The New Car

Doug and Geoff were talking this morning about their plans for the day. My plan was to stay here and house clean, they're off to shop for a car. 

Doug said that before they left he needed to go to the lab for some blood work, and drop off his colon cancer poop sample dealie. 

I called out from the bedroom "you can't go to Kensington, you know. You have to go to Gaithersburg." Doug asked why was that? 

"Kensington is closed on weekends," I told him.

"Chris, it's Thursday."

"Oh yeah. It is, isn't it?" 

Taking time off from work does a little something to my brain, I guess. Totally feels like a Saturday up in here. 

I got out of bed so we could talk money. He refuses to buy anything that needs to be financed but thank God we've got money in the bank to buy something decent and he's stopped buying thousand dollar cars. 

We checked our bank accounts, our available credit, he has had a specific car in mind, and if he can pay cash for it, boom. He'll pay cash for it. 

Thing is, if they'll let him use his debit or credit card without some horrible 10% fee for it he'll pay cash for it. Otherwise, he has to come home, go to the bank in person and pay a 20 dollar fee for a bank check and go back to the dealership. This is what we went through when he bought the Dodge. 

(By the way, if he puts something this big on a credit card, I pay the balance off immediately. That's the way I roll. No leisurely slow payment plan over a year. Payment, done. Boom). 

Doug is notoriously cheap when it comes to banking. Fees? Surcharges? What kind of banking is this! Fuck your bank! He got ripping angry at our bank three years ago when he had to pay a $20 fee for the bank check, but it was less than the charge to pay for the car on our debit card at the dealership (that would have been 500 bucks). 

I told him it is the "cost of doing business," and that if he didn't like it, he could take cash out of the bank without a fee and hand it to the dealer. But the dealer doesn't take CASH of course, because of safety. 

So the customer is left getting fucked on fees. It's how banks make money, yo. Sad but true. Go buy a car already. 

And he did. Meet his new Mini Cooper S Countryman named Domino. He had a personal check in his wallet, and the guy accepted it. No fees.

The mini has 129k miles on it, the price was right, the dealership in Maryland is responsible for making sure it passes inspection and it did (he almost bought one in Virginia but I reminded him it needed to pass inspection in MD and VA has much much lower standards!) 

For some reason the satellite radio is on and working. It has an AUX and USB cord and it plays CDs. It doesn't exactly know what technology year it is supposed to be in, to be honest. 

Welcome to the garage, little zippy car.

digits:

exercise: 12 hours of 250 steps. dedicated 10 and a lot of moving around for housework and stuff. 

blood glucose:

9:30am: 166
5:30pm: 144
11pm: 163

food:

coffee, water 
11am: Metformin; chicken salad (approx 2 cups) left over from yesterday
2pm: 2 leftover bratwursts (cold) eaten whilst doing steps in the house
6pm: metformin+jardiance
7:15pm: arugula salad w/vinaigrette dressing; 3 slices of artisanal pizza. 3 beers
9pm: 2 baby bell cheeses, ramekin of mixed nuts. 
10pm: protein shake