
sleep...bank...store...post office...chess w/sister...billiards w/sister...tv...sleep
At the moment, my car is exactly 100 miles off the lot.
posted by Tom 2:12 AM
Thursday, January 02, 2003
Happy New Year to all of you. I hope everyone had a good time ringing in the year. Me, well, for slightly more than the cost of a movie I purchased myself four hours of entertainment--okay, less than an hour of it was actually exciting; the rest was twiddling my thumbs and signing my name until my arm cramped up--and a new set of wheels. Yeah, I was going to wait until I could save up a little larger down payment, but one of the dealerships that I had taken a test drive at called me up Tuesday morning and told me that it would be worth my time come by that afternoon. I didn't get a rip-the-dealership-off kind of bargain; they still made some profit, but I did get a price that even an employee would have had to negotiate for (below MSRP), and being a recent graduate qualified me for an interest rate about half of what a normal first-time car buyer would expect. Bottom line is that since it was the last day of the year, I got them to come down on the price to a point where they wouldn't have been willing to go if I came back in a couple of months, so it made economic sense to go with the smaller down payment. Later that evening I took my cousin and a couple of her friends ice skating. While taking one of her friends home (about 1:00am) I was nearly side-swiped in my new car...TWICE...BY THE SAME IDIOT! The first time was sort of understandable for someone who doesn't know the area. We were both trying to get on the freeway going north, which would intuitively be a right turn, but this particular on ramp requires you to make a left turn and loop around. I was in the left turn lane and he comes all the way across from the right lane when he realizes that the on ramp is on the other side of the road. No problem...just look first next time. The second instance wasn't so forgivable. Once we were on the otherwise empty freeway, I moved to the far left lane and start to pass the guy. He proceeds to cut sharply across the two lanes in between us and narrowly misses my front end for the second time in as many minutes. But hey, now I know my brakes work well. And now for some much-needed sleep.
posted by Tom 1:46 AM
It starts with the shoe. Maybe the next day it's a t-shirt or a sock. You don't know if the washing machine ate it, or your roommate borrowed it a month ago and forgot that it was yours. All you know is that by the end of the week, you're walking to class naked because you don't have any clothes left.
