One Year With A Car

People have remembered the one year “anniversary” of the pandemic and the start of things shutting down in many ways. Maybe by counting the number of days kids have been in (or out of) school. Perhaps by the last time you attended a live sporting event or concert. For me, there are two ways that I count the time. The first is my dad passing away. The second is getting a new car.

Back in 2017, I got in an accident, and the insurance company determined that it made more sense to send me a check rather than put money into repairing a 14 year old car. With a third child on the way, we decided to lease a Honda Odyssey. The car was what we needed, but we also didn’t want to spend the amount it would have cost to purchase the vehicle. Fast forward to March 2020. The lease was ending, and I definitely didn’t feel comfortable visiting multiple dealerships to search for a new car. Plus, not knowing what the future would hold, leasing again seemed like a good option for us. So after contacting dealerships online and by phone, we settled on another Honda Odyssey at a location near us. I did a quick test drive, filled out the paperwork (which was not as quick), exchanged the Hondas, and brought home a new car.

(This is a stock photo. Our car hasn't been close to an ocean.)

One year later, we have about 2,300 miles on it. As a comparison, my dad and I drove more than that in one week going from Pittsburgh to San Diego for my job after college. Several months ago, I calculated the amount of money we have paid for the car between the down payment and the monthly payments per mile driven. Even without including insurance payments and getting gas, this was not a fun exercise.

The silver lining to all of us this is there is little chance that we'll exceed the 36,000 miles on the three-year lease!

The Car Accident

A few weeks ago, I was involved in a car accident. Everyone was okay. Now that we established this, I'll try to set the scene of the accident. On a sunny afternoon, I was driving on a two-way, two-lane street in my neighborhood. At an intersection, a guy decided to turn into the side street apparently thinking he needed to do so quickly. Although I honked my horn and slammed on the brakes, only resulting in him stopping his car in the middle of road, I wasn't able to stop in time and hit the front right side portion of his car.

After making sure everyone was okay, he accused me of going too fast. I didn't respond because I couldn't believe this idiotic thought. Plus, another driver stopped by to check out the situation around this time and called the police for us. There were no witnesses to the accident, meaning he could have waited 4 seconds to turn after I passed through the intersection.

Meanwhile, the guy then ran, by foot, to his home to get insurance information. As I found out later, the guy has a Venezuelan license and is on his mother's insurance policy. Unfortunately, he was not Andres Galarraga. A police officer talked with both of us, had us complete the Police Department Accident Exchange of Information form, and ended up giving the other guy two citations, one for being at fault for the accident and I'm not sure what the other was for since I haven't seen the police report yet. (It could be related to the Venezuelan license.)

Now the real fun begins. Since the other driver was at fault, I went through his insurance company. After nearly two weeks (and me calling and emailing his insurance company multiple times), they told me that they were unable to get in touch with their client, and I would have to go through my insurance company. Lovely. I'm not going to identify his company, but Flo should either drop them or have their name their price tool equal about $30,000.

Anyway, my insurance company has been terrific. Unfortunately, they determined that my 2003 Honda with nearly 127,000 miles wasn't salvageable. While I'll get a settlement, I now need to find a new (to me) car rather quickly. We're probably looking at a bigger car like a Honda Pilot or Honda Odyssey, Toyota Highlander, Chrysler Town and Country or something similar. I don't want to use the word "minivan," but that could be in the discussion. Any suggestions?

Random Ramblings

I recently found a $100 US treasury bond that I received in 2001, apparently as a gift for graduating from graduate school. It appears that the gift-giver paid $50 for this bond which will be worth $100 when it matures in 2031. It looks like I have two choices here:

1. Cash the bond now and receive approximately $75.
2. Hold on to the bond for another 15 years when it will be worth $100 and hope that I don't lose it.

The US must make millions just on people losing their bonds. It seems really easy to lose something or accidentally throw something away after 30 years!

In March 2012, my car hit 100,000 miles on a drive to North Carolina as part of my annual hockey road trip. On Wednesday, my car reached 125,000 miles. That's not a lot of miles driven in the past 4.5 years.

On Saturday, I recorded the Ohio State-Michigan game since I knew that I wouldn't be able to watch the entire game live. ABC set the broadcast time from 12:00-3:00, which was not realistic, so I added an hour of recording time. At exactly 4:00 on DVR time (though later in real time) with Ohio State driving in double overtime, the recording stopped. While I was happy when I checked online to see that the Buckeyes won, why are college football broadcasts so long? Games should not be 4+ hours! I know the clock is stopped on first downs (please get rid of this, NCAA), but every commercial break was at least 4 minutes. No other sport has commercial breaks.

Have a great weekend!

24 Hours

On Monday evening after the kids went to sleep, I got the mail which included a rather significant check from all of the games I worked as a soccer referee this fall. Wooooo! Then, I took the 2016 soccer referee recertification test online. (Please note that the next portion of this blog post is about soccer ref stuff, but there's non-ref stuff below.) This 100-question, multiple-choice test is painful. Some of the questions are poorly worded, and there are plenty of others where they are trying to fool you. Here are some questions:

#1: A player, while in an offside position, is guilty of interfering with the opponent and therefore guilty of offside if he does the following:

A) blocking an opponent’s view of the ball but not involved in challenging for the ballherefore guilty of offside if he does the following:
B) running beside the opponent towards the ball without making contact with the opponent
C) making gesture of not playing the ball obvious to everyone
D) none of the above

Does no one proofread this? Although the answer is A, I answered none of the above since I had no idea what the wording in A was supposed to be.

#2 True or false. The ball is in play on a corner kick when the ball is kicked, moves, and leaves the corner arc.

Fortunately, I've taken the recertification exam enough to know some of the quirks. While it's true that the ball is in play on a corner kick when the ball is kicked, moves, and leaves the corner arc, they are asking if the ball is required to leave the arc to be in play. Therefore, the answer is false.

#3 Red #20 is ready to take a throw-in. White #31 pushes a Red attacker down inside the penalty area while jostling for position. You stop the throw-in and caution White #31 for unsporting behavior. The restart is

A) Dropped Ball
B) Thrwo-In
C) Kick-Off
D) Corner Kick
E) Gaol Kick

Is it too much to ask to spell throw and goal correctly?

It took me nearly two hours to take this exam, but I passed with a score of 87%. I don't feel bad about this score either. After the exam, I watched the end of the Detroit Lions-New Orleans Saints Monday Night Football game almost entirely for fantasy football purposes. In a semi-final match, one guy (we'll call him Mike) had a slim lead late in the fourth quarter. His opponent (we'll call him Michael) still had Saints RB Tim Hightower and Lions WR Calvin Johnson. On the last play of the game with victory certain for the Lions, Hightower caught a meaningless 18-yard pass. However, with a half-point per reception and .1 points per yard, this play gave Michael a victory by .1 points. Oh, this play happened just a minute after this rant by Michael:

I *#(@ing don't make the finals because some fat &*^% can't rember to tell the official he's eligible on second down after he remembers to do it on first down. That's the biggest bull &$*# ever in the history of fantasy football.

I feel like the fantasy gods will (or at least should) look poorly at Michael in the championship. Of course, now that I shared this, perhaps the fantasy gods will look poorly at me for the two leagues where I'm still in contention.

On Tuesday morning, I had my regular dentist appointment. I'm sure that I've mentioned this before, but I have a great relationship with my dentist. She knows that I don't floss and never says anything about it. (She also got me an electric toothbrush as a wedding gift.) However, the dental hygienist apparently doesn't know this deal. She asked how often I floss. I replied about once every 6 months which basically corresponds to when the hygienist does it during my appointment. So the hygienist made sure to give the spiel that I need to floss. I'm still not going to floss. If flossing was so important, the dentist should include some with the free toothbrush & toothpaste bag. On a different topic, I need a filling though this is nothing that flossing would have prevented.

This is turning into a very long post. Thanks for staying with me. After the dentist, I took my car to my mechanic for the required state inspection. I've been dreading this since I knew my car wouldn't pass due to an always on airbag light and my driver's side window not working. My 2003 Honda Civic only has 118,000 miles, and I only drive it about 5,000 miles per year. While I definitely need a car, I don't want to put too much money into it or start with a new car payment.

It turned out that the air bag light wasn't a problem. However, my headlights were. Another Honda was there, and I could see how clear they were in the other car compared to my foggy lights. Then, I needed a new window regulator and motor driver. I'm just happy that Warren G is involved with my car.

So my car is now fixed and passed inspection but the soccer referee money is gone.

Finally, I had my soccer referee recertification class. With the class scheduled for 3:30-8:30, I brought snacks and hoped they would provide pizza like they did in previous years. No pizza. I was hungry when I got home but I knew I couldn't eat too much so late. Therefore, my dinner consisted of a cheese stick, clementine, and mint chocolate chip ice cream. Dinner of champions!

Car Rant

My 2003 Honda Civic is slowly falling apart. While the car runs fine overall, it's the little things that are adding up. The passenger side rear window hasn't opened in a few years. Last month, my driver's side window stopped working. You can hear the power window mechanism trying to work but the window doesn't move. While this usually doesn't bother me, it's quite awkward to open the car door to enter and exit parking garages. (Fortunately, I haven't gone to a drive-through in my car yet.) However, this inconvenience is not enough to spend $500 to fix this. I miss my Plymouth Acclaim where I could roll down the window.

Now, I have a bigger problem. The airbag light now appears and stays lit on my dashboard. I took the car to the local Honda dealership on Wednesday to determine the issue. A little later in the morning, I received a call from the service department informing me that the airbag is fine (there was actually a Honda recall on this earlier this year) and that the issue is the seat belt buckle switch. The cost to repair this: $545. I declined the repair.

However, I still needed to pay $132 for the diagnostic. Um, what? I did not get this quote when I left the dealership. After some complaining, the representative said that he would help me out. So when I arrived back at the dealership in the afternoon, I learned that I had to pay $112 instead. The staff seemed to feel like I got an amazing deal by having this diagnostic charge reduced by $20. Without much of a choice, I paid the $112 and left. Oh, I also learned that Honda used to replace this at no cost, but apparently, changed their policy a few years ago. If the problem was mechanical, they would repair the airbag stuff for no change. Any electrical issues, though, would need to be paid by the customer. Great.

Finally, it sounds like my car won't pass the state inspection in December with this light on. Wonderful. So I'm going to need to put about $400-$500 into a 12 year-old car (or more if I choose to fix the window) or face the decision to try to sell the car if it fails inspection. Ugh.

By the way, considering that the car is over 12 years old, 118,000 miles really isn't that much. It's still a good car. Well, don't be surprised if I try to sell this car on Sean's Ramblings later this year.