Cars are not free. They are money pits. You'll more than make up the car payment in gasoline and maintenance costs on a 13-year-old behemoth like an Expedition.
Absolutely obscene.
Many of my neighbours have five or six cars, a couple of which even run. Cars are excellent lawn ornaments.
I would be incapable of doing so. It's just against my nature. I have trouble turning down free things even if I don't want them. I make no a value judgment on people with different capabilities in this matter.
It is possible to get accustomed to bigger cars. I thought my minivan (yes, I too have a stupid middle-class lifestyle) was pretty big when I bought it. Now I don't.
By the way, if your parents want to give their car to me, I'll take it. But I'm not sure what I'd do with it.
You could just ride a bicycle everywhere. I'm sure there's a way to attach four car seats to one.
(I did this "why not ride a bike!" thing to a facebook friend who was asking about parking passes near our building, and I feel bad, so I'm doing it here, to emphasize how ridiculous I was being. In a forum where she'll never see it. Okay it doesn't make a ton of sense. Still, four car seats on a bicycle would be amazing.)
Take the free car and sell it, then use the proceeds to make a downpayment on the car you want.
How many miles on it?
Probably not too many. I don't think they've left Florida in it.
Do not take a car you do not want. Things that aren't right for you are burdens, not gifts, even if they have value to other people.
When the revolution comes, those who have turned down offers of free cars will be the first up against the wall.
Take the free car and sell it, then use the proceeds to make a downpayment on the car you want.
Nah, maintaining friendly lines with my parents trumps the actual outlay of money.
Get any car that will allow you not to have three car seats in the back of something like a Camry. The seats don't even fit across the back seat of Lee's Infiniti, so she never has to transport more than two at a time. Boy did I enjoy leaning over to buckle squirmy kids in during yesterday's extreme downpour.
Do you have a problem with gifts from your parents in general? Or does that not come up otherwise?
8: You should maybe ask. Apo's point number 1 is more likely to be correct the more miles on it. I drive a 1995, but it only has 128k miles.
"You could just ride a bicycle everywhere. I'm sure there's a way to attach four car seats to one."
I personally have seen, in the streets of Saigon, the following sitting on a single motor scooter:
Dad, driving;
sitting in front of Dad, Very Small Daughter;
sitting behind Dad, Mum;
held between Dad and Mum, Even Smaller Child of Unknown Gender;
sitting behind Mum, and leaning on her back to write his homework, Small Son.
7, 11: Are you sure they'd be insulted by your wanting to sell it? I mean, the various reasons for your reluctance to accept are all completely understandable. Certainly you could ask. On the other hand, the resale value on a 98 Expedition may not be very high, when it costs nearly $40 to fill a tank on a Corolla.
It turns out there actually is a pretty excellent bicycle solution.
Do you have a problem with gifts from your parents in general? Or does that not come up otherwise?
We generally have an excellent balance - they love to offer gifts to me, and they trust me to put on the brakes and not be greedy. This has gone on since high school or so.
Usually it doesn't get into gifts this big, although they help us out with daycare, which is pricey.
15: If the only one wearing a helmet was Dad it sounds like what you'd see in India.
17: I do like those, but I have a total (irrational) phobia about the kids and cars, and biking them alongside cars would give me an ulcer.
maintaining friendly lines with my parents trumps the actual outlay of money.
The advice was meant tongue-in-cheek.
My parents gave their superannuated vehicle to a local poor family who needed a car, and the family proceeded to sell it (allegedly for less than my parents thought it was worth). My parents were a bit sore about that. I told them that they were being unreasonable, and they couldn't presume to judge what was best for the family, and they had made an unconditional gift, etc. etc. But they were still pissed about it.
17: I can't visualize how that thing can possibly be steered.
22: just like a normal bicycle. There's a linkage between the handlebars and the front wheel.
17: I read a blog from your neck of the woods about a bike-only family with a very similar setup, though I think they also have one that includes a tandem bike so both moms can pedal.
"The world needs Vietnam like a fishtrap on a bicycle"
24: I know the blog you mean. I've seen (one of) them out riding, but on the Xtracycle, not the Bakfiets.
23: With four or so parts, I guess.
14:I drive a 1995 1993, but it only has 128k 28k miles.
I should be ashamed. It will rot from age before it's potential has been fully realized.
But I don't want to go to Denton.
Take the Expedition, get some data on your actual miles driven and the costs, including tags & insurance, and then make a decision to keep or sell it. The size is mostly irrelevant, you'll get used to whatever you drive in a few weeks. If you decide to sell it, lie to your parents about some impending mechanical disaster you just managed to avert. It probably won't be the first time a variant of that tactic was employed, right?
30: lie to your parents about some impending mechanical disaster you just managed to avert.
My idea was similar but you lie about some guilt-inducing actual on the road mechanical problem. "Thank God the kids weren't in the car at the time." That'll get you some more useful bling.
"Taking the Expedition" involves some shenanigans involving obtaining a 3rd row of seats and getting it installed, though. Possibly bolted down.
I'm really enjoying the current of "Don't take it" comments in this thread. That's what I'm rooting for.
I insist you buy a Ford Flex and get the optional DVD player.
Sweet! With the two-toned paint job?
If you don't get the two-toned paint job, I'll kick three kittens on my way home.
Expeditions are huge and presumably guzzle gas (regular, though, I think). But the room and the third row may make be very convenient, especially if you start the haul-the-soccer-team routine in the near future. If it's in good shape/relatively low mileage and you're planning not to pack the miles on, it may be OK for two-three years. I think they're only worth about $3.5K tops at present. And what Biohazard says in 30.
32: No, don't do that! If it's not already all laid out for maximum car seat efficiency, don't do it! This is my bottom line. (I'd also said it was my bottom line not to have any kids besides Mara in car seats, so what do I know? But I make the mistakes so you don't have to!)
"Taking the Expedition" involves some shenanigans involving obtaining a 3rd row of seats and getting it installed, though. Possibly bolted down.
Not as arduous as what "Taking the Expedition" entailed back in the days of the Oregon Trail, but still probably a bad investment.
"Take it and trade it in" might be a better spin than "Take it and sell it"
I turned down a couple different car offers from my Dad, who couldn't believe that I really didn't want one. I especially didn't want his wife's old SUV. I'm so glad I did. I've got a car around the place now that I'm living with the historian, but I didn't for at least five years and figure that was worth many thousand dollars to me. If you are going to have something as expensive as a car around, make it exactly the car that fits your needs.
"If the only one wearing a helmet was Dad it sounds like what you'd see in India."
All but the baby were wearing helmets. The Vietnamese are quite good about wearing helmets (some of them styled to look like 1960s US Army steel helmets, which is a bit weird).
32: Figure any special shenanigans needed to make it useful to you into the total cost. At that age things are going to go wrong with it fairly soon. I'd base the decision on how important "free" for a few years would be.
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OT Bleg
If I wanted to create a database of passages to use in critical thinking problems, where each passage is associated with a bunch of tags indicating things like what kind of questions the passage is good for, where the passage came from, and how recently I used it, what software should I use?
Currently, the passages are just kept in a long, disorganized, Word .doc. I'd like something that is searchable and easier to manage. I don't want to spend more than $50 for some shareware product and I don't want to spend more than a few hours learning a language or software.
Any advice?
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You want a collection of brief text snippets with associated timestamps and arbitrary tags?
Kinda sounds like you want a blog.
Easier, cheap, quick to learn? I think you only get two of three.
It will rot from age before it's potential has been fully realized.
Hover text.
now that I'm living with the historian
Shh, people will talk.
1 gets it exactly right. The free car my aunt and uncle gave me less than a year ago has so far cost me thousands of dollars in repairs.
A '98 Expedition averages 12 miles per gallon in the city, and gas is only going to get more expensive going forward. Unless you're already pregnant, you're gambling that you'll need the third row of seats before a 13-year-old vehicle wears out.
45: It also needs to be private. I suppose I could do that with blogger.
46: I think my priorities are (1) Easy to use (2) quick to learn and (3) cheap.
and gas is only going to get more expensive going forward
If you reverse around the city, people get mad.
44: Evernote in its free version? Even paid isn't very expensive per year. It handles most everything you can toss at it and the web clipping feature is great.
A free car is a free car, I suppose. Although googling for pictures of the Expedition it does fall into my 'up against the wall when the revolution comes' category of car. Different in the US, I suppose.
If you are going to have something as expensive as a car around, make it exactly the car that fits your needs.
This is my sentiment exactly, but I realize that doesn't work for many (most) people.
Actually I now have a car which I got for free (inherited from my grandmother) and rarely drive. Occasionally I calculate how much the insurance is costing me per mile of use (~$0.50/mi right now) and it seems kind of absurd. But it seems like a useful life skill to have some experience owning a car, so I think it's worth it for that reason.
What's the car seat law situation in various countries? Is the US an outlier in that it's illegal not to have an enormous vehicle if you have more than 2 children?
NickS, when you're old and grey your grandchildren and gret-grandchildren will gather around and beg "Grampa, tell us about the time you owned a car."
re: 56
I'd guess the seat laws are similar here. But there are small MPVs that'll handle reasonable numbers of car seats, or estate cars that'll take a third row, and other options. There's a lot of space for additional seats between a small 4 seat compact car and the Ford Behemoth.
I'd guess the US trends towards behemoth sized cars for historical/cultural reasons. It's basically always been that way, no? As a difference between the US and Europe, generally speaking.
The SUV-style bohemoth is new. It used to be giant station wagons (we had one that got 10 miles per gallon) or full-sized vans.
I had a quick google and some of the current 7-seater MPVs on the European market will get about 50 - 60mpg. Those are of the mini-van type.
That would be diesel, right? IIRC the US has stricter diesel engine emission standards than Europe and most of the euro diesel vehicles can't be sold here. (My memory of reading this is a couple years old so it may be out of date)
I don't think the 4-seater hybrids get 60 mpg here.
60 -- I learned to drive in a '72 Suburban. They look heavier now, but were always pretty big. It was awful handy, having that 3d row.
61-63: also, as has been discussed here before, the MPG rating system differs such that European ratings generally come out higher for the identical car.
I learned to drive in an '85 Suburban. It felt like someone had loosened every bolt holding the thing together. There was like 4" of play in the steering wheel, and I swerved around the lane like I was drunk. Also I beached it along a pole in a parking lot. I was not drunk. Good times.
re: 63
The high-end figure of 60mpg is mpg-UK, which works out at nearer 50 US.
It seems crazy, if true, that very frugal diesel engines with very high mileage and low emissions would be banned while SUVs with single-figure MPGs not.
Welcome to our ass-backwards country.
Beached? Like a beached whale? Lying on its side motionless?
My grandma drove my parents' 1971 Pontiac station wagon (featuring the world's least comfortable 3rd row of seating) into the Post Office. Parts fell off, but the car kept running and never had a repair. It was a strange situation. My grandma didn't tell my parents and my parents never mentioned that they knew. I was never sure if my grandma knew they knew. Grandma never learned to drive until she was past 65 and the wagon was old when it hit. She may have thought the damage was not noticeable.
67: CO2 emissions don't even figure into the U.S. calculations.
70 - no, like I somehow got the pole pressing a dent into the middle of the side panel in such a way that whether I went forward or backward, it made the dent bigger. I couldn't figure out how to undo whatever got me in that spot.
Also picture nice concrete-on-metal scraping sounds and yellow paint on the blue Suburban.
I've heard diesel vehicles are pretty popular in interior Alaska because you can keep them running for weeks at a time.
I used to have a Rover 800-series, which I got for £25. By UK standards, that was a massive car. They used to use them as ministerial limos. Someone had driven into it and run off, before I got it, so the passenger side had a massive rusted dent all along it. Despite that, I drove it for a year and it went through the MOT [annual car safety check] needing a license plate replaced [it had cracked], and that was it. You'd have sworn to look at it that it had been abandoned and didn't go, but it drove like new.
Heebie:
why do you need a third row of seats?
67.last: laws against particulate emissions that block a lot of diesels got passed in (I think) the early or mid-'70s, when 1. they were still quite bad as far as particulates and 2. smog was the key issue that people were worried about.
At around the same time they tried to establish fleet mileage limits that would cut down on the number of giant, incredibly low-mlieage vehicles, but they exempted trucks over a certain gross weight, and automakers eventually figured out that you could chuck a roof over the back of a truck and call it an SUV and sell as many of them as you wanted.
The third issue is that safety standards in the us (Naaaaadeerrrr!) make for generally heavier cars.
So yeah, pwned by 68.
78 gets it right, and old pre-clean diesel really was super polluting.
77: New Year's resolution to pick up more hitchhikers.
Oh yeah, but there's been a massive revolution in diesel engines over the past 10 years. I'm not an evangelist, or anything, I have a very small petrol car. But they really aren't what they once were.
We talked about this before, re: safety, and I gather Euro and US safety standards aren't actually that different. Size isn't a safety standard thing, surely? It's partly cultural surely, and partly that petrol is so much cheaper in the US that more people can afford to drive really heavy fuel-consuming cars.
Size is a fairly cheap way to get to a given level of safety, assuming you aren't going to roll the vehicle.
The free car from my grandparents during my senior year of college lost its first transmission in two months, then dropped another one when I started grad school, and then broke down on the way back to my second semester, at which point, not being able to sell it because it was a gift, I signed it over to my parents and walked everywhere for five years. Also, ime, old cars are a pain because not only are they a money drain, but they are really not reliable, so that when you really need to be somewhere, or want to take a long cross country trip or something, you have to rent anyway.
If Jammies has serious mechanic skills (i.e., can pick out a transmission from the junk yard and install it himself), then it might be worth it. Otherwise, I'd be inclined to suggest that your parents donate it somewhere.
My 2004 Ford Focus with manual transmission is the first car I have ever owned that has passed 130K miles with no real repairs needed. Yes - there have been new brakes and tires and windshield wiper blades and battery and serpentine belt, but that has been it! I haven't even replaced the spark plugs or clutch and the air filter refuses to be replaced.
With fresh tires it drives better in the rain or snow than most SUVs. It gets 30 mpg highway. I pretty much love this car, although the driver's seat is pretty worn out now.
For now I'm thinking an electric motorcycle will be my next vehicle purchase.
81.1: I'm certainly not denying that, at this point, diesels are basically awesome and the law has led us to a very stupid place. I was just explaining how it came to be, historically.
81.2: I don't really know what the differences are, but I know that whenever you hear about a small car that's been very popular in europe (the smart, the fiesta) getting released in the US, it's a couple of hundred pounds (at least) heavier, and that's ascribed to safety regulations (mostly the bumpers need to be tougher, I think).
Anyhow, yes, the inexpensiveness of gas plays a huge role.
81: My anecdotal experience is that SUVs are driven by short people who want to be able to look over the crowd and see things for once.
that's ascribed to safety regulations (mostly the bumpers need to be tougher, I think)
The stricter U.S. bumper rules are not so much a safety regulation as a consumer protection. Before the era of the 2 mph bumper (i.e. suffers no damage whatsoever in a 2 mph collision), a simple parking lot fender-bender could result in hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of repair bills. The new regs were intended to make low speed collisions costless for consumers (and the insurance industry, natch). The downside is that chrome bumpers are pretty much extinct.
Goddamn internet, getting too smart for its own good. When I do a Google image search for "Expedition," the first result is a picture teo posted on his blog that mentions some expedition or other.
Parent always get this need that they have to have three seats. On those rare times when you actually do need three seats, rent a car.
Otherwise, a normal car will do.
OT: What's normal to leave as a tip for the housekeeping staff at, say, a Days Inn in South Alabama?
Ed Hardy was in a different thread. But, I just found out that the purse my daughter has been carrying around is an Ed Hardy purse.
I think I have the answer for heebie. The utility of the Expedition compared to her current vehicle (the one that's "dying a painful death") is that it alleviates her concern about her car breaking down (presuming the Expedition is mechanically sound). She should tell her parents that she is happy to take their car to tide her over until such time as she finds the car that meets her exact needs . She is really grateful for the Expedition because it eliminates the terrifying possibility that her car could break down before she finds the precise car she wants to buy on the used car market.
Result: heebie gets title to the Expedition, and when she is ready to buy a new car, she trades or sells the Expedition with the implied consent of the parents -- because, let's face it, once they are rid of the car they won't want to take it back.
90: Hmmm, I usually leave a $5 for two days, or something like a $10 for a week. I suppose I'd leave $2 per day although it is hard to leave that little for a single night.
93: I'm with you, knecht, assuming heebie has a place to keep the Extinction.
90: If you want to fit in, leave nothing and steal the towels.
I always left a couple dollars a day, when I remembered, until some thread here where people mentioned leaving $10 or more. Then I tried leaving $5 a day for a while and started coming back to find notes like "THANK YOU FOR TIP!!!!!" and thought maybe that was overdoing it after all.
97: Right. You want to get notes that say "FUCK YOU, ASSHOLE." That's how you know you've tipped the right amount.
And if they say "FUCK YOU ASSHOLE?" you might want to double-check what kind of hotel it is.
Oh, and if you're worried about them wanting it back, it shouldn't be too hard to find As, Ns, and Ls in the same font.
why do you need a third row of seats?
I want the possibility of having 4 kids. Not that we definitely will. Also cramming 3 car seats in one row sucks a lot.
Not that we have three kids, but we'll definitely go for a third.
My anecdotal experience is that SUVs are driven by short people who want to be able to look over the crowd and see things for once.
You have clearly never been to Texas.
When I do a Google image search for "Expedition," the first result is a picture teo posted on his blog that mentions some expedition or other.
Huh. When I do it all I get are lots of pictures of Ford Expeditions.
Parent always get this need that they have to have three seats. On those rare times when you actually do need three seats, rent a car.
You mean those rare occasions that would occur if I had 3 kids to take to daycare?
Transporting people who are not one's offspring isn't exactly rare. Car pools, play dates, taking a neighbor kid or two out along for ice cream.
OK, I suppose one should just live somewhere where everyone walks to school and to get ice cream.
(Yes, I know, I should refresh more often.)
As should we all (for various values of refresh).
OK, I suppose one should just live somewhere where everyone walks to school and to get ice cream.
Welcome, friends! It's really good ice cream, too.
106: Yay! You are so right! I don't know how large the HPs are, but car seat recommendations keep tending toward keeping kids in booster seats until prom, and while once you get to the point where you don't need seats with backs it's easier to manage them, it's still a huge pain.
Alex, at 4, is the size of an average 2-year-old and is in a full lockdown seat. Mara and Val, 4 and 5.5, are about the same height, but because Mara is younger she gets the booster with a back and Val has a straight-up booster in the middle. When both Val and Mara are riding, I have to lean over Mara and shift her seat to be able to buckle both. I wish all the time that I had three seats and I think it would be safer, not just easier for me.
Well, if you have to bring three, then it is a pain.
I thought you transported two to daycare. If a third come along, that becomes a problem.
Obviously depends on the age, but most people dont have more than 4 people in their car very often. Even most people who feel like they HAVE to have a giant car.
Most of the time, it is the parent and two kids.
Im just pushing back on that pressure that parents always feel/get told that they absolutely cannot survive unless they can transport the entire preschool to different places.
I see lots of carseat disputes. Far too many guardian ad litems (and jsome udges) are still in the mindset of "who cares about carseats!?!?!? we rode around unbelted and we survived!"
Seriously!?!?!?! It is the law.
I still don't remember to tip hotel cleaning staff. Dick move.
"Dick move" isn't the tip that they're talking about, Annelid.
In related news, Anne Sinclair (aka Ms. Strauss Kahn) has been hired to be the head of the French version of Huff Post. Their bloggers might not get paid but at least they'll get complimentary orgy invites.
sorry, late to the party. will you have to pay taxes on the Expedition? My mama gifted me a car, didn't have the certificate that said she paid the state sales tax, I ended up paying $800 to the State of Washington. So it was free car that cost me $800.
You should never tip hotel staff without first consulting the BLS wage index for the statistical area you're in.
I still do most of my pirating in an OG way - BPL has a lot of stuff available for free. Internet piracy is something I reserve for things that are unavailable legally and not at the library.
I still read BPL as bass playing lifeguard.
I'm pretty sure Knecht's solution is the right thing to do - accept the Expedition to avoid a disaster with the current car. Then take your time finding the next one.
I don't like the smallest cars with 3 rows of seats in - the 3rd row is so near the back of the car I would just be far too worried. But then I drive a van with 9 seats. Usually with one row of seats taken out so we can do trips like this.
Worried about something driving into the back of us, if that wasn't clear. I only put the dog right in the back if I have to.
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Crap. Pregnant spouse has found out from her employer's HR that the 3-6 month unpaid leave option that's on the books "is just not done these days", so it's 12 weeks of (also unpaid) FMLA and then back to the job. That's not how this was supposed to work. Crap.
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(Only half off-topic, really.)
Knecht has it right. Accept it, use it for a bit if you need to, unload it. Christ, an Expedition. Completely awful. I know lots of people have legit reasons for driving large-capacity vehicles, but we've been just fine with our little first-generation Prius for the four of us.
Relatedly, for them that can get it, Zipcar rules. The one that's three blocks away from my house is a late-model Prius. $7.75/hour, $71/day, gas and 180 miles included.
126: Whaaaaaat? That's horrible. I hope someone here will know relevant laws.
126: Too bad about the leave, but congratulations and best wishes.
127: Knecht has it right. Accept it, use it for a bit if you need to, unload it. Christ, an Expedition. Completely awful.
When Jesus says Christ, then you know it's bad.
Crap. Pregnant spouse has found out from her employer's HR that the 3-6 month unpaid leave option that's on the books "is just not done these days"
"Just not done," how lovely. Gah.
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This seems like it belongs here.
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I hope I'm not the first person devious enough to suggest waiting eight to twelve weeks, then deploying the ol' "Oh, we love it but gas is so expensive we thought we'd better trade it in toward a Prius" maneuver.
Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure that FMLA is the relevant law, and it says that anything beyond 12 weeks unpaid leave is at the benevolence of your employer. Definitely not a happy-American moment (have there been any of those lately?).
GW: Is the employee handbook a contract? Some are, and the fact that it has a disclaimer saying that it isn't one doesn't always answer that question.
I'll chime in to say that Knecht has it right at 93. I'd probably explain to the parents from the outset that you'd like something more reliable, like, right now, but are concerned about the gas mileage long-term, and think that the Expedition wouldn't be suitable on that front. You could also make vague hand-wavy noises about how there was that big deal about the Ford Explorer having roll-over safety issues, and maybe the Expedition might too.
If they're only offering because they think this is the solution to all your vehicular problems, and you say that it's not (longer-term), maybe they'll want to keep the thing. It would need to transported from Florida to Texas, right? That doesn't make sense if you're going to trade it in a few months from now; unless they don't really want it any more anyway. Leave it up to them.
I don't know about the contract nature of where the leave option was written down, but I think it's described as being at the discretion of some level of management in the first place (Even if granted, the employer reserves the right to decide, at the end of this unpaid leave, to not let you come back, but we think that that's a low risk given the particulars of her work).
Also, it kind of seems like a problem given that day care waiting lists can be over a year here. "How can this ever work?"
I'm sure it will work just fine and that if you have a girl you'll know exactly how to threaten boys without treating her like a helpless object of the male gaze.
Anyway, somebody who knows how to reassure people should try to say something reassuring. The best I can do is to say that you become capable of managing all kinds of things you never thought you could manage once you have to.
(That is crappy leave. We got much better. At the time, I didn't know it was an employer going above the law.)
132: Unfortunately, I read the comments.
Has anyone congratulated our first President? If not, congratulations. Babies seem pretty cool, wrote the irresponsible and self-centered bachelor.
Babies seem pretty cool, wrote the irresponsible and self-centered bachelor.
This irresponsible bachelor was in a state of dread when recently left alone for a couple hours with a little kid. [Please don't cry, please don't cry oh god, you're crying, HELP!]
145: They still make laudanum, right?
They just call it "Thomas the Tank Engine."
143: Someone should put that in the FAQ.
Not that I know of, but they do still produce 'kompot' the Polish bargain basement version (take lots of poppy stalks, boil the hell out of them, reduce to brownish syrup). None was readily available. I could have tried Bailey's though.
150: Seriously, drugging babies is wrong. Did you [thinks for a while] jingle your keys? Make funny faces? Play some Bootsy Collins at 33 rpm?
Pregnant spouse has found out from her employer's HR that the 3-6 month unpaid leave option that's on the books "is just not done these days", so it's 12 weeks of (also unpaid) FMLA and then back to the job.
Trying to resist the urge to be that annoying Canuck/Brit/Swede/Citizen-or-Denizen-of-a-Non-USian-Country-with-a-Sane-and-Sensible-Paid-Parental-Leave-Policy-that-is-Mandated-and-Enforced-by-Law, who comes on to say, 'What?! How can you people live like that?! My sister spent part of her one-year paid maternity leave on the beaches of Maui, hanging out with a German family whose paid parental leave was even more generous than the Canuckistani benefits...' But, er, I guess I just failed to resist that temptation. Totally crappy, GW, is there no way to negotiate a more sensible deal?
Heebie, don't take a car you don't really want, even if it's free. Been there; done that; and it cost us a couple of thousand in repairs before we finally had to admit that our "free" car was too damned expensive to keep running. Also, the new car-seat regulations do require bigger vehicles, and that's not your fault at all. And c'mon, you can't rent a bigger vehicle every time you want to take a family drive (or drop the kids off at daycare, say).
I actually suspect the resale market for large vehicles is down, based on my experience buying a used compact car in June. When Thundersnow mentioned offhandedly someday wanting a pick-up truck that can haul a gooseneck trailer, the salesman nearly fell over himself trying to sell us a truck.
Still, Knecht has it right.
152: Go back to [looks something up] one of the very many nations with more generous legally-mandated maternity and family leave policies than that of the U.S.! Second Amendment! Coors Light! Chuck Connors in Branded!
151 THe kid quickly realized that I'm not 'Mummy' (though he'd been calling me that earlier during the day), ducked under the covers, sobbing loudly, and reappeared every half minute with a look of utter despair as he realized that I hadn't been magically transformed into my cousin.
Why is it that when my cousin was around I could react to a crying toddler with equanimity, but when left alone with one I was both terrified and deeply upset at the kid's distress? It's not like a little kid crying is a likely indication of any serious problem, that's just what they do.
I really did read 133 as being a reply to 126. I could probably do with a bit more sleep.
I actually suspect the resale market for large vehicles is down ...
It appears the value is very roughly about $2500.
when left alone with one I was both terrified and deeply upset at the kid's distress
If it makes you feel any better, that sense of terror and ineffectual sadness won't go away when/if you're dealing with your own kid.
154: And takers versus makers, of course, and a 'food stamp president' against the example of John Wayne. And if toddlers had to clean up the messes that they made, with children working as janitors in their own schools, the better to embody a 'work ethic,' all Gingrich-style, it would be a different, and an even better, America.
159 was me. Temporarily distracted by Callista's scary, bleached-out helmet head. They built a sports dome in Toronto with a retractable roof, and that expensive and state-of-the-art edifice looks more humane and approachable than Madame Gingrich's signature hairdo.
160: I was a little disappointed when the NYer made a little point of her hair in its profile this week. It can't be all that revealing of character.
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Someone let a cat into the building and it's wandering the hall meowing so I'm awake at 3:45 am. I'm glad they let it in. Few things make me as unhappy as the idea of a cute non-abstract cat (yeah I went out and petted it for a few minutes. It is now a concrete example of "cat") out on a cold night because I am basically that girl in that Internet meme and fuck you autocorrect for capitalizing internet. But my day tomorrow is shot to hell.
Pro tip: when the noise is out in the hall, it doesn't do any good to turn on a white noise generator in your dream.
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140 - I promise there were books. Mine were all library books of course, but they took up half my packing. I love going on holiday - guilt-free reading all day.
We were bringing a bookcase hom once from my parents, just a low one, and because we have a gap of about 5 or 6 foot between the two rows of seats when we have the middle one out, it was just standing up behind the front passenger seats. It looked great, we thought we should always keep a bookcase in our car.
What I really sneer at is those heathens with built in DVD players in their cars!
162: When I did get to sleep, I dreamed about various people telling me I was being selfish and unhelpful for being annoyed every fucking time a kid woke me. I don't recommend this coping strategy. Now I'm sleep-deprived and even more cranky than I'd have been just from all the wakeups.
My cat who lives with the ex was a cat who came in from the cold and she's super great. Any chance you or some neighbor will be able to keep this one?
Which girl in what internet meme?
Cats have a refined instinct for picking up humans. A cat made homeless will almost always find some soft touch within a day or two by sitting on the back step and looking pathetic. (At one time this would usually have been me, but there are too many established cats on our street now for a newcomer to bother.)
Predators? Bloody little scroungers, more like, all cute and helpless, like they've never heard of a can of tuna.
we've ended up with a lot of cats that way. our current one was abandoned in a drain as a very small kitten with an eye infection. the drain was right next to our house. we were pretty much doomed.
Which girl in what internet meme?
Two Girls One Cat, presumably.
teraz: kids just cry and it's no big deal. I babysat a lot as an...inappropriately young child by u.s. standards, but probably on the older side considering worldwide median. anyway, sometimes they just cry, and you can pick them up and dance them around, or pat them and tell them "everything's going to be all right," or you can just play video games. they seem to turn out fine either way.
165: A cat made homeless will almost always find some soft touch within a day or two by sitting on the back step and looking pathetic.
What has been to date our "bast" and smartest cat came to us via that means but where the "back step" was a second floor balcony without steps (but barely reachable via tree branches) and "pathetic" was outwardly disinterested. His subsequent career as a cat reflected this prideful intrepidity.
Love the picture in 124.
If I get more lives, I would like to come back as one of asilon's kids.
Through a series of decisions that individually seemed like good ideas at the time, we've ended up feeding a free-lance cat who turned up at our back step. Now he sits there patiently, sometimes for hours, with his head winningly cocked to one side, hoping to be let in. We'd probably accede to his request, except that our primary cat, who sleeps indoors, views even the existing arrangement as a usurpation. There's a little political theory seminar right there. I feel torn between my pre-existing loyalties and my belief in social equality. I've been scratching the ears of the subaltern cat a lot in an effort to expiate my feelings of guilt, but this is proving to be a quite time-consuming redistributive strategy.
When I was a teenager a mate and I found a box of kittens abandoned by the side of the road, and brought them home for a couple of days until we could get them to a vet. Our existing cat didn't just view them as usurpers, she tried to kill them, and would certainly have succeeded if left alone with them for more than a few seconds.
What I really sneer at is those heathens with built in DVD players in their cars!
I know, not even Blu-ray!
Our existing cat didn't just view them as usurpers, she tried to kill them
Extreme feline propertarianism in action.
163: It looked great, we thought we should always keep a bookcase in our car.
We bought our family truckster minivan the week before leaving on a summer vacation. During ot we managed to acquire an antique chest-of-drawers. It fit neatly behind the third seat and in some ways served as a superior method of organizing everyone's clothing for the remainder of the trip--although not to the degree that we ever brought one along on subsequent trips.
172: Our current cat by way of contrast is a study in low feline self-esteem. When my wife and a friend brought home a kitten they had found doing a good impression of the famous-internet-kitty-I wont-link in a busy intersection, the current cat completely retreated to the depths of an upstairs closet barely coming to feed and relieve herself (she had spent the first several months with us doing the same). I will leave it to One of Many to give the proper political theory interpretation. (We quickly found another home for the kitten, where it lives to this day with the sobriquet "Little Cat".)
I will leave it to One of Many to give the proper political theory interpretation.
An illustration of the dhimmi mentality that liberals reflexively adopt in response to the demands of Mooslim immigrants. The closet represents a burkha.
164: Lots of my neighbors are cat people, so it's not out of the question. As for me, my otherwise charming tortoiseshell turns into a howling monster in the presence of another cat.
I know this because on New Years's Eve a couple of years ago, I was walking to the subway and met a small orange cat with large ears on 35th Street, freaked out, called my ex ("whatdoIdoitssocoldoutIcan'tjustLEAVEitouthere!!!") and ended up taking it home. Little Hans (I figure even my cat should get an Internet pseudonym) went nuts, so the orange cat had to live in the bathroom for a day.
The happy ending, if you require one, is that, after an eye-opening conversation with an animal rescue lunatic, I got the ex to take the cat for a few days and some coworker of his was charmed--really, one could not fail to be--and adopted him and changed his name to something annoying like Mr. Rochester. We had been calling him Small Cat which we thought was funny but was pwned by 176, I now see.
It's kind of awesome that the "Car Advice" thread is now cat advice.
Oh, look how uncreative I am. My cats' online pseudonyms were/are Little Cat and Big Cat.
Soon, it will be bat advice. Then bad advice, which should be fun, as should cad advice, and then we can circle back to car advice.
Maybe it'll be Cat Advise, where we tell cats what to do, and then Cat Advils, after all the shitty advising we did.
("whatdoIdoitssocoldoutIcan'tjustLEAVEitouthere!!!")
This is like a voice from another world. There are a great number of cats have homes and wander freely in the cold. I don't think cats have tags. At least, I've never seen a cat with a tag. How do you know it didn't have a home?
New York city street. A cat outdoors is either lost or homeless -- very close to no one lets an owned cat wander outdoors. I'm sure Smearcase wouldn't have reacted that way if he were out of town at the time.
Even people near open areas don't let cats roam?
I've now got "New York City Cats" going through my head, to the tune of the refrain from "New York City Cops"
Be nice or I'll make sure "Memories" goes through your head.
I'VE got it going through my head to the tune of the refrain of "Detroit City Cats".
What LB said. Nobody would let a cat out for a jaunt in midtown, like it doesn't even...no.
My older female Fat Cat has instantly adopted every kitten she's met, up to defending one from a confused Cute Boy Cat in hunting mode. I feel bad that I can't keep bringing her kittens, but there's probably some persnickety legal threshold.
We bought our family truckster
Oh JP, I love you even more than before.
way back in 17: I really covet those things, but they cost a mint over here. Have you ever seen a cheap one? I know it's cheaper than a car, but if I'm going to pay four figures for a bike, I want it to be a fancy road bike for ME ME ME ALL MINE.
My ex and I had a former stray cat who went by Little Cat as well. Many efforts to rename her ensued -- including "Mini," as a counterpart to the other cat Max -- but stupid names often stick better than clever ones, in my experience.* She was probably my favorite pet cat though: one of these sweet, boneless creatures you can drape around your shoulders. She had peculiar tastes and once devoured half a muffin: I shot a video of her with her head in the muffin bag, but this was before YouTube, so I couldn't as easily plague the Internet with it.
* "lurkey"
I used to try to give my pets clever names, but I noticed I still called them OneCat and TwoCat, so I gave up on that.
The best source for cat names.
I guess I haven't really mentioned my new cat here, or given her a pseudonym. Maybe Dahlia, one of the names on my shortlist.
I've been reading the Jeeve's books since people keep mentioning them here and I needed something free to put on my Kindle. They are good, but it gets a bit repetitive after the second or third chapter.
I used to try to give my pets clever names, but I noticed I still called them OneCat and TwoCat, so I gave up on that.
Mine has a clever-ish name everyone assumes to be a reference to something annoying. (Ok, I'll unmask her: she's Dora, but not Dora the Explorer.) But it doesn't matter anyway because no matter how hard I may try, I mostly address her as "Fluffy."
A friend from Slavic days complained to me once about people that give their cats literary allusions for names. In response, she named her cat after a character in Anna Karenina: Kitty.
I named my only cat Seymour, after the Salinger, and because of the homophony and puns, and because it felt absurdly arbitrary. I don't like Salinger that much.
I might name my next cat "tree" or "socketwrench"
My parents' cats are all called letters of the Greek alphabet. Actually, my grandparents started it with Zeta, which I'm sure was after something or other topical (this was the 60's), and then when my parents got married they got a cat and called her Pi. One of their cats was a dog, but apart from that, cats. At the moment they have (in descending age order) Lambda, Ming (she is actually MY cat, which is why she doesn't have a proper name), Iota, Eta, Alpha, Omicron and Epsilon.
They have also had Beta, Gamma, Delta, Theta, Kappa, Mu, Rho, Sigma, Tau, Chi and Omega. Not many left.
198: My first guess would be from Freud, but I like that others think you're a closet Nick Jr fan so much that I may choose to believe it myself.
Any cat of my acquaintance could be called Eta without fear of contradiction.
Asilon's parents have still got Digamma, Koppa and Sampi if they're desperate enough.
I think cats need to have incredibly pretentious names to match their level of self-regard. If I had a cat I would name it either Agamemnon or Clytemnestra.
202: Not many left.
It's like the "Nine Billion Names of God".
I've said it before, but my favorite cat name (and I've met at least two cats with the name) is Meow Zedong.
Favorite dog names are a close first and second place:
2nd Place: Charles Barkley
1st Place: Avon Barksdale
207. I believe (alameida will correct me) that Mao is actually Mandarin for cat. Onomatopoeic?
207: The Kliban cartoon version of that was two cats in padded jackets inspecting traces left outside a mousehole.
"Meow."
"Mousie dung."
209: Different character and tone.
The Kliban cartoon version
You would not believe how passionate my parents are about Kliban cartoons.
Like, I had to explicitly tell them to stop giving me Kliban cat shirts. I would bet 70% of their summer wardrobe is Kliban cat t-shirts.
His non-cat cartoons (and some of his cat cartoons) were often genuinely funny. But that was thirty years ago, and your parents should be over it by now.
210: I believe the first cat said "Mao," though I can't find any Internet support for this.
My favorite Kliban (according to my potentially leaky memory) was two cats sitting on a fence. I have a recollection that it was a male speaking to a female:
"If I had two dead rats, I'd give you one."
Somehow I find that hilarious.
