I woke up this morning sometime after 9 and thought about just staying in bed a while longer, but then I thought, “You’ve got plenty of time off; you can just take a nap if you want to after you get up and do stuff.”
This argument made sense to me, so I got out of bed, did some sitting around doing nothing in particular, then showered, dressed, and headed out into the world.
My first order of business was to go to the bank to cash in my change. I think this is the first time I’ve ever cashed in my change just to satisfy my curiosity rather than because I actually needed the money. Still, my urn full of change was, well, full of change, so, seeing as how (also for the first time ever) it was almost full to overflowing, I was curious to see how much that amounted to.
For the curious among you, and particularly any of you who have actually seen my urn full of change, the total was $222.12, not counting the handful of coins that the counter rejected.
After that I drove past a place in Leesburg that does state inspections, but the line was far too long, so I headed over to Wal-Mart to at least get the oil change done. My reasoning was that I have the remainder of the month to get the inspection done, but the oil change was way, way, WAY overdue.
As noted in the previous entry, I wasn’t able to get it done there, so I headed out find another place. I knew that the Shopper’s plaza in Ashburn has a place that does oil changes and inspections, so I headed there, but noticed a Goodyear place along the way that didn’t look too busy, so I stopped there.
The inspection and oil change took under an hour, and no major problems were found. If I’d gone to the dealership, I guarantee they would have found something that “needed” to be repaired or replaced. At Goodyear the total cost was under $100, and that’s with the full synthetic package that allows me to go 10,000 miles or 10 months without an oil change, which, given my propensity for going long stretches of time between oil changes, is ideal. So my next scheduled oil change isn’t until June of next year. With the low mileage I put on the car – I’ve had it for more than five and a half years and am still under 40,000 miles – I could probably get away with going a full year and waiting until inspection time again.
Even if it had been more expensive than that it would have been worth it because of the time I saved, as I’m sure that at the dealership I would have been without my car for a couple of days…and ended up owing like a grand or something.
I hadn’t done any shopping at Wal-Mart, but I did get myself some blunch at the McDonald’s inside the store. My Big Mac was on some kind of retarded bun that fell completely apart in my hands. I thought about complaining, but decided it wasn’t worth it. Maybe I should have called 911.
On my way home I got stuck behind a slow-moving wrecker that, like Visa, was everywhere I wanted to be, but as I was following it down to my street, I decided that I actually wanted it to take the turn and head towards my house.
Why? Well, sometime Wednesday night some woman parked her car in front of my house – badly; she’s at least two feet away from the curb – and the car hasn’t moved since. I don’t know if she even lives on my street, but even if she does, she has no business parking in one of my spaces. And again, it’s not the point that I don’t actually need the additional spaces; they’re my parking spaces.
So I was hoping that the wrecker was coming to haul her car away, but alas, such was not the case.
Now, I could, and probably should, call to complain about this – after all, every house on the street recently got a flyer from the HOA specifically saying “Don’t park in front of someone else’s house” – but the thing is, I don’t actually have the required sticker on my car.
When I first moved in, I called the number for getting a sticker, but I had to first get my registration changed to reflect my current address. When I called back after doing that, I got an answering machine and left a message, but never heard back, and then I forgot about it.
The person I originally talked to had taken my information, though, and said that he’s the one who makes the decision about whether or not cars get towed, and didn’t seem overly concerned about the potential loss of $1 of revenue if I didn’t get a sticker.
I suppose I could call and get the sticker, and then complain about the other car.
We’ll see.
Monday Verizon is coming out to hook me up with a CableCARD for my digital TV tuner, so I’ll be able to watch and record TV on my computer, and, more importantly, HD TV.
Now that the biggest tasks have been accomplished, I’m not sure what else to do with my time off. I mean, I have things that I could do, but the question of what, if any, of those things I will do arises.
I suppose I could do some yard work, but…meh. The backyard is pretty overgrown, but the front and side look fine. I’ve been thinking about buying a new latch for my fence door, but the stickiness of the current latch is really only an issue on Mondays when I get home from work and have to bring my empty trash can back behind the house.
Still, it wouldn’t cost much in terms of time or money.
Then again, not doing it is easier.
Decisions, decisions…
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