catching up to the current...

absolutely marvelous! it's been quite busy the last month... let's see... saw MCR at allstate... if my hearing wasn't bad enough, after scores and scores of screaming teenage girls, i think i've reached old man hearing status... we also purchased tickets for arcade fire coming up... which is a show that never seems to dissappoint...

magically lost my cell phone in somewhere within the bits and bytes abound... this was the point that i realized how much i rely on technology... (hell, if my pc is offline for a day, i go nuts...) nonetheless, it's been replaced and i'm finally back thrown back into the trend... (thanks to a b-day giftcard from my sister)

i turned 26 - and am never really a fan of celebrating my b-day at all... dunno why, but oddly enough i think it has to do with my shyness... in anycase, j treated me with a DS-lite that i've been thirsting over for the last year or so... she always knows what she can get me that'll keep my occupied for ages.. (ds, world of warcraft. simpson bats, foam cowboy hats,m etc..)

we also finally decided to purchase a new car for j... she's been driving this '94 cavalier since back in the day, but the car was quite the trooper... heck, if we had room for it, i wanted to keep it as a beater car, and something i could work on and learn more about cars on.. there was nothing wrong with it, but alas it was time to retire the car (mostly due to the fact that i had a cc with lots of gm bonus bucks on it that were all going to expire...)..

it was a sad day to see it go.. it's funny at times how attached you can become to such inanimate objects... it felt like a metallic funeral pyre watching it sit ontop of that tow truck, slowly sailing away to be auctioned off.... we ended up donating it to an animal rescue shelter, so we hope it helps...

buying the car was quite the experience - after finally signing for the car from the salesman and then a 2 hour or so wait, we were escorted to the first of two "let's try to sell you a bunch of overpriced warranties for stuff you'll never need"... now keep in mind, we've already been there about 2 or so hours and just wanted to get out of there... instead, the "warranty-death" saleslady proceeded to tell us how she would make this "quick" by apparently first starting totally off topic on sushi, before finally getting to the point...

she was trying to sell warranties for paint/corrosion fading, some anti-theft tracker, and whatever the hell else it was she was trying to sell... trying to enforce her sale with examples of acid rain, hail damage, and even the deadly bird shit that is apparently so acidic it'd dissolve you the instant you touch it... the funny thing was. was how much she reiterated the bird shit... apparently if we didn't have their paint warranty, bird shit would eat our cars alive...

after about slow pain-stakingly 30 or so minutes of listening to her, i basically told her that i bet about 80% (stat pulled out my ass like most stats) of people don't have this warranty so my car will look just like everyone else's... at this point, she threw the "don't you want to protect your investment?" BS line... yeah, that's exactly what i want to do.. protect an investment that always depreciates, rather than appreciates... after this new miserable experience, we moved on to salesman #2..

it all started off quaint and quite nice... talked about general shaz, until he finally got to the point of trying to sell extended warranties for the parts... i told him no and he proceeded to keep trying to make the sale... now, there's nothing better than a salesman basically calling you a "stupid-fuck" indirectly.. phrases such as "it'll pay for itself if you use it just once, there's no real reason for you to not buy it" or "so you don't want to pay for something that'll pay for itself after just one use?"..

sorry fucktard. no. at this point, i decided to have some fun with this guy and i started to goad him on (in a very nice, and unbeknownst way to even my wife, that i was doing it - btw, this is pretty accurate of how the convo went..)... i started making up shit about how i have good friends who know cars (well i actually do, so this was fo rolez) and that i like fixing cars...

he countered with "well, good luck with trying to fix an electrical problem in the door"... to which i replied, "oh, i'm not worried... i have friends who are EE majors and have done stuff like that before"...

Taken agast, he razor replied with, "well, it'll cost you about 8 hours of labor... that'll be expensive and it'll tkae a long time".. to which i replied again "well, i like learning about that stuff and my friends don't mind teaching me... i need to learn this somewhere..."...

Trying to prove me wrong he wagered - "and the parts are expensive, you'll have to pay for those".. my reply... "oh that's not a problem, i've gotten tons of parts from salvage yards that i've used in my car now, and for cheap..."

"what do you drive now?" - "a 97 chevy blazer to which i've replaced lots of stuff and fixed on.."
"oh.... this will be much harder to work on than your blazer" - (could you believe this shit?)

"that's ok, i can learn it, i learned how to work on my blazer with my friends, so i don't think will be a problem..."

"Well, it'd take at least 8 hours or so of labor, so you'll have to pay for that..."
to which i whimsically replied... "well, labor payments to me is a 12 pack of beer..."

in jackfaced unmoved emotion - "you're not in college anymore" (i honestly can't believe he said that... at that point.. i knew i was pissing him off... and who was he to tell me what my friends would do for me...)... "well, i have good friends, they've always helped me with everything...i help them with computer stuff, they help me with car/ee stuff..."

after this point, he just didn't say a word after that and just got us the rest of our paperwork queitly... however, i wasn't done... i continued to bombard him with questions in a very friendly/cheerful manner... asked him about if the chicago auto show brought lots of business, or if he's ever been to it... told him about how i've been to the d-town auto show... these were all received with very short responses as he tried as quickly as he could to process the rest of our paperwork...

of course, i can't really blame them for trying and being "pushy"... in fact that's there job... but just due to being there for so long, i was frankly bored and just wanted to get outta there... i saw an opportunity for some fun.. and i took it...

about 3+ hours after first walking in, it was finally over... we are now a proud owner of a 07' red chevy cobalt... i can't wait for the next car we buy... cause i'm thinking i'm gunna have me some more fun :)