monkeyplus1

I know, I should have taken more pictures, but that’s the extent of the front-end damage to my Subaru WRX from a minor fender bender.

It’s been in the shop for over 2 weeks, I should be picking it up today.

$4600 in damages, plus about $300 rental car fees.  Luckily I have a low deductible, so I’m out a few hundred bucks, the insurance picks up the rest.

On the fence on whether or not I’m going to keep it. A stick shift in city traffic is absolutely no fun to drive, especially when crawling along the freeway between 0-15 mph, constantly shifting between neutral, 1st and 2nd gear.

A While ago, I was rear-ended in my Subaru Impreza WRX. There was about $1,800 worth of damage that got all fixed up nicely.

This week, I smashed in the front-end, rear-ending someone else.

I was behind a blue BMW SUV, who was also turning onto 99W from SW 68th in Tigard. There’s rarely a green light, so you have to watch the traffic coming down 99W for a break.

I saw a break in the traffic, saw the BMW in front of me start to accelerate, and looked left again as I started to accelerate.

BAM!  The asshole in front of me changed his mind, and had come to a stop.  Of course I’m at fault, being impatient, and not double-checking he had actually continued to move forward.  Fucking old turd. I wanted to hit him, anyway.

Damage estimates came today on my WRX at about $4,600. Nothing mechanical or structural; with the exception of possibly the radiator, it is all cosmetic damage. But, there are no used-parts for such a new car, and WRXs are fairly rare among Subarus, so everything had to be OEM parts.

The retail value of it is around $18,000, and private party value is $14,000, so it’s far from being “totaled”.  I’ll pay the deductible, get it all fixed up.

I’m thinking of selling it. I love the WRX, but having a stick-shift in the city is not a lot of fun, especially in slow traffic.

The other reason is that the WRX does not like to go slow. It is extremely sluggish below 2500 RPM, which is almost always while in a city.

At around 2800 RPM, the turbo-charger spools up, and then it’s a rocket.  Shoved-back-into-your-seat fast.  The first time I drove it hard enough for the turbo to kick in, it shocked the hell out of me.

Addictively fast. That’s another problem. If my wife & kids are not in the car, it makes me a very aggressive driver, and a hell of a speeder. And while the WRX isn’t built for top-speeds, it can take high-speed turns in all weather that a normal car could not do.

I don’t have pictures to show… the coolant line was ruptured, so I had it towed to the body shop.  It’ll be there another week at least.

So… I’m not superstitious, believing my car to be bad luck, but I think I’m over the fast-car obsession.  I’m considering selling it for something more tame.

Now that I don’t have much of a yard to speak of, I’m also considering selling my pickup truck, too.  It helped tremendously with the massive landscaping project last summer, and more recently in getting stuff moved to the new house, but now it’s just sitting at the end of the street, lonely.

Today’s drink of the day:  “Hennessy Paris”:

• 1.5 oz Hennessy (cognac)
• 0.5 oz lemon juice
• 0.25 oz Cointreau (triple sec)

Shake over ice, strain over your favorite glass.

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We are finally, 100% moved into our new house. It’s fucking beautiful. A lot of stairs, though - it’s 3 stories tall.  We still have a ton of things in boxes, many things left to find.

We weren’t at the apartment very long, a few weeks, but long enough. There was a Burger King nearby, and the cancerous stench of grilled cowflesh, that gray cloud of dioxins, could be fucking awful when the winds were just right.  I think even a carnivore would get sick of the smell.

A house party is on the horizon, but for now, unpacking, resting.  Aggravated an old back-injury, gawd I feel like an old fuck sometimes.

The music room is getting set up. When the boy is a couple years older, this will be his room, and I will turn the garage into my studio.

I have looked up nearly all of my neighbors within a one block radius.  I know the names of all the owners, when they bought, how much they paid, how much square footage their house is, when it was built, what type of construction it is.  I have a lot of names of past residents who have lived in the area.  I know some of their health conditions, their prescriptions, their allergies.  Some of them, I know their occupations, I know their hobbies.  There is a glass artist, some musicians, a teacher, some business folks, some retirees.  There are a couple sex offenders, too. In their case, I called up their parole officer, who kindly gave me 30 minutes of her time to go over their case history, status, etc.  I have kids, so I’ve got a special interest in watching out for those kinds of monsters.

I am a resourceful motherfucker.

One thing I’ve noticed - the older people are, the harder it is to find out anything about them.  At least, through free, publicly available (and legal) means.

found a new house.

Here is a  phenomenon.  We put an offer on the house the day we saw it. I have the keys less than two weeks later.

My mortgage broker this time around is a real champ.  Usually, between an offer and getting the keys takes one month, as there is so much that happens in between.

• the buyer makes an offer, putting down “earnest money”, usually a few thousand bucks.
• the seller accepts the offer.
• the buyer acknowledges the seller’s acceptance.
• the mortgage broker collects pay-stubs  (there is a lot of other paperwork, credit-reports, etc, that we had done in pre-approval before we found a house, which is the smart thing to do, since you’ll know what you can afford once the broker gives you a “good faith estimate” that breaks down all your closing costs & monthly mortgage, real estate, and hazard-insurance payments).
• the mtg. broker finds a suitable lender.
• the mtg. broker submits your paperwork to the lender to apply for the loan. The lender drafts up the loan documents.
• you sign all the documents, and give your down-payment money, closing costs, etc, to an escrow officer.
• the escrow reviews all the docs, sends them back to the lender for their review.
• the lender then wires the money to escrow.
• escrow sends all the documents to the county recorder, where they are scanned and photographed into the county legal records.
• escrow then gives the seller his money, and then the mortgage broker, realtors, tax office, and title company/escrow all get their cut.
• the buyer gets their keys.

that’s a lot of stuff to happen in less than two weeks.

the house is gorgeous.  I won out in the new house (me)  with modern amenities & efficiencies, versus old house (wife & realtor) with charm & higher return on equity.

here are a couple of the realtor-taken pics (the furniture is not our, it’s staged for the open house)

there’s a room which will be dedicated to music, so monkeyplus1 is soon to be back in the saddle.