9 posts tagged “fun”

A few years back someone named Mena Trott decided to make miniature donuts. It's still one of my favorite random things from her dollarshort.org days because, who would make miniature donuts?

I now have a better answer than "Mena Trott." The correct answer is "Mena Trott and the Japanese."

I obtained these amazing miniatures from our local Mitsuwa:

McNear's Mystic Theatre

Last night I made the trek to Petaluma's Mystic Theatre to witness Various & Sundry, a west coast tour featuring a number of my favorite artists, and one I didn't know.

• Glen Phillips, once of Toad the Wet Sprocket and master of solid solo records;
• Luke Bulla, a fiddler I did not know;
• Sean and Sara Watkins of the soon-to-be-on-hiatus Nickel Creek;
• Grant-Lee Phillips, once of Grant Lee Buffalo and likewise master of solid solo records.

So the new camera arrived yesterday (yay!) and I will tell you one little think that I like a lot: My Colors mode. It's very simple, actually: in this mostly-for-fun mode you can do color manipulation tricks in the camera.

It might not be much, but the fact that I could change an apple from green to red in my camera? Is awesome.

Coming soon, I'll take a picture of me and use My Colors mode to give myself a tan. That's right! I won't be pasty anymore!

Fantastic!

Someone has taken the overlapping parts of Back to the Future I and Back to the Future II and put them in the same video. It's delightful, and the consistency is quite good.

I won the scavenger hunt contest at Coudal! That means I'll be getting a lot of stuff in the mail and will be a co-guest editor of Fresh Signals in July. Sweet!

Or at least, our office. Try out this typing test, and then tell me how well you did.

I did 108 adjusted with two errors (one was just capitalization). My all-time high is 110 adjusted.

When we last left our intrepid buying duo, their hopes were dashed. The orange Element was not only orange due to paint color, but to rust as well. And they had been given the cold shoulder by another dealer. Would they find the vehicle of their dreams at a price slightly lower than a Maserati lease at $1999 per month?

We arrived at Continental Honda in Countryside. I dropped Jeani off while I looked for parking; the place was packed so I ended up just parking in a kind-of-not spot. On the way in both of us spotted the Element.

Once we entered the showroom we met Stephanie, our only guide on this journey. Stephanie took us out to the car and let us play around with it and inspect it. The body was clean. Very clean. The interior was also very clean. There was a little wear here and there, but nothing abnormal. There is a slight separation on the driver's seat - much like the full-blown rip on the orange Element - but Jeani said she'd be willing to sew it. "I could sew it right now." At first, I thought she meant right then, which struck me as odd given we didn't own the car.

While playing around with the controls, I found the controls for the wipers, both front and rear. I squirted some washer fluid on the windshield and everything was fine. I then pulled the handle back. I looked in the rear view mirror and laughed out loud.

"What?" Jeani asked.

I pulled the handle back again and laughed again.

"What? What?" she said.

"Look in the back. The nozzle squirts out!"

And it did. The nozzle that was supposed to squirt on the rear window of our car would, in fact, squirt the windshield of the car behind us! I thought it was the funniest thing ever.

"We could squirt it at kids!" I said, referring to the non-existant kids on our street. We laughed a lot at this idea. "Or we could drain the system and put some lemonade in it!" Truly, this was a fun problem.

Stephanie copied our driver's licenses and came back for the test drive. I took a route I was familiar with in Countryside, heading up La Grange Road to 47th. "Have you ever test driven with us before?" Stephanie asked. "No," I said, to which she replied, "You're following the exact same route we normally take people on!"

The car felt good. It felt very good. The brakes - a problem in one we saw last weekend (sponge cake-like) - were good. It handled well. The engine sounded good.

We returned to the dealership and took another few moments to look the car over. It was then that I spotted the only real minus: the front tires differed from the rear. But everything else was fine, so we decided to sit down and talk about it.

I might add at this point that Stephanie was totally cool and non-pressure. She was available (except for one time a little later on), and didn't ram a thing down our throats.

We did the sit down and talked price. We had our ceiling, and after a few rounds back and forth - including the obligatory one with the manager (who wasn't a jerk, honestly!) and a "final" one wherein I thought we wouldn't get the car - they came down to our comfort zone. That was the good thing. We told them to throw in some floor mats, and we'd call it a deal. They said yes.

So we said yes!

The next hour or so was rather standard. Lots of signatures, lots of paperwork, lots of talk with the finance guy. Ultimately we decided to get an extended war... er, service contract that would cover our heinies for up to 100,000 miles, or March 2010, whichever comes first (2010).

When all the paperwork was finished we got to take all of our stuff out of the Beetle and transfer it to the Element. Then, Stephanie gave us the lowdown on the controls - something I haven't had happen since the PT as it's usually just "seeya" - and we did a final look at the car, which had been thoroughly washed and cleaned. It was only then that I remembered the lemonade dispenser on the back of the car.

No problem, though - we needed to come back for the floor mats, so they'd take care of it then.

With that, we drove off in our new, 2003 Honda Element EX 4WD OMG LOLFR. We got some dinner - after spending the entire afternoon at two dealerships, filled up the tank, and took the long drive back home. We got to take Lake Shore Drive up to Evanston. It was a beautiful, crisp, chilly night.

With that, our tumultuous car buying and owning experiences came to a close. The Honda really and truly is in it for the long haul - as are we.

We had decided on Friday to check out the orange Element that was 35 miles away. When yesterday morning rolled around, I called the dealership and ensured they still had it. Yes, they did. Was it still $12,995? Yes, it was. Okay, we'll see you in a couple of hours.

Now, the funny thing about all this was that this car was at the Luxury Motors group out in Downers Grove. I have no qualms mentioning it, because the idea of us trading in a VW to get a Honda at a Bentley dealer is pretty amusing. "Hello! We'd like a Be.... Element!"

Jeani and I headed out after her morning appointment and some good Middle Eastern food. Unfortunately, said food was loaded with garlic so a stop at CVS to get mints and gum was necessary; my breath was kickin'.

We arrived at the dealership a good 30-40 minutes later. Now, again, this was a Bentley dealership per the site: Superior Motor Works. So you can imagine our surprise - and relief - when we saw that this particular branch of the car group was just a nondescript white building with cars around it. Nothing Bentley about it. They did have more than a few BMWs and Mercedes and, due to the lack of parking, I placed the Beetle in between a couple of 'em.

Headed in and met up with our contact, who took us out back to the Element. There it was, looking at us head-on. And the first thing I saw was a big gash in the front bumper. "Uh oh," I thought instantly.

It looked just like the gash that lived in the PT's bumper for years, when I rear-ended a car and smashed only the plastic bumper part into another car's trailer hitch. Same deal. "It's been in an accident," Jeani said. Our salesguy said, "No, an accident doesn't do that." What?

We were starting to get really disappointed. We walked around the car, and Jeani found more than a couple of scrapes on the passenger's side doors and molding. I walked around back and noticed, yes, a nickel-sized spot of rust underneath the nameplate. The rear bumper was also loose and cracked, and there was more damage on the driver's side.

We looked inside and saw that the driver's seat was ripped! Ripped, I tell you. We could see foam. At that point we'd had enough. We told the guy that we weren't interested and thanked him. "Why not?" We told him it was more beat up than we'd like and, frankly, it looked like it was in an accident.

As we walked back to the car, the bummed-ness levels were running high. We'd driven so far to see... a piece of crap. A car we wouldn't buy, ever. Visions of us driving a nice, shiny orange Element home changed into us driving a dirty, black Beetle home.

We left and headed to a gas station where gas was a whopping 14 cents less than it was near our place, and put in a few gallons. Then we sat in the car and discussed things, including how bummed we were. How could that guy say that car wasn't in an accident? "A child didn't just, you know, punch that bumper," I said. Jeani said, "It's obvious that it was - the car either hit another car or even a stationary object. That's an accident!"

We still had a list of all the Elements under consideration with us. Since we weren't terribly far from Countryside, I suggested that maybe we should look at the Jetta wagon. That was our other vehicle under consideration, and this would be our only opportunity to see it, really. It was an 04 with low mileage and was still under warranty. But, one of the Elements we'd had on our list was in Countryside too, at a Honda dealer.

It was decided then that we'd drive to the Honda dealer and check out the Elements they had - but new ones. The whole new versus used debate was sussed out in our car, with both of us raising good points. If anything happened to a new car, we would know what happened. We could stain our own seats (ew!), rip our own fabric, and make our own rust holes. It sounded good, actually.

But on the way over, the notion of new car payments just twisted my stomach a bit (as I know it did Jeani's). The final plan was to forget the orange Element, forget the green Element, and look at the used silver Element this dealer had. We'd also talk new ones if it was a big miss.