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Friday, June 23, 2006

drivers wanted

You know, it's been a while since I posted about buying a green Beetle, and I missed doing that, so today we...bought a green Beetle.

But the new one is a 2004 instead of a 2000, and doesn't need a couple thousand dollars worth of repair work, and doesn't have 115k miles on it thanks to my old commute from Oakland to Silicon Valley.

Here's what happened. The car started overheating and freaking out on the way home from the airport when I picked Dennis up after Bonnaroo. I was: not amused. My first aid attempts were useless, so I took it to the dealer for diagnosis, because I suspected we might trade the car in if the diagnosis was bad (with a comped diagnosis on the trade-in), and I could always get it fixed elsewhere if the news wasn't dire.

It turned out to mostly be stuff that one would expect to start breaking around the 100,000 mile mark, but it was pretty bad and I crunched the numbers and based on what the car was worth, we decided to throw the repair money towards a down payment instead if we could get a good deal on a newer Beetle.

The first Beetle was pretty great until now. It had far fewer problems than my two previous cars, and most of the things that came up were taken care of by VW, so we were in complete agreement that we wanted another one.

The car broke on Monday, we took it in on Tuesday, and just got the new car today. I actually managed to do most of the stuff you're supposed to do, like lining up financing in advance and walking out after an hour of negotiations and letting them call me back with a better deal the next day (which they did), so I think we only got a little bit screwed (it's still buying a used car, so it seems foolish to claim to not have gotten screwed, but they didn't get away with anything outrageous).

Yes, I know we're having a baby and therefore every force in the universe should be pushing us toward an SUV. I like little cars! It's a good child-wrangling car, too. Even though it's a 2-door, the ceiling is so high that not-especially-tall people like me and Dennis can semi-stand in the back with the front seats flipped forward and have full access to the baby seat. Maybe we'll get the convertible version next time, when the kid is older and can tell us if it's too windy back there. I'd hate to have to put doggles on a baby.

I have mad skills at packing that car, considering the amount of cargo space available. Seriously, last weekend I had a big desk in there, and a floor lamp. The desk was broken up into three pieces, but still, it was a whole desk in a Beetle.

I surprised Dennis with a new desk when he got home from his trip. I'd had my eye on it at Ikea, but it has been out of stock for a while, and then I snagged it cheap off craigslist from someone who was graduating and leaving town. I didn't do the greatest job putting it back together; I don't think I was supposed to have a big piece left over. Eh, we're moving in a month and a half, and I'll fix it when I take it apart again to get it upstairs.

Now I have to decide what to put in the car's bud vase.

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Saturday, June 17, 2006

fabric store websites are the opiate of the masses

Here are two sets of fabrics I'm considering for the nursery, for accessories and window treatments.



Retro Sci-fi



Sock Monkeys

I like both of them because they have lots of colors and aren't a specific licensed design, so they're pretty flexible, and there are lots of ways to theme around them.

Assume white walls and Rental Beige carpet. Which one do you like?

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Thursday, June 15, 2006

de-luxe apartment in the sky

The baby has whapped me with the Exhaustion Stick the last couple of weeks, and I haven't been able to do much of anything. Where is this second trimester burst of energy I keep hearing about? Huh?

But, even without my being able to participate, we have good things happening. The big one is that our upstairs neighbors are moving out. Not only does this mean an end to Fake Orgasm Theatre, it also means there will be a two bedroom apartment available. And that means the baby won't be sleeping in the kitchen after all!

We're going to move up there at some point in August; the big moving party will probably be Saturday, August 12. It should be a pretty easy move, since it's just right up the stairs. I'm suddenly happy that we mostly have Ikea furniture that doesn't weigh a ton. Yay for poverty.

I'm so flipping excited about being able to have a real nursery. One of my friends is lending us a crib, which means that baby will have a choice of four places to sleep: the bassinet, the crib, the moses basket, or the co-sleeper. Begin placing your bets now. The tiebreaker round will be decided by which one Gracie will most want to sleep in.

Since this is our kid, he'll probably reject all of the above and only sleep in a shoebox on top of the TV.

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Saturday, June 03, 2006

Ok, who forgot to pay the karma bill?

Oh, man. Today. Such a day.

Dennis' day started to turn craptastic much earlier than mine did, but only because I got to sleep in and he had to go to work.

He had structured his day to be done at 11, since we had plans in the afternoon. Yeah, he left around 4. So, not so much. Some fuckwits vandalized the bathrooms at St. Ned's last night, so he had to clean up an ungodly mess, and our new best friends also kicked the shit out of both toilets and ripped out the insides so he had to replace the entire flush assemblies. Which of course involved two trips to the hardware store and a lot of swearing and phone calls home apologizing for being so late.

It was just not a good day to be the sexton.

Meanwhile, after I finally got my preggo ass out of bed, I decided to do some laundry, which turned into a weird battle with the annoying neighbor upstairs, who kept taking my laundry out of the dryer just before it finished so that she could claim the dryer. Uh, yeah. I have no idea. So the laundry took a lot longer than I expected, which is just as well since Dennis was stranded at work.

He finally got home and I offered to go get us some Chinese takeout for dinner, in the interest of lazyness. I left on my little journey, almost there, everything's great...and....wait for it...the car starts handling badly. Is it the road? No! It's my brand new flat tire! Whee!

I made it to the Chinese place and called roadside assistance, who sent a guy to deal with it. He got right to work...on the wrong tire. And I was sitting there wondering if I should say anything, or if he was going to use some kind of magic jack that needs both tires off. I was already feeling a bit defensive about not just changing it myself, and I didn't want to look like some silly girl who knows nothing about tires, right? Fortunately he glanced to his right and saw the pool of rubber that used to be the other tire before he got the lugnuts off. We had a good laugh about it.

Oh, and I had a snack while I was waiting for the tow truck, and my fortune cookie had no fortune in it.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, a near-starving Dennis tripped over the powercord to my laptop and smacked his head on something solid. He called to tell me and we both just started laughing and I told him to cover himself in bubble wrap and not move until I got home.

I made it home (by way of Baskin-Robbins, because if anyone ever deserved a hot fudge sundae, it's my husband) in one piece. We're going to lay low for the rest of the evening and hope it doesn't start raining frogs or something.

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Thursday, June 01, 2006

muppet news flash

Crossover from the baby blog.

I'm just about out of the first trimester, and today we found out that we're having a little boy! Wow.

If you need me, I will be eating everything in sight. It's what I do.

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