and so you will die. a lot. stupid valkyrie.
So, this is what my odometer looked like when I left for work this morning:
Three miles short of 100,000. I’m very pleased that I was able to pay off my car in December, but as poor as the resale value was at that time (and, to be fair, when I drove it off the lot in 2003), it was worth almost nothing by the time I pulled into the parking lot at work today. …Still, no more payments! Now I just have to keep it in good repair until I can afford a down payment on another car. Which will be, oh, never.
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The Beck album was a disappointment. It’s slight, post-modernist, and even Beck doesn’t sound all that interested in what he’s singing. The mumbling, meandering final song, “Volcano”, is a break from the clean, hip style of the rest of the album, but it’s a much more suitable sound for the attitude of the album. It doesn’t cohere and it doesn’t interest. (Rolling Stone utterly disagreed with me.)
As for the new U2, I had written a couple of paragraphs in this space about how disappointing it was, but after listening a bit more I think it’s a pretty darn good record. Some things that I didn’t delete because they’re still true: Bono’s voice is wearing out, starting to be unpretty instead of just unusual. The record reminds me in some ways of Achtung Baby, and I thought that Achtung felt in places like a sloppy, early-draft version of a sincere followup to The Joshua Tree. There’s polish here similar to the polish on All That You Can’t Leave Behind, an excellent but sort of bland record, but in certain places this album feels the same way as Achtung: sloppy, unfinished. When U2 are good, they’re transcendent; when they’re not quite switched on, they are frustrating.
I realize this is blasphemy, since U2 are nobility in the rock world, and a new album by one of the Old Greats will always get five stars, but I didn’t like this tossed-off quality in some of Achtung Baby and I don’t like what there is of it here. (RS disagrees with me on this as well, and while I think he’s probably right and I’m probably wrong, holding U2 to the standard of TJT instead of the rest of their career would be a truer journalistic act.)
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If you know anything about video games, I highly recommend Zero Punctuation, an animated video column about games written by Yahtzee, a Brit living in Australia who is hilarious, smart, and snarky as hell. I have often watched certain of his reviews over and over (he’s right, it was a horrible game) and over, but yesterday was the first time I immediately rewatched a review as soon as the credits were over, so do yourself a favor and watch this one. (TB, here is his review of Oblivion so you don’t have to look.)
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Some checks and some financing came in at work, so the furlough is over. We were never even docked for it, and we got miniature bonuses last week to help make up for the stress. (I got $250 and put it immediately into savings.) I find this nice, but short-sighted; by the end of last week we were in another “crisis” period and no checks could get written and we didn’t get paid on time again. For this reason, and for all the others that I talked about when the furlough was induced, I’m thinking of asking if I can work four days a week anyway. I brought this to BF and he was not encouraging; since this is the second time I’ve talked to him about this and his response the previous time was also “I don’t think that’s a good idea”, I’m inclined to think it’s not a good idea. But I just don’t have 40 hours’ worth of work in the week, and if it would make a difference to the firm that would mean we’d get paid on time, I’d rather cut my hours than have to sit here for 8 unnecessary hours. I dread going to work a whole lot more now than I ever have, and fewer days to dread it would be nice.
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School tonight and tomorrow, and then next week is spring break so no school. After that, only seven weeks more and I’m done! Mom asked me what I wanted for a graduation gift, and I told her I just wanted it to pass unnoticed. She thought it was kind of sweet that MM wanted to throw a party for me and asked why I was so opposed to it. The answer is partially that I’m still bitter over the total lack of interest that my actual college graduation got from both of my parents, but the rest of the answer is because I never wanted 100% to get this stupid certificate and I feel like MD forced my hand, and also I don’t feel that I put much effort into it at all and yet am graduating with flying colors, and that makes me feel bad, so I just want to put it on my resume and forget about it. But oh no. No, no no. Let’s make a big stinkin’ deal out of it.
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This was a terrific weekend, full of relaxation and Star Trek, but I’m starting to feel more concern about how attached I am to BF, and how much more I enjoy being at home than I enjoy being anywhere else. It doesn’t feel healthy. It’s a vague feeling of disquiet, so perhaps I’ll explore it in another post sometime.
March 16, 2009 at 11:02 am
About your car – if you can afford to do the routine maintenance on it (oil changes, tune-ups, fix anything that goes wrong right away), 100,000 miles is nothing. DH is driving a truck right now (1989 Ford F150) with almost 200,000 miles on it and my Windstar (2001) has 140,000 miles on it (and my 1997 Grand Caravan had almost 170K miles on it when we traded it in). Granted, vehicles with that many miles on them aren’t worth much as a trade-in, but if you can afford to sell it out-right, you’ll get more money from it (my son just sold a 1989 Buick for $600 and could have gotten $1,000 for it, he had 30 calls asking to buy it). I told him he should have gotten all the callers together and let them bid on it….LOL
You’re exactly right – the thing that’s depressing is not the number of miles, but the lack of trade-in value. I was thinking when I did sell it that selling it to some kid for his first car would be perfect, and that I’d get a lot more money that way, so it’s good to have that confirmed.
March 16, 2009 at 3:45 pm
Trade-in? Ride that b*tch to its grave celebrating no payments each and every month while you do a little happy dance. Just treat it to something every once in a while…
Not to make light of your hourly wage (plus the company labor burden for those eight hours), but eight hours of your pay is a drop in the bucket to the big picture of the company.
Which is exactly what BF said. Even taking into account the fact that we have only three full-time employees, plus three lawyers and some contract folks, my salary is almost definitely the lowest one so you’re both almost definitely right.
March 16, 2009 at 4:35 pm
Figure out how much you could afford to make in monthly payments in the future if you were to get another car. Start putting that money way every month now. Keep this car until it either has some really big repair that needs to be done (a repair worth substantially more than the car itself, like a new tranny), or until the monthly maintenance starts approaching the amount of your expected monthly payment. If you do this, and can keep this car until 200K miles, you should be able to simply buy another car, forget about making a down payment.
Good call. I’m planning to use my savings account as a wall that I will construct and then break down – once I’ve saved up enough for teacher training, the balance vanishes. Once I’ve saved up enough to pay off the one student loan, the balance vanishes. Etc. Probably once all the debts are paid off I’ll start saving for a car…and that’s a lot more years away than another 100,000 miles…
On the financial side, I agree with BF: the firm can afford to pay you for those eight hours, if they are will to do it. But there is an emotional toll to sitting around doing nothing. That’s something you have to evaluate on your own. I don’t think there’s a right or wrong about this.
I’ve had jobs like that, but unlike this job there didn’t seem to be an end in sight. At this point the nothing-to-do is cyclical and will probably change in another month or so. For now I’m going to stick it out. And apply for jobs elsewhere, naturally.