my mother is good

[cranbonite]

She's going to drive from Reading to Great Barrington on Sunday to bring the car that I'll be using this year: it was my sister's, but she's gone to California to do god-knows-what for who-knows-how-long - it's a very bland, boring beige Toyota Corolla station wagon, and it's comfy to drive and gets good gas mileage! yay! I'm really happy about

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[cranbonite]

Oh dammit...the $50. I'd forgotten about that. I guess I can get $50 in cash, but that's a large chunk of what money I have right now. What a suck. Anyway, thank you for the info, and the reminder.

Someone else who's living with me seemed to remember it as III. But who knows. I'll find out when I get there, I guess, heh. I'm sure that the space will be used for something, I told my mother I would sleep there (it does have a little couchy thingy right? I'm not hallucinating memories?) if there's no room for me on my own floor on Sunday. It shall be used. I can have WILD PARTIES YEAH MAN. Uh yeah. I dunno.

The car is actually a 1997 model, I believe. But I find it very comfy. I am small, and very short-legged, and I like to sit WAY close up to the steering wheel and pedals. The seat is very low, which I like too. I hate being in SUV(-type cars, as John always reminds me that the Cherokee is classed as a wagon)s and vans, too high up. The seat in this station wagon is pretty forgiving, and I drove it on a 2+ hour trip to Jersey.

You know, I remember that at the end of sophomore year, they changed the policy so that they didn't give us the $50 back in cash, they just credited it to our parents' account. I wonder if perhaps they'll put it on the bill then this time, rather than asking for cash? One can hope.

[oldlife_archive]

My sophomore year, I actually had to drive to the bank, get cash, and drive back, sulking all the while and making myself look like an ass in front of one of the together and mature Asian supersmart math people in my class, who probably has his own wing of MIT by now (Jeff Cua). Actually, no. I think he got turned down by MIT, which probably means he got a BA and is now working as a frontline physicist for NASA :P

There is no little couchy thing, unless you bring it yourself or it was already there because someone else never moved it. In my particular case, there was one of the comfy chairs from the living room, but that was chiefly because the previous occupant had left it up there and everybody involved was too lazy to move it back where it technically belonged. It would be uncomfortable to sleep on. And you might do better with the floor in the semi-common room than the floor in your own, as the floor in your own is carpeted rather than shiny happy hardwood.

You may also open the place up to the general population later, depending on who actually lives there. A number of other loft people have chosen to do so because they got on well with their housemates, usually when the entire Orchard was being run by smoker cabals, such as during your freshman year. I remember when I went to check the place out at the end of that year, Bill White and the others had actually dragged a TV and one of the common room couches up there and turned it into a sort of den. As an INTJ, you're more likely to follow my lead and go "mine, all mine, RAWR!" until Ken instructs you nicely to share - which he probably won't, but it is technically supposed to be shared space, so just be aware of that.

1997. I hate you. That's probably right around the type of car I'd get if I could afford a car at all right now and owning a car in Seattle wasn't an incredibly stupid thing to do in the first place. Be glad you've (presumably) got the parentals paying your insurance, for now. Sooner or later, you'll have to pay it yourself on top of bills and living expenses and it's going to SUCK. (Granted, I've never done this myself, but I'm aware of the suckage. And whatever you do, don't register a vehicle in Massachusetts at all ever no matter what you do. You will be KILLED. But I'm sure John has already been quite eloquent on this subject already.)

[cranbonite]

Re: the common room, I figured there was nothing I could do to stop the common room from being common. I don't mind, as I'd like to open up to most of my housemates - most I know only marginally and they seem kinda nifty. The only one who is a senior is Ned. I shall try to ignore his existence as much as possible. The juniors do seem to be a bit of the smokerish types as well, but the more open/less judgmental sort. One was one of my freshlings on 3rd east in Crosby.

My parents are paying the insurance, yes, but it's not really my car. It goes right back to them after I graduate. They just know that for the path I'm trying to take, the class (Greek) that I'm taking at Bard is necessary, and that the potential van schedule (they ended up not having a van this year cos everyone's driving) would have been really difficult-to-impossible for me. Every time I brought up the idea of a car for this year, I was told to go ahead and buy one...but when I signed up for the Bard class I was told that unless I was driving I might want to reconsider because they didn't have a van for that early in the day. Luckily Talya had decided she was gonna be outta there and working on random organic farms on the west coast by summer, so it was kind of a spare. And just happens to be the car of our household that I prefer to drive. Even thought it stinks of various cigarettes and patchouli oil and sometimes pot and other things that my sister's hippie friends (they're my friends too and I love 'em, mind) infest it with. But insurance sounds scarily like a bitch. I hope to be able for my younger adult life to live in a place when a car won't be remotely necessary or even particularly useful. I hate to think of the expense. But in a place like Great Barrington, or say in Reading, it's a freaking godsend.

(Did John ever tell you how the city of Cambridge would not let him get a parking permit to park his car on the street we're living on, unless he CHANGED his registration from Hampden to Cambridge? Even after he explained that it was only a temporary living situation? Such absolute rot. The car's happily living in Somerville most of the week.)

[oldlife_archive]

You are living in an Orchard with Ned. I am so sorry. Now I'm beginning to think that living with JW really wasn't so bad after all. At least he was a *lot* less likely to burn the place down in his sleep because he and his stupid friends had found some new and incredibly asinine way to break the rules.

Insurance is not actually *that* scary, depending on where you live. It's actually relatively low, comparatively, so long as you're not registered in one of about 15 absolutely killer states, of which Massachusetts is #3, and has the most asinine insurance laws in the country, such that only two national companies will even do business there. Not even Geico will touch Massachusetts because of archaic insurance laws, though they'll even do New York and New Jersey, which are the top two - though those two are freaking EXPENSIVE, for obvious reasons. I actually looked into this a couple of months ago - it'll be more expensive than the norm for you because you're a younger driver, but thank whatever diety you happen to believe in that at least you're not male. Most places actually have fairly cheap insurance, usually depending on population density, insurance laws, and how badly people drive (the latter is not applicable in the south, where drivers, nay, *people*, are insane and insurance is still relatively low.) If you ever do get to that point, the stats are pretty easy to obtain on the interweb. I've also got an old set from earlier in the year knocking around in a private entry somewhere in the vicinity of April.

(He did not, because he knew that it would only fuel my hatred of Boston and the Boston area even further. HATE BOSTON. And hate that bullshit about street parking permits. Hate hate hate.)