Michigan creates vacuum.
Well, some of you are probably wondering if I'll ever post another update, and I've been wondering the same thing myself. It's been a pretty stressful several weeks since the week before the wedding. All sorts of crazy details to attend to, and I'm surprised to report I've been too overwhelmed the past week or so to take care of very much on my own. The weirdest part has of course been just the being-married thing, but I'm being hit by everything, from the stress of quitting my annoying but financially profitable factory job, to my poor Mercury not having been drivable when I left, to trying to stuff enough of my stuff in the car with the backseat full of wedding presents, and so on. I also got to drive my new wife to work three days in a row, which isn't such a big deal except that a) the MSU campus is an extraordinarily annoying place to operate a motor vehicle, and b) the latent pangs of being so soundly Put Down by the esteemed operations department head a few weeks ago. And I can't say I have much respect for very many of the student types one sees in the general area. Most seem to be of the type who spend large amounts of money to look like retarded-posteriored punk rapper wannabes but still maintain an inexplicable attitude of superiority. It doesn't help, of course, that some of these people apparantly have some business or other at the lab, which is likewise baffling to an ordinary, respectable fellow like myself.
You also gotta appreciate all the annoying little surprises about how expensive it is to live around here. Expensive apartments aside, metered parking in downtown East Lansing - not even in Lansing proper - is a full buck an hour, same as in Detroit, which is a much larger and more important city. That's a quarter for 15 minutes. At home, the meters don't even have a quarter slot, since 10 cents buys you an hour. I know, it's not really all that much money overall, but it's just absurd. Also, motor vehicle costs seem to be a good deal more expensive here than in Indiana. I have my two station wagons registered on Indiana, and I pay about $55 per year to tag the '87 and about $45 per year for the '79, and I figure that's plenty to pay to have up-to-date little stickers for the license plates. Turns out that in Michigan, the counterperson at the Secretary of State branch office, which handles motor vehicle affairs in lieu of a BMV or DMV, said registration on the '87 will be around $70 or more per year, while the '79 may be almost $90! I absolutely cannot believe it - call it motivation number one for keeping my cars registered in good ol' Indiana for as long as I can. I particularly dread visiting the local State Farm office tomorrow, as I highly doubt they'll be able to match the ~$100/month price point I can get from my State Farm agent back home. Legality be darned, I don't owe the state of Michigan a darn stinking thing, and I'm not going to pay them crazy amounts of money if I can help it!
You also gotta appreciate all the annoying little surprises about how expensive it is to live around here. Expensive apartments aside, metered parking in downtown East Lansing - not even in Lansing proper - is a full buck an hour, same as in Detroit, which is a much larger and more important city. That's a quarter for 15 minutes. At home, the meters don't even have a quarter slot, since 10 cents buys you an hour. I know, it's not really all that much money overall, but it's just absurd. Also, motor vehicle costs seem to be a good deal more expensive here than in Indiana. I have my two station wagons registered on Indiana, and I pay about $55 per year to tag the '87 and about $45 per year for the '79, and I figure that's plenty to pay to have up-to-date little stickers for the license plates. Turns out that in Michigan, the counterperson at the Secretary of State branch office, which handles motor vehicle affairs in lieu of a BMV or DMV, said registration on the '87 will be around $70 or more per year, while the '79 may be almost $90! I absolutely cannot believe it - call it motivation number one for keeping my cars registered in good ol' Indiana for as long as I can. I particularly dread visiting the local State Farm office tomorrow, as I highly doubt they'll be able to match the ~$100/month price point I can get from my State Farm agent back home. Legality be darned, I don't owe the state of Michigan a darn stinking thing, and I'm not going to pay them crazy amounts of money if I can help it!