Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

I left my apartment to go to work this morning, and noticed the registration on my car had expired. (In California, you get stickers with the month/year that you have to put onto your license plate, so it's very easy for you (or the police) to see if it's expired.)

I know I paid for the registration (because I was happy at the thought of never again needing a smog test since my car is a hybrid), so why didn't I get new stickers?

While collecting information so I could talk to the DMV, I discovered my car insurance paper said my insurance expired back in 2013.

Sigh.

All this was caused because I moved and failed to update my address with these two groups. As I had to update my address in 32478234738341923401278 different places, I'm not kicking myself that I forgot two.

The insurance was easy to solve -- just log into the company's website and print a new ID card.

The car registration, not so easy.

Step one: Try to change my address on the DMV website. No-go. For some reason, it thinks my car isn't owned by me. (I paid for it in full when I got it, so there wasn't even a loan that could be causing that confusion.)
Step two: Call the DMV. They have a handy thing where you can leave your number and they'll hold your place in the queue and call you when it's your turn to talk to someone. Worked well!
Step three: I have to go in to the DMV office or supposedly I can get this done at AAA since I'm a member there.

I'm going to head to AAA after work and see if that works out. I'm so paranoid now, since the fact that it expired is right there on the back of my car for anyone (POLICE) to see.

Hopefully it will go fast and smoothly. This isn't how I had wanted to spend my Friday evening.

It's very rare for me to rewind a commercial to watch it again. Never before had I rewound to watch two commercials in one break.

The first one isn't brand new, but I love it. The silliness of it. Having a bear as a mother:



The second was such a wonderful mix of storytelling/reading and scifi; turns out it's a video game commercial:



And on the car/license plate situation: Thankfully I googled further before heading out this morning. Turns out in many states (including California), when selling a used car, the plates stay with it. So it seems like the DMV hasn't updated the paperwork yet.

The dealership (after giving me an hour-long run-around, sending me to various offices in different towns), finally was able to give me a copy of the bill of sale and release of liability forms. The tricky detail here is that the ticket letter said I need a bill of sale with a "DMV seal" on it... I have an appointment at the DMV on Friday. I'd like to just send in these two forms and see if it's good enough, but I probably should go in and see if I can get official copies. :/

Avengers Assemble, a cartoon series based on the movies, premiered last night, and by chance I caught it. I'm so glad I did! I loved it so much. While it wasn't a perfect match for the movie, it was really, really good and it 100% had the spirit of it.

The Stark/Captain America vibes were so strong they likely set off the local seismograph. Clint/Natasha was totally clear as well. Both made me grin from ear to ear!

My dislikes were few. There was no Bruce, only The Hulk, which was a disappointment (though understandable, since they had to make the cartoon simpler). Some of the voices were very different, but again, that's not really surprising.

I can't wait to see more eps!

My license plates for my car finally came. While you can drive up to 30 days in a new car without them, I was starting to get nervous about my lack of them. Opening the package, I was amused to see:

Contents made by
Prison Industry Authority

I thought that was only a joke/myth! Prisoners actually do make license plates!

I got lucky with my plates, too. I got random this time instead of custom, but even after seeing it just once, I had the whole thing memorized. Usually my memory sucks, but all the numbers/letters sort of fit together.

In California, our license plate format is: # L L L # # # (Number, three letters, three numbers.) On mine, the three letters almost form a word. The three numbers are part of my first phone number in my childhood home. So all I need to remember is that first number and I have it all. It took me forever to remember my current phone number, so I was worried about remembering my license.

Birds! There was a new bird near my feeder, one with very interesting coloration. A black phoebe!

(Not my picture.)

Apparently they eat bugs and not seeds, so I'm not sure what it was doing eyeing my feeder. Excitingly, I think it's nesting in my covered parking area! I love it when birds nest there, though I worry other residents or staff might knock it down to "clean up" the parking area. (In truth, I don't like the idea of my new car getting covered with bird poop, but I'd never knock down the nest to prevent it.)

I bought a bird bath (sort of). I wanted a real bird bath, but all the ones I looked at cost $120 and up, and were made of cement. I'm in an apartment, I'm going to move sooner or later, I didn't want a big/heavy one. (And I sure as heck did not want to pay $100+ for one!) Then I spotted a plant pot holder. It was on a stand and had a dish with a lip... That would work fine! The birds have been ignoring it so far, but its only been out a couple hours.

I'm getting worried about the squirrels. I'm not feeding them (on purpose, they're still eating seed when it falls). But they're getting so bold. Bold as in not running away from me when I walk up to them. Bold like looking like they might run into my apartment when they're on the doorstep and I open the door. Even when I say "Shoo! Shoo!" and wave my arms at them, they just cock their head and eye me.

If I ever vanish, check with the squirrels...

Three topics, one subject line.

* I had high hopes for Vampire Boys. A gay romance spoof of Twilight sounded like it would be mighty funny. And failing that, the eye candy! ( Click for large image, work safe shirtless vampires. )

Turns out it was really bad. Not even funny-bad, just bad-bad. Between the acting and the full frontal nudity, for a brief time I thought it might be porn, but after that one scene not much more skin was shown. It was really odd to go from two totally naked men kissing to the next scene were two different men were kissing, fade into and out of black and the one guy says to the other "Bet you didn't think I'd be so easy" or something like that. Jarring.

I actually didn't see the whole movie. 45 minutes in there was a glitch and I couldn't restart it at that point again. Only thing to do would be to watch the whole thing over to continue on, and in no way was it worth rewatching 45 minutes.

* I went into the Toyota dealership today to do all the paperwork for my new car. It took nearly two hours. I can't say it was boring as I kept panicking every other minute and second-guessing myself. I don't NEED a new car. My current car works. But it's 15 years old and has a blue book value of under $1,000 and needs work on the brakes. Last time I got brakes done it cost a couple hundred. My reasoning is it doesn't make sense putting a lot of money into a car that's worth so little. (But what if I do the brakes and then it needs nothing else for years? All that free driving in a car that works fine!)

It's very odd, but they would have let me pay for the car with a personal check. Not only that, they would have held the check days if I wanted them to. A personal check! For a new car! That seems insane to me. They really, really wanted me to drive it off the lot today, but I wasn't ready to. Instead I came home and got my insurance policy changed. Monday I'll go to the bank and shift funds around so I can get a check for them, then I'll pick it up Monday afternoon. This isn't mine, but it's this color/model:


All my previous cars have been black, this is my first non-black one, but the blue is so deep and pretty I decided to change.

* Book #14 of 2013 should have been The Iron Trail: An Alaskan Romance by Rex Ellingwood Beach, but I doubt I'll be finishing it. I've been reading it for a week now, and I'm only 10% into it. The biggest issue is that it's a very old book translated by machine into ebook form, so it's full of errors. I mean one word in four has an error. Everything from periods showing up as "o"s to the fact that every fifth word has an extra space in it because it was at the end of the line in the original text, to things like "N" being translated as "/\/", to dialogue tags being replaced by * or ^ or @ or other characters... It's nearly unreadable. Example section of the text, all other quotes in this post I edited:

The reaction following a sle epless night of anxiety had repla ced the first feelings of thankfulnerss at de-, and i t was not a hap y cargo of humanit 26
THE IRISH PRINCE
the rescui ng boat bore with her as the SUB peeped over the hillso

Unlike the other two 1914 books, this one was full of racism and sexism. I had been interested in what a romance book was like in 1914, but in the 10% I read, this is the only thing that might be considered romantic:

Involuntarily he turned his eyes away, for he felt shame at profaning her with his gaze. She was very soft and white, a fragile thing utterly unfit to cope with the night air.

The women in the book were treated as children. (So romantic?)

"Now, my dear child," he told her, "you must do exactly as I tell you. Come! Calm yourself or I won't take you any farther."

And about the main character's love interest:

Miss Gerard's frank delight showed that she was indeed no more than a child.

And:
"With the creepy water all about, and big black mountains frowning at you!"
"Oh fiddle!" she exclaimed. "You'll be there if I get frightened!"

Recall in White Fang how London went on and on and on about how perfect the main character was? And in that other 1914 book about a wolf-dog they did the same thing? I saw something similar in An Alaskan Romance. I wonder if it was some theme of the time or if everyone copied White Fang? The main character's ship just sank:

Several times he gave up and floated quietly, but courage was ingrained in him; deep down beneath his consciousness was a vitality, an inherited stubborn resistance to death, of which he knew nothing. It was an unidentified quality of mind which supports one man through a great sickness or a long period of privation, while another of more robust physique succumbs. It was the same quality which brings one man out from desert wastes, or the white silence of polar ice, while the bodies of his fellows remain to mark the trail. This innate power of supreme resistance is found in chosen individuals throughout the animal kingdom.

There were lots of comment about "non-white" peoples.

"If I was a Jap I'd split myself open with a bread knife."

I marked so many more sections to use, but this post has gotten long enough. I'll end with this final one:

"My God!" he ejaculated. "You were not on the ship?"

I guess it is a romance story after all!

I really want to get this whole buying a new car thing over with. It's been dragging on and on, and it's literally keeping me up at nights. I want to make an offer today, but I'm running into the same problem has been stopping me all along.

Kelly Blue Book (and other pricing sites for new cars) says this for the car I want:

MSRP $24,960
Fair Purchase Price $23,490
Dealer Invoice $23,508

The dealer is quoting me: $22,788

The price is lower than the dealer invoice. Which seems odd, since then they're not making money?

So my question is, since his quote is lower than the invoice price and the suggested fair offer price:
[Poll #1906584]

I could pay his offered price on the condition that they throw in floormats for free. ($100 and change value.)

Had to work late. Still hadn't eaten, so stopped at Subway on the way home. Came back out... car wouldn't start.

45 minute wait for AAA. (I should have gone back inside and eaten, but they said 15-45 minutes so I wanted to watch for the guy.)

AAA guy couldn't start it. He was about to call a tow truck when he tried one last time with a hammer and pipe (no idea what, he put the pipe in the engine and hammered on the other end...). It started, but he said go straight to a mechanic, it won't start again.

Went to the mechanic. They said an hour. I said WOO!

Part arrived. Was used. They had to reorder it. "Two hours!" >:|

Some other stuff happened, no idea what. Ended up being almost three hours.

Three hours of nothing to read but the worst magazines. Cosmo ("15 bedroom tips you NEED to know to KEEP your boyfriend!"), car magazines, and some title I never heard of but was basically "yay penises, boo "fags", don't be a pussy, going to prison makes you a man!".

This is the same shop where I saw my first, last, and only episode of Jersey Shore.

Today they had on Keeping Up With The Kardashians. How on earth do people watch such godawful shows? But hey, after that came some show about being married to a Jonas brother!

All this time I was starving (but I sure as hell wasn't going to eat in the waiting room).

I was pretty sure this was going to happen, I just thought it wouldn't be so soon. I'm so happy I got off my butt and got a cell phone, otherwise it would have been even worse.