The New Car is Fast.
It’s been quite a while since I put anything on this site, and quite a bit has happened that seems interesting, at least to me. I don’t want to fill a couple pages though, so I’m only going to cover one thing right now.
A couple months ago, my parents came to visit me here in Omaha. As I understood it, they were going to stay Thursday night, then head to my brother James’ on Friday. But it turned out he wasn’t around, so they decided to just hang out with me all weekend. Of course, they didn’t just come out and tell me this; first on Thursday they asked if they could stay Friday as well, and didn’t tell me until Friday night that they were staying the entire weekend. My parents have always believed that I have the ability to read their minds; I thought I had broken this belief over the last couple years but apparently they’ve gone into some kind of relapse. Hopefully they got it this time when I explained to them that I don’t know things that they haven’t told me yet.
Anyway, they surprised me by pulling up to the appt in a shiny new convertible! The story was, they went to a car show the weekend before, just to check it out, because Dad was thinking about getting a new one sometime next year. But while they were there, they found a 2004 Chrysler Sebring with like 17,000 miles on it that was being sold as used. Turns out the previous owner died less then a year after buying it, and his family traded it for a minivan or something. So my parents uncharacteristically haggled for a couple hours, and ended up buying this car right there on the spot.
Now, all this wheeling and dealing didn’t include trading in his 2000 Chevy Blazer, and I was getting tired of the Buick, so I was all like "SELL IT TO ME!!!" in my best Gollum voice. And so we worked out a thing where I give him ten grand for it. He’s letting me pay him back over the next couple years, and in the mean time I sold the Buick to a friend of mine here for a cool 800 bucks.
The Blazer had issues with it’s front left speakers, which the shop people had told my dad was due to a blown amp in the stereo deck. I think no problem, I’m going to put my Alpine in there anyway. When I got to doing this, however, I ran into two problems: first, my Alpine doesn’t have the right kind of mounting bracket; and second, the front left speakers still don’t work! Luckily I have some car stereo freak friends around here, and I ended up replacing both the front door 6.5” speakers with some coax ones I got a best buy for $69, and the dash tweeters with some 4.5” coax speakers my man Craig had lying around. I put the Alpine back in the Buick, and tacked an extra hundred bucks onto the price tag; and kept the stock stereo in the Blazer. The end result isn’t the best car stereo in the world, but it sounds pretty good for seventy bucks and a couple hours work.
This is way too long now, so that’s the end of the new car story. Next time I’ll write about the concerts I’ve both seen and missed lately. I won’t say which is which yet, but the bands to be discussed include Skinny Puppy, Ministry, MLWTTKK, The Faint, Mathew Sweet, and Ween.
A couple months ago, my parents came to visit me here in Omaha. As I understood it, they were going to stay Thursday night, then head to my brother James’ on Friday. But it turned out he wasn’t around, so they decided to just hang out with me all weekend. Of course, they didn’t just come out and tell me this; first on Thursday they asked if they could stay Friday as well, and didn’t tell me until Friday night that they were staying the entire weekend. My parents have always believed that I have the ability to read their minds; I thought I had broken this belief over the last couple years but apparently they’ve gone into some kind of relapse. Hopefully they got it this time when I explained to them that I don’t know things that they haven’t told me yet.
Anyway, they surprised me by pulling up to the appt in a shiny new convertible! The story was, they went to a car show the weekend before, just to check it out, because Dad was thinking about getting a new one sometime next year. But while they were there, they found a 2004 Chrysler Sebring with like 17,000 miles on it that was being sold as used. Turns out the previous owner died less then a year after buying it, and his family traded it for a minivan or something. So my parents uncharacteristically haggled for a couple hours, and ended up buying this car right there on the spot.
Now, all this wheeling and dealing didn’t include trading in his 2000 Chevy Blazer, and I was getting tired of the Buick, so I was all like "SELL IT TO ME!!!" in my best Gollum voice. And so we worked out a thing where I give him ten grand for it. He’s letting me pay him back over the next couple years, and in the mean time I sold the Buick to a friend of mine here for a cool 800 bucks.
The Blazer had issues with it’s front left speakers, which the shop people had told my dad was due to a blown amp in the stereo deck. I think no problem, I’m going to put my Alpine in there anyway. When I got to doing this, however, I ran into two problems: first, my Alpine doesn’t have the right kind of mounting bracket; and second, the front left speakers still don’t work! Luckily I have some car stereo freak friends around here, and I ended up replacing both the front door 6.5” speakers with some coax ones I got a best buy for $69, and the dash tweeters with some 4.5” coax speakers my man Craig had lying around. I put the Alpine back in the Buick, and tacked an extra hundred bucks onto the price tag; and kept the stock stereo in the Blazer. The end result isn’t the best car stereo in the world, but it sounds pretty good for seventy bucks and a couple hours work.
This is way too long now, so that’s the end of the new car story. Next time I’ll write about the concerts I’ve both seen and missed lately. I won’t say which is which yet, but the bands to be discussed include Skinny Puppy, Ministry, MLWTTKK, The Faint, Mathew Sweet, and Ween.