utenzi

I am now in the underclass of society, a leper, one of the unclean. You see, I don't have a credit card! It all started with the picture on the left. My tires were quite well worn. I'd put almost 48k on my original tires, as you can see by the wear shown in the picture below, and it was well time to get new rubber under my car. But when it came time to pay... the credit card machine said "declined." Well, it didn't literally say it. Just the word appeared on the readout but that was enough to send me into the depths of the underclass of humanity. Someone without credit! Yikes. (and I don't mean it in the way that the word was used on The Big Bang Theory either) As it turns out, the identity theft feature was activated on my card and as a result, they automatically inactivated the card until they could verify the purchases. When I called about the card being declined, and couldn't identify the last 20 purchases (which might be my memory, not actual fraudule...

I'm officially a car owner again. I received the title to my Elantra in the mail yesterday. As of tomorrow I'll have owned it for 2 years and 10 months. Since I usually keep cars for 6 years that means 3 years and 2 months before I have to deal with car payments again. I'm quite happy with the car and if it holds up well, I might keep it past the 6 year point. Hell, given the weakness of the economy---I might HAVE to keep it longer than 6 years. In other news, my heels are finally healing over. Only one of the blisters I got last week while hiking is still weeping. And that's only a little bit over the course of a full day at work. Soon I'll be able to go hiking again! Now if it'd just cool off a little bit. Hiking in 90+ weather is not a lot of fun.

None of us are getting any younger. That case came home to me yesterday while I was driving away from home in the rain. My car hit the 30,000 point and since there wasn't any traffic around, I pulled over and took this picture. I've had the cute little thing for just over two and a half years. I bought it on August 3, 2006 and it had a few hundred miles on it, mostly from the delivery since it was in a Charlotte NC dealership on the other side of the state. I'm scheduled to have it paid off in October but since I only owe $2,180 on it now I might pay it off sooner. Since I usually keep cars for around 6 years, put something like 75,000 miles on them, that means that a significant amount of this car's life with me is gone. Odd, it still seems practically new to me. Oddly enough this makes me think of women too. My longest relationship is less than 5 years, my marriage was less than 4---I keep cars longer than girlfriends. Usually a lot longer. I don't know if tha...