August 2 misc (edit)

The newspapers were in bundles of 8’s this weekend, the fattest they’ve been for weeks.  It’s a little unusual for the papers to get fatter after July 4th – there aren’t any holidays until Labor Day, but I didn’t mind – 8’s used to be the "usual" size, and it’s encouraging to see advertisers buy space.  Selfish self-interest – fat papers will keep me working.

It was in the 80’s last night when I started work, and didn’t cool off very much – it was nice to wear shorts and a tee shirt instead of layers of stuff.  There were a lot of people around last night – I see more dresses these days than I used to, and I’ve always been a fan of a well dressed woman – easy on the eyes, you know.

I ran into the Daily Driver, the one who was paying me to drive an ice cream truck for him.  (He has two of them and a couple of drivers set up to work for/with him selling ice cream)  He’s a pretty quiet guy – nice, I guess, and he asked me if I had quit (walked off, actually) the job driving for one of his trucks because of the guy I was driving for, who had no valid license and repeatedly failed the written test to get one.  He was a jerk to work with and a sexist bastard too, and I got sick of him and the fact that he repeatedly ordered me to drive like an asshole.  It’s MY license we’re talking about here, and I don’t need this job – that was the big deal to me, putting my DL in jeopardy.

The Daily Driver wasn’t surprised – in fact, his reaction was so low key that I gather this has happened before.  The Dailies guy tells that what’s his name drove after I walked off, insisting he’d make a mint on July 4th… and got himself an $800.00 ticket for driving without a license.

Ha Ha.

I was soo mad when I walked away from the ice cream van that I forgot my clear glasses in the van.  I didn’t realize it for a few hours – took me that long to get home.  No fucking way did I want to see the jerk again and have him holding something of mine over me.  I had an older pair of glasses here – they’d been "replaced" by the ones I left in the van, so I used those for the weekend and got an eye exam and new glasses that next Monday.

***

K* is supposedly coming on the 20th.  I’m looking forward to showing off my car to her – I finally bought one of the rental cars we used.  The black Caliber is everything I’ve ever wanted in a car, although, with the BRIGHT sun this week, I was calling into question  why in the world I got a black car.  Of course, all cars are hot in the sun, but all black?  Never had one of those before, and boy oh boy.

When I was little, I used to build car models, and after awhile of doing that, you accumulate a supply of parts you didn’t have to use – accessories for that car you’re building, and so what if you put a Ford part on a Dodge?  You can’t really do that much in Real Life.  I got used to my vehicles being less of what I wanted them to be, so when I bought the basic Caliber last year, I was thinking "Well, I can just add the stuff I want".  After a year or so of driving the blue Caliber, I had a list of things I wanted, and it looked expensive or impossible to get some of the stuff I wanted too.  On another level, I tried to refinance my car – interest rates had dropped waay lower since I bought the blue car… but no one would refinance me, or if they would, the offer wasn’t all that much better than I was paying anyway.

I took the blue car in to get the oil changed at the dealership I bought it from and wandered out on the lot, spying the Black Caliber, the "Sport" model that I have now.  "Make me a deal on the black one", I told the sales lady, and the deal made, I took.  It was a good deal for them – I see now I could have got the price a little lower, maybe, but my interest rate got cut by more than half, and for only 192 dollars a year more, 16 a month, I’m driving a car that is everything and more than I’ve ever wanted in  a car of my own.

One misc. observation:

The Caliber was a new model in 2006, an ’07 car introduced at the usual time, the beginning of the model year the year before.  I rented one in the summer of ’07 – it had the CVT automatic transmission in it.  I bought an ’08 model with a five speed manual transmission, but the more I read about the CVT, the more I wanted one, so when it turned out that the black one was an AT car, it was icing on the cake – I bought it.

The CVT is, of course, continuously variable, and has no gears – no gear steps as it winds up.  The CVT faces/ed an introduction to the American driver, who had become accustomed to feeling a transmission step through it’s gears.  This lead to poor reviews of the car – many people are so "programmed" to feel and hear those gear changes that they assumed that the Caliber wasn’t very fast or responsive.

It IS.  You just don’t hear a lot of noise, other than the engine going to peak power.  I’m just ten miles short of the five thousand mile mark, so my engine isn’t even broken in yet, but the car accelerates deceptively fast, and the Sport model is stable and sure footed.  Gas mileage will go up as the engine breaks in.  I’m getting less mileage than I did in the manual transmission car, but the black one is heavier – more power accesories – and has a slightly bigger engine/different transmission – and more sound deadening, as the third year of the series.  You kinda want to stay away from NEW cars – let the bugs get worked out of the model first, eh?

The ’07 CVT compared to the ’09 model was slick

– no gear change feelings at all, but the new one has a feeling of gear changes more similar to what you might feel with a different kind of transmission – a sense of "gears".  I haven’t topped it out yet… and might not ever, but so far I know:  the Caliber keeps accelerating until you let off the gas.  The rental in ’07 was as smooth at 95 as it was at 55 – the black one is no different:  Smooth.

I really like the Caliber.  I haven’t had ANY problems with the two that I’ve owned.

The black one is worth about 6k more than the blue one I had, but my total indebtedness only went up about 3k.

THAT worked out very nicely.

***

One last thing:

I guess I love my Black Cali:

A picture of it parked at my friend’s house is the wallpaper on my monitor now.  I change it every so often…but I guess I love my car.  I’ve had my ex wife’s pic as wallpaper.  I used Cher for awhile.  Multnomah Falls and Crater Lake have both been wallpaper scenes… but I like looking at my black Caliber.

 

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