Friday, July 3, 2009

Running Around

I finally broke down and took the car back to Discount Tire. Hour and a half wait, they tell me. Just about every time I go there it's an hour and a half wait, so I end up just putting air in the tire and leaving. This time I decided to bite the bullet and do the wait. Fortunately there is a Walmart across the parking lot - something to do and I had business there anyway.

So, I go to Walmart. No, nothing happened there with customer service - I was taking my time walking through the entire place. The store is so massive, that took quite a while, like almost an hour. I got a napkin holder and some napkins (have been wanting to do that for quite a while now, I just keep forgetting); another garden hose - so I don't have to keep moving one of the houses from one outlet to another; and the new glassware that was the reason I wanted to go there in the first place. These glasses are much larger - it's summer time and a small glass of ice water or whatever drink does - nothing really.

After returning, the man approaches me and tells me one of the tires is bad. I inform him that buying new tires right now is totally out of the question, do you have anything used? He does - and it's identical to the new ones I bought a while back that are on the rear of the car. He informs me of such and says the tire has a lot of tread on it, that I only need buy one more new tire and it's done. Okay, well - no new tires today, thank you. I had all 4 tires rebalanced - free of course - but have not gotten on the freeway to find out whether there is still a vibration.

If there is, I will take the car to a different shop and have the wheels balanced and checked out there. If it isn't - which is my extreme hope - the problem is solved and I need not deal with it anymore.

Trip to the post office - they are only opened 3 hours today and were closed when I got there. But - they have this automatic thing now that uses a debit or credit card, I wanted to send my mortgage payment via a faster delivery mode anyway. Trip to the bank - deposit tenant's checks and money orders, over to pick up Caleb and finally home.

I'm still grappling with whether to get another 401k loan. I just can't seem to decide one way or the other - but it's something I need to get resolved in my mind for my own peace' sake if nothing else. I'm thinking hold off a couple of weeks and see what happens. Now that I have 3 paying tenants I'm sorta hoping I can pull out of this personal mortgage "crisis" and eventually get caught up. I'm fully a month and a few days behind on the mortgage payment.

DANG. I forgot to go to the DMV and get my driving history. Heck, I don't even know if they're opened today. Seems to be a day of shortened open hours. I think I'll call over there after this and see if they are - there's an office about 5 miles down the road from me. If I go, I will take the extremely long way home, get on the freeway and cruise 75mph or so and see what happens. I KNEW there was something I forgot, darnit. I hate making all kinds of trips, I tend to plan them in advance and get it all over with.

Anyway, I'm going to get out pen and paper and start looking at what I can do to try and get caught up on the mortgage without loans and things. The thing that is slammning me right now is the electric use - knew it was coming, and here it is - it's at $10 and change per day, which really isn't that bad - but that's because we haven't gotten up to the 110 or higher mark. Today's high is 103, tomorrow is allegedly 103 and then Sunday we zoom up to 109. Weekends are always more expensive - for whatever reason. Laundry is a factor, yes, but most of us are doing the drying outside which helps mitigate the use. Price of fuel has gone up - another $15 to fill up the tank from what it went down to before.

Well, I guess I better find out of the DMV is open - I haven't made any decision about a daytrip up north tomorrow because of the car. I hate to put the lady on hold like that, but I already told her what is going on with my car.

Have a great day!
ben

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