Thursday, August 11, 2011

Checking Off the To Do List...

So much is going on these days.

I bought a used mini van today: beginning an adventure (or misadventure) that I have a feeling will continue to unfold for some time to come. Paul is at class all day, so I went out with Grumpa to find my new ride. We found it at a little, somewhat shady looking dealership half an hour from the school.

When we took my 100,000+ mile, $4000 Town and Country for a test drive it ran like a dream. We went back and forth around the town and everything went smoothly (yesterday). Today I paid for the car...

A few miles down the road (after signing all the "no warranty" "as is" papers) I tried to roll up the window. It wouldn't budge (it had gone up and down yesterday!). The motor in the window is out, or so we discovered after heading back to the dealership (Grumpa will discuss fixing it with the shop owner tomorrow... the salesman says they'll fix it... but so far the owner has overruled him on everything else so we'll have to wait and see...).

I left the shop a second time. I made it about five miles before the beeping started and the oil light went on (sinking feeling!). After another call to Grumpa we determined that the van needed another 1/2 quart of oil (the light only went on when we stopped). Grumpa added oil and so far so good. I do find myself thinking of the van as the "flying torpedo of death" as I drove down the freeway... probably because I was pretty sure the engine was going to give out as we flew down the road after the beeping began.

At home I discovered that the lock in the back on one side won't unlock when I hit the power lock button and that the one of the other side won't lock once it's been unlocked with the power button. Needless to say, the van has a lot of character. And Paul will probably never let me go out to pick out a vehicle without him again.

In other news I put together a book shelf by myself today (yay!) and created a cute little school area that the girls love. We finally got the internet to work. Paul got a job at the library today (although between school, work and studying I fear I won't see him again for three years!). And A Snood for All Seasons and Full of Grace Creations are both back online (double yay!)!

Now for the nightly round of unpacking. The new bookshelf I built (with Sadie acting as my personal cheerleader) will really help with that (cookbooks!).

If only I could find my camera cable I could put up some of the pictures I've been taking!

And let me say that I'm still getting over the shock of how much it rains here. It started raining today and when we walked outside a little while later the water was so deep it was going up over the tops of my shoes! I'm having a hard time picturing what an actual hurricane is like, because I'd pictured "hurricanes" as pretty much what the daily storms have been like. There is a lot of water here!

5 comments:

  1. Yeah, rain happens a lot in FL. Glad to hear your settling in. A little something should be going your way fairly soon. Just need a few more things.

    ReplyDelete
  2. O just to let you know. Naples doesn't normally get hurricanes passing right ever them. (I have an Aunt in Naples and they've lived there as long as I can remember.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hey Cammie, I am sure FL has lemon laws, so the dealership should be fixing stuff, warranty or no, (our E-brake went out less than a month after buying it probably from lack of use, and we got it fixed for free). If the salesman or owner made any misrepresentations, then stick it to them, because that is against the law. Hope that helps, you have to be tough and forceful with these sleazy guys.

    ps. after a quick look, your car might not be covered under the lemon laws, depending on how old it is. http://www.carlemon.com/lemon/FL_LemonGuide.html#Chap01

    Wanted to say Good luck to Paul at law school! If you guys need anything just let me know. Still praying for you Cammie.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Once cars get over 100,000 they seem to simply have random things go wrong. Ours, for example was into the shop for the brake light a month or so ago. Then just weeks later the brake line went. We had it in for springs and shocks on the driver's side last winter, and now it's rattling on that same side again. Probably CV joints this time. You always have to decide whether it's better to keep getting nickled and dimed on a vehicle that's all paid for, or go out and buy a newer one that may not have as many problems. My husband had a Taurus once whose window would randomly decide to not go up when it was wet and not go down when it was hot. That car also had the brakes fail on him twice (fortunately not in traffic!)over the course of just a couple of years (he really did get them fixed). The point is that things went wrong even after the car had been at the mechanic's. Sometimes it will be the very next week that something new goes wrong, so it may not be a shady dealer, but simply the age and mileage of the vehicle. We even switched mechanics thinking the old one might not be that competent, but similar things keep happening.

    Obviously we also drive older vehicles and we usually drive them pretty much into the ground. Sounds like thus far yours has only relatively minor problems. For another time, you might want to take the vehicle you're thinking about buying to a mechanic to get it checked out. It costs a little to do that, but it's worth the aggravation of having to get one little thing after another fixed that were actually wrong when you bought it.

    ReplyDelete
  5. That's not to say there aren't sleazy dealers. I remember my driver's ed instructor telling about this older woman whom he taught to drive. She bought three cars in a row only to have them fail on her within a few weeks, but she bought them all from the same dealer. He said after the second one she should have figured out that perhaps it was not the best place to buy a car.

    ReplyDelete

I love comments and I read every single comment that comes in (and I try to respond when the little ones aren't distracting me to the point that it's impossible!). Please show kindness to each other and our family in the comment box. After all, we're all real people on the other side of the screen!