cargrump
Whoof. I've taken a few beatings over the last few days over this.
My office is moving across town, which spells an end for my nice little commute with Whines. This is a sad thing, but not an unalloyed tragedy, it gives me a degree of freedom I haven't had in a while -- as much as I love being able to go home with my mate at the end of a work day, being nailed to someone else's schedule has its down sides. So I had to get a car, and I'm not totally upset about this, tho in the balance it would have been better if I didn't need to. Of course, I'm forgetting how to park, so there's trade-offs.
I ended up purchasing a station wagon from some friends, which seemed to be a nice arrangement all around--put my money to work helping someone else out of a fix, which I love being able to do, particularly if I can meet one of my needs in the process. So, that's good.
The initial purchase ended up costing me a lot more money than I thought it would, like $1200 more. Upsetting. I knew it would be expensive, there'd be some repairs that had to happen, but that was half again as much as I'd planned to spend, money that went down the car-toilet.
Now the car's acting up. It's not my friends' fault, there was some extenuating, complex circumstances...but I spent months and months with a car on its death bed not so very long ago, and the symptoms were too similar.
*sigh* I'm really not in a blame mode, I'm just sad and frustrated by life. I'm sad that I had to get the car in the first place, feeling a little helpless in the face of my own ignorance of cars in general...it's not a skill I particularly want to develop, there's only so much time in the world to learn things and do things, but I do recognize my basic ignorance in this field, it's occasionally a problem. And I have this dread that I'm falling back into the horrible, claustrophobic world of "guy with dying car," it's (mostly) irrational, but a hard fear to shake.
It is a nice car. Once it gets over its issues, anyway, it will be.
My office is moving across town, which spells an end for my nice little commute with Whines. This is a sad thing, but not an unalloyed tragedy, it gives me a degree of freedom I haven't had in a while -- as much as I love being able to go home with my mate at the end of a work day, being nailed to someone else's schedule has its down sides. So I had to get a car, and I'm not totally upset about this, tho in the balance it would have been better if I didn't need to. Of course, I'm forgetting how to park, so there's trade-offs.
I ended up purchasing a station wagon from some friends, which seemed to be a nice arrangement all around--put my money to work helping someone else out of a fix, which I love being able to do, particularly if I can meet one of my needs in the process. So, that's good.
The initial purchase ended up costing me a lot more money than I thought it would, like $1200 more. Upsetting. I knew it would be expensive, there'd be some repairs that had to happen, but that was half again as much as I'd planned to spend, money that went down the car-toilet.
Now the car's acting up. It's not my friends' fault, there was some extenuating, complex circumstances...but I spent months and months with a car on its death bed not so very long ago, and the symptoms were too similar.
*sigh* I'm really not in a blame mode, I'm just sad and frustrated by life. I'm sad that I had to get the car in the first place, feeling a little helpless in the face of my own ignorance of cars in general...it's not a skill I particularly want to develop, there's only so much time in the world to learn things and do things, but I do recognize my basic ignorance in this field, it's occasionally a problem. And I have this dread that I'm falling back into the horrible, claustrophobic world of "guy with dying car," it's (mostly) irrational, but a hard fear to shake.
It is a nice car. Once it gets over its issues, anyway, it will be.