fearlesstemp (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fearlesstemp) wrote2004-09-10 12:20 am
fearlesstemp) wrote2004-09-10 12:20 am
Entry tags:
automotive update
Item the First:
Pop quiz, hotshots. My car smells like:
(a) ass;
(b) something crawled under the passenger seat and died;
(c) mildew; or
(d) some heretofore unknown, unholy combination of all of the above (as well as some other unidentified odors).
Where is this coming from? Where? I have cleaned the car out, looked under the seats (a terrifying endeavor – I reached under there fully expecting to come upon half a PB&J from March or something), and driven with the window down through the rain a lot, but still it lingers!
Thought: It's probably something damp in the rugs which is not being helped by me driving through the rain with the window open. No more of that.
Or there's a leak somewhere. Horrifying thought.
The smell has only really been apparent in the last day or so, but I'm worried that it may have been around longer. My car may have been smelly for months, and because I was acclimated to it, I never noticed it. Maybe I've been leaving the house every day clean and slightly perfumed, only to be stenchified by my commute! Maybe my secret nickname at the office is Mildew Temp!
Horrors!
Item the Second:
I will escape the smell for the next few days at least, though, because I am driving out of town this weekend. I have to borrow my mother's car because my car needs to be inspected (my inspection was up in August – don't tell the Troopers on me!), and I don't want to tempt fate by driving all over creation for hours and hours with that hanging over my head. Well, actually, in front of my head – but you know what I mean.
Today I drove to three places trying to get the stupid hunk of metal inspected, but no luck! One place, which advertised with a big orange sign saying, "NYS INSPECTIONS – NO APPOINTMENT REQUIRED," was out of stickers. I kind of wanted to ask if he could just write me a note in place of the sticker, a colorful post-it, perhaps, with his name and phone number on it so that any state trooper could call him and verify that my car passed inspection.
But I didn't. I drove on to two other places that wanted me to leave my car, which I couldn't do. Every other year I've done this, I've just walked in somewhere, and had the following conversation:
Me: Hey, do you do state inspections?
Car Guy: Sure.
Me: Can you inspect it now?
CG: Sure.
And then I would sit there for an hour reading a book and go on my merry way. Not this year!
I asked my friend Joanna, my personal car guru, about this and she said that it's because New York State has changed the requirements for inspections so that it will be more difficult for cars to pass inspection when they maybe shouldn't. It involves some really expensive machine or something.
This is stressful! My hunk of junk has recently had new breaks and new tires, but the stupid windshield wipers have had one speed broken on them since I got the car. Fixing it would cost upwards of $400.00. Not worth it! I'm a simple girl. I've got two other speeds that work fine and the manual setting too.
But what if that doesn't pass anymore? I do not want to replace that! Crap.
Item the Third:
You may recall that about a month ago my car got towed. On the little payment slip there was a note saying "City Fee: $35.00". The woman at the garage gave me no other ticket, and there was nothing on my car, and so I assumed that the city fee was the cost of the ticket, and that I was all set.
No! Not all set! Last Friday I received a notice from the city saying I was delinquent on a parking violation and they were doubling my fine! Doubling my fine!
I stomped around the house waving it wildly, saying, "I PAID THIS!" to no one in particular.
Maybe I hoped the city powers that be would feel my righteous fury and erase it from my record, but no such luck. It stayed in my hand. Something else that had stayed with me: the receipt from the garage that day, which showed a City Fee of $35.00 (the precise amount the delinquent violation notice said I owed for the ticket originally).
I spent half of my lunch break yesterday dealing with this, talking to a city employee who said that what I paid was an administration fee, not the actual cost of the ticket. And that I should have gotten a ticket for an additional $35.00.
"But I didn't get a ticket!" I said, and told her the garage I went to.
"Oh," she said. "Yeah, we have that problem with them a lot."
And then I broke my cell phone banging it against the table.
Okay, not really. What I did was ask who I should call to deal with this.
"You can't call," she said. "Evil Ticketmaster will only deal with any dispute over a notice like this in person. You'll have to go to his office from 9AM to 11AM on a Tuesday."
"Only then?"
"Yup," she said.
"I can't fax him a letter? Call him on the phone?" I said. "Can you transfer me?"
"I don't even know his extension," she said.
"But I work then," I said. "I seriously can't deal with this any other way?"
"Sorry, honey," she said. "Only Tuesday mornings."
This made me so angry I couldn't see straight.
First of all: I can't quite believe that there are two city fees for a parking violation, and that they both cost exactly the same amount. My first assumption when I got this notice was that the Skeevy Garage hadn't passed the money along to the city, and part of me still thinks that could be true.
Second of all: If there are two such fees, and I really did owe an additional $35.00, how am I supposed to know that if there's no notice on my car? Am I supposed to be moved by some otherworldly force or the goodness of my own heart to write a check to the city for $35.00? How can I be penalized for another person's incompetence? Answer: very easily.
Third of all: Only 9-11AM on Tuesdays? No phone calls, no faxes, no correspondence? Okay – if I go down there on Tuesday from 9-11AM (and I can't make an appointment! It's first come first served!), and it takes me an hour to wrap things up? Add on my commute time, you're cutting at least an hour and a half out of my workday. Because of my crappy job status where I'm as hourly as it gets, I'm out more than half the cost of the late fee I'm trying to avoid right there. If it takes two hours or more and traffic is bad? I lose money even if they decide I'm right.
I called my father all full of fury after talking with the city employee, ranting about suing the garage for lost wages if I had to miss work taking care of this and the stupidity of Evil Ticketmaster.
"Yup," he said in a very bland, bored way. "That's OurHometown."
And we wonder why everyone tilts their head in sympathy when we announce our city of origin.
Item the Fourth:
They are completely restructuring the major intersection a mile away from my house. I don't have an exact time count, but I believe this has been going on since the first Gulf War. Or maybe April. Either way, it feels like forever, and the other day I rolled to a stop over the uneven terrain to discover that they'd finally put in the new traffic light, complete with a left and right turn signal. Very swank compared to the original light, which was one of the boring up-and-down tricolor variety.
I've driven through this intersection more times than I can count - more than I've driven through any intersection, really – and I was genuinely startled by the new light, which I'd seen at countless other busy intersections in my driving career. Just not at this particular intersection.
I thought to myself – are they just going to hang it here? They're not going to tell us how to use it, train us on the new equipment? I'm not ready!
It's been said before: I don't deal well with change.
Pop quiz, hotshots. My car smells like:
(a) ass;
(b) something crawled under the passenger seat and died;
(c) mildew; or
(d) some heretofore unknown, unholy combination of all of the above (as well as some other unidentified odors).
Where is this coming from? Where? I have cleaned the car out, looked under the seats (a terrifying endeavor – I reached under there fully expecting to come upon half a PB&J from March or something), and driven with the window down through the rain a lot, but still it lingers!
Thought: It's probably something damp in the rugs which is not being helped by me driving through the rain with the window open. No more of that.
Or there's a leak somewhere. Horrifying thought.
The smell has only really been apparent in the last day or so, but I'm worried that it may have been around longer. My car may have been smelly for months, and because I was acclimated to it, I never noticed it. Maybe I've been leaving the house every day clean and slightly perfumed, only to be stenchified by my commute! Maybe my secret nickname at the office is Mildew Temp!
Horrors!
Item the Second:
I will escape the smell for the next few days at least, though, because I am driving out of town this weekend. I have to borrow my mother's car because my car needs to be inspected (my inspection was up in August – don't tell the Troopers on me!), and I don't want to tempt fate by driving all over creation for hours and hours with that hanging over my head. Well, actually, in front of my head – but you know what I mean.
Today I drove to three places trying to get the stupid hunk of metal inspected, but no luck! One place, which advertised with a big orange sign saying, "NYS INSPECTIONS – NO APPOINTMENT REQUIRED," was out of stickers. I kind of wanted to ask if he could just write me a note in place of the sticker, a colorful post-it, perhaps, with his name and phone number on it so that any state trooper could call him and verify that my car passed inspection.
But I didn't. I drove on to two other places that wanted me to leave my car, which I couldn't do. Every other year I've done this, I've just walked in somewhere, and had the following conversation:
Me: Hey, do you do state inspections?
Car Guy: Sure.
Me: Can you inspect it now?
CG: Sure.
And then I would sit there for an hour reading a book and go on my merry way. Not this year!
I asked my friend Joanna, my personal car guru, about this and she said that it's because New York State has changed the requirements for inspections so that it will be more difficult for cars to pass inspection when they maybe shouldn't. It involves some really expensive machine or something.
This is stressful! My hunk of junk has recently had new breaks and new tires, but the stupid windshield wipers have had one speed broken on them since I got the car. Fixing it would cost upwards of $400.00. Not worth it! I'm a simple girl. I've got two other speeds that work fine and the manual setting too.
But what if that doesn't pass anymore? I do not want to replace that! Crap.
Item the Third:
You may recall that about a month ago my car got towed. On the little payment slip there was a note saying "City Fee: $35.00". The woman at the garage gave me no other ticket, and there was nothing on my car, and so I assumed that the city fee was the cost of the ticket, and that I was all set.
No! Not all set! Last Friday I received a notice from the city saying I was delinquent on a parking violation and they were doubling my fine! Doubling my fine!
I stomped around the house waving it wildly, saying, "I PAID THIS!" to no one in particular.
Maybe I hoped the city powers that be would feel my righteous fury and erase it from my record, but no such luck. It stayed in my hand. Something else that had stayed with me: the receipt from the garage that day, which showed a City Fee of $35.00 (the precise amount the delinquent violation notice said I owed for the ticket originally).
I spent half of my lunch break yesterday dealing with this, talking to a city employee who said that what I paid was an administration fee, not the actual cost of the ticket. And that I should have gotten a ticket for an additional $35.00.
"But I didn't get a ticket!" I said, and told her the garage I went to.
"Oh," she said. "Yeah, we have that problem with them a lot."
And then I broke my cell phone banging it against the table.
Okay, not really. What I did was ask who I should call to deal with this.
"You can't call," she said. "Evil Ticketmaster will only deal with any dispute over a notice like this in person. You'll have to go to his office from 9AM to 11AM on a Tuesday."
"Only then?"
"Yup," she said.
"I can't fax him a letter? Call him on the phone?" I said. "Can you transfer me?"
"I don't even know his extension," she said.
"But I work then," I said. "I seriously can't deal with this any other way?"
"Sorry, honey," she said. "Only Tuesday mornings."
This made me so angry I couldn't see straight.
First of all: I can't quite believe that there are two city fees for a parking violation, and that they both cost exactly the same amount. My first assumption when I got this notice was that the Skeevy Garage hadn't passed the money along to the city, and part of me still thinks that could be true.
Second of all: If there are two such fees, and I really did owe an additional $35.00, how am I supposed to know that if there's no notice on my car? Am I supposed to be moved by some otherworldly force or the goodness of my own heart to write a check to the city for $35.00? How can I be penalized for another person's incompetence? Answer: very easily.
Third of all: Only 9-11AM on Tuesdays? No phone calls, no faxes, no correspondence? Okay – if I go down there on Tuesday from 9-11AM (and I can't make an appointment! It's first come first served!), and it takes me an hour to wrap things up? Add on my commute time, you're cutting at least an hour and a half out of my workday. Because of my crappy job status where I'm as hourly as it gets, I'm out more than half the cost of the late fee I'm trying to avoid right there. If it takes two hours or more and traffic is bad? I lose money even if they decide I'm right.
I called my father all full of fury after talking with the city employee, ranting about suing the garage for lost wages if I had to miss work taking care of this and the stupidity of Evil Ticketmaster.
"Yup," he said in a very bland, bored way. "That's OurHometown."
And we wonder why everyone tilts their head in sympathy when we announce our city of origin.
Item the Fourth:
They are completely restructuring the major intersection a mile away from my house. I don't have an exact time count, but I believe this has been going on since the first Gulf War. Or maybe April. Either way, it feels like forever, and the other day I rolled to a stop over the uneven terrain to discover that they'd finally put in the new traffic light, complete with a left and right turn signal. Very swank compared to the original light, which was one of the boring up-and-down tricolor variety.
I've driven through this intersection more times than I can count - more than I've driven through any intersection, really – and I was genuinely startled by the new light, which I'd seen at countless other busy intersections in my driving career. Just not at this particular intersection.
I thought to myself – are they just going to hang it here? They're not going to tell us how to use it, train us on the new equipment? I'm not ready!
It's been said before: I don't deal well with change.