The costs of the inspection, the sticker, and any tickets resulting from not having a current sticker in your window, are just some of the many hidden taxes that can be found here, though exactly what the government services those taxes are paying for are often much harder to find than the taxes themselves.
In any case, along with the oil change and 15,000 mile "intermediate service," my car needs to have its annual inspection performed.
I usually just go to my dealership for all of this, and last week I'd tried to make use of the online scheduling to set up an appointment for this morning. I never got any sort of confirmation e-mail or call about the appointment, but I decided that it was irrelevant because even when you call to make an appointment you aren't really making an appointment, you're basically just letting them know that you'll be coming by, at which time you'll basically just be dealt with on a first come, first served basis.
They usually tell you to show up ridiculously early in the morning, too, at which time dozens of other people show up trying to get oil changes and whatnot before going to work.
Since just showing up seems to work exactly as well as calling ahead, I decided to just show up this morning. Further, I figured that if I went in a little later I could get in faster, having avoided the early morning rush.
I was wrong, and ended up having to make an "appointment" to show up really damned early tomorrow morning, at which point I'll have to contend with the dozens of other people who have just shown up...
I'll actually be leaving my car there all day, as I'll finally be getting the problem that keeps my gas gauge from working fixed.
After I got home this morning I hit Kathleen up with an IM to ask her if she wanted to go to lunch, as I know she doesn't have a standing conference call immediately after noon on Tuesdays and Thursdays, giving her some more leeway as far as her lunch hour goes, but she was leaving early for an appointment.
I ended up walking across the street to check out one of the places in the new plaza full of useless shops that was built not too long ago.
When it first started going up last year, it looked like it was going to be one big building, leading me to hope that they were going to build something useful, like a Wal-Mart, Target, or Best Buy to complement the already existing plaza full of useless shops and restaurants.
But alas, it was actually two separate strip malls being built.
They're actually doing some more construction in that lot, though this time I know better than to hope that it'll be anything worthwhile.
In any case, today I went over to check out the shop that sells "smoothies and healthy food."
I ordered a rather pricey fruit smoothie and an expensive sandwich.
As it turns out, the menu they have displayed on the wall isn't accurate, as they don't actually make every type of sandwich listed, and because that's just the way things work when you're Jon, I'd ordered one that they don't make, though the kid taking my order didn't realize that at the time, as the sandwiches are made ahead of time and kept in a cooler that I hadn't noticed, so he wasn't aware of what was or was not in stock.
After he and the other lady working there puzzled over the fact that I couldn't find the type of sandwich I'd ordered in the display, they realized that it was one that they don't make, and so asked me if I'd like to choose another, which I did.
Both the smoothie and the second-choice sandwich were very good, but hardly worth the cost.
Rather than carrying them home, I sat on a bench in front of the fountain in the little courtyard that was built so that the different restaurants could offer al fresco dining.
It's actually kind of nice, so I took a picture with my PDA:
Every other time I've walked by the fountain it's been overrun by teenagers just hanging out, which is why I call it the "Fountain of Youth," but today I had it to myself until I was almost done eating, at which point an attractive young housewife and her two kids came to sit down on one of the other benches.
As I was leaving I cocked my eyebrow a bit, as I thought I saw the woman holding some sort of tether that was attached to the younger of the two kids, but then I noticed that it was actually plastic tubing for attaching to an oxygen tank and that the other end of the tube was actually placed into the kid's nose.
He wasn't hooked up to a tank at the time, but obviously there was some problem that would necessitate being prepared to do so.
Poor kid.
From there I came home and started working on making a "Sin City" theme for my PDA.
This required scanning in some pictures from that issue of "Maxim" that did a "Sin City" special when the movie came out.
I scanned in this image from the Frank Miller cover as the background image:
For the image that would display in the background of the "Start" menu, I wanted to make use of the "centerfold" style image of Brittany Murphy used inside the magazine.
Because this is a very big image that would be rather unwieldy to scan, it was my hope that someone else had done the work for me, and that I'd just have to find a copy of it to download.
Unfortunately, in the decade or so in which I've been using the Internet to acquire pictures, the people I've come to rely on have gotten really lazy, and I was unable to find a complete copy of the image.
This meant that because I wanted it done right I had to do it myself, which was a pain. After all, the picture was spread across three full magazine pages. So I had to scan it a page at a time and try to piece it together seamlessly.
That didn't work. The required folding and holding in place caused all sorts of artifacts in the final scan.
Ultimately, I was able to take one of the incomplete scans someone else had posted, which, luckily, contained the piece I was having the most trouble with, and semi-seamlessly integrate it with the two pieces that I was able to get to scan reasonably well.
This is the end result:
The fact that it's so tiny helps to cover up the seams a little. I do have a much larger version of this composite which I will use as a reference for my own rendering of this image, so don't worry, you will get to see it somewhat more full-sized somewhere along the line.
In any case, I need to figure out what I'm going to do for dinner tonight so that I can decide what I need to defrost or what other ingredients I need to pick up. I will most likely return later tonight.
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