Car search, over.

So after hunting for a car for a few weeks, I've finally found one.

What's cheaper than a prius, can be found with lower miles, still gets pretty damn good fuel efficiency, still has toyota reliability, and totally doesn't suck?

A toyota MMR Spyder.

Or as my brother so kindly put it, "Are you having a midlife crisis, or something?"

Huntington Dog Beach

One of my classmates and I took our pups to the dog beach today.  I only took Skwissgaar, since Izmere is kind of a bitch around strange people and dogs.  I honestly thought Gaar wouldn't go near the water, since it's the end of the world for him to go outside when it's raining, and all he would ever do at my old dog trainer's ponds was wade in a couple inches.

He thought the waves were the best thing ever.  When they went in, he'd run in, then playfully run from them once they came back out at him.  He did get rocked by a few waves, but it didn't even phase him. It was so much fun watching him be a big goof, and now that I know he's not afraid of the water, I definitely need to go back as much as I can.  

Car shopping part 2

I'm still trying to find a car I can drive to rotations.   Since I can't get a likeable car (since every single car made since the '70s is a soul-crushing waste of a machine,) I decided to look at "responsible" cars.  I found 2 pretty immaculate older black Priuses (Priui?) about an hour away.  One at a dealer, one a private seller.  I make Tyler wake up at 8:30 and drive me to the dealer first, so we can get there early.  We show up, ask for the salesman I'd talked to a few days before, and he announces "I just saw somebody drive that car off the lot.  Let me go double check."  So he walks us to the spot where it was, between 2 newer and way-too-expensive Priuses, and apologizes.  Damnit, at least we have the private seller to fall back on.  I call her, and let her know we're on our way, at which point she tells me that she just took a deposit on it 10 minutes ago, so don't bother.  Aargh!

So, now it's take 2 on finding something that will work.  I can't find any more hybrids in the same price range as the ones that got snatched out from under me, so I'm kind of looking at everything.  Not having much luck.  It doesn't help that I do keep finding cars that I fall in love with, but would be completely irresponsible to buy without an income for restorations and a garage.

Like this Chevy I found.

Or this Plymouth

Or, heartbreakingly, this Pontiac ambulance, that the owner is threatening to scrap if it doesn't sell

But no, I can't have a nice car.  Eventually, I'm going to find some horrible 2000's sedan, or hybrid, or something "responsible," and I'm going to spend a lot of money for something that won't break on me, all the while resenting that car manufacturers decided to forgo any sort of personality or design aesthetic  in their cars, all while trying to convince us that a hybrid that gets 40 mpg is somehow amazing, even though gawd-awful Geo Metros were getting that milage 10 years before hybrids came onto the market.  

Whenever I hear people complaining about how American carmakers are struggling, or lamenting what will happen to the US auto industry, I honestly wouldn't care if GM and Ford bit the dust.  If they're going to shove tauruses and caprices at us, they deserve to struggle.  It was their decision to ruin cars, they can live with it.   What really gets me, is what are classic car enthusiasts going to do in 30 years?  Will we all be fighting over the remaining 50-100 year old cars, or will some nostalgia switch flip, and suddenly we'll be wanting today's crapburgers, because compared to the 2040 models, they're actually pretty decent looking?  

Looking for cars sucks

I've been trolling craigslist looking for a new car - basically, I'm fed up with having to share my car with Tyler, so I thought I'd look for a 2nd car for him to drive.  I was pretty much looking for something under 5k, not white, either a sedan, coupe or hatchback, and relatively new and unlikely to break down.  Basically looking at 10 year old Volvos, Toyotas, Hondas and Subarus.  Every one I looked at, I felt pretty "meh" about.  Sure, they'd be practical, but something about buying something that expensive that I don't love makes me feel like a schmuck.  Kind of like I felt by having to sell my '67 caddy hearse in order to buy a "practical" pontiac vibe.  Selling my hearse killed me a little bit inside, and here it is 2 years later, and there's still a cadillac shaped hole in my heart.

Well, I know there's no way in hell I could buy another hearse while I'm out here (I don't think they'd appreciate it too much if I showed up to rotations in a hearse,) and ambulances of the same era are much harder to find, and tend to not be running.

So I found this car instead.

1960 cadillac 4-door.  Tail fins.  Flat black.  Only $5700.  Not new, not practical, but makes me squee harder than any car has in a long time.  I kept coming up with reasons why I could justify buying it, even though it'll break all the time, be really hot to ride in, get shitty milage, and generally be the kind of pain-in-the-ass that only classic cars can acheive.  Then Tyler had to shit on my parade, and bitch about how it'd get stolen in our neighborhood, how it'd be hard to get back to Colorado in 2 years, blah blah blah.

So now every other car I've looked at absolutely sucks in comparison, and I've lost all motivation to find something.  At this point, I'm tempted to just take my stupid Pontiac Vibe back from him, and tell him to ride his broken 80's Mongoose bicycle to work.  How's that for impractical?

Just a couple pictures

Couple pictures of the new place.  There's still a few boxes of things we don't really know where to put them, but overall, everything's pretty settled.   My backyard has almost no shade, so I'm trying to figure out a cheap, non-trashy solution for that, so I don't feel so bad about letting my pups out for more than a couple minutes in the afternoon.  I'm also trying to figure out a way to combine a raised vegetable bed in the back with greywater from my washing machine, but I don't know if it's really worth the effort, since the season's halfway over.

Quick Update

We finally got internet at the new place, and we're all settled.  We just went from 1100 square feet to around 700, so it's tiny and cramped, but it's not as bad as I thought it would be.  Our med student neighbors are gone to their 3rd year rotations in Oregon, the jerks, getting out of Pomona early.  They did, however see fit to take advantage of having friends moving in behind them, by leaving extra trash around the yard for us to have to dispose of for them (including an entire BBQ they just didn't care to bring with them.)  Anyway, I'm pretty much done with moving for the next year or so, so I'll just suck it up, and slowly fit their crap into the trash can an item at a time, as there's room for it.

We had to have a tech from Time Warner come out today to install our cable.  He was waiting for the cable box to turn on, and decided to make small talk.

"Where do you work?"
"Oh, I don't work right now, I'm a student."
"What are you studying?"
"Vet Med."
"Did you just say Batman?"
"I wish."