3 Stations East

Minor Celebrity Sighting: Alpana Singh

nobody@vox.com(Paul) — Sun, 16 Jul 2006 08:43:45 -0500

This is the year of meeting (or at least, seeing) minor local celebrities. As readers of ennui will recall, my organization hired a former local news anchor and it was just kind of weird working on the same floor as her. (Ryan suggested I ask her to give me a news update every time I walked by her. Nice.) It was uneventful, of course, when we said "Hi" in the hallways or whatnot. It wouldn't be right to say, "OMG, you're from channel 5! I loved your report on vitamins!" But no.

Anyway.

Yesterday Jeani and I were at the Glenview Trader Joe's. We were looking at the trail mix/bagged nuts area. I was standing with the cart and Jeani was a little ways back in the aisle. I was looking at her, and then I turned around to look forward towards the dairy section.

My eyes probably nearly popped out of my head.

"Honey!" I said. Now, I said this about 20 decibels too loudly - a level reserved more for, "Help!" or "We won the lottery!" than "Oh, come here, look at these great peanuts!" Jeani naturally replied, "What?"

But I didn't reply. What could I say at that same level? "Oh, look! It's..."

Instead, Jeani looked at me in a quizzical fashion and slowly walked towards me.

"Honey, I'm pretty sure that's Alpana Singh."

We both looked over to the bread aisle where this woman was. Jeani turned to me quickly and said, "That's her!"

Alpana Singh is the nation's youngest sommelier and the host of channel 11's Check, Please! - a great restaurant review show. There she was, buying stuff at Trader Joe's in Glenview.

We were kind of stunned in a good way, so we poked around the cashew section a little more. I kind of wanted to see what was in her cart - I mean, she's an obvious foodie, so what would she buy?

However, just staying put and not buying anything else and looking at Alpana Singh seemed a little weird. We moved on with our purchases and made it to the frozen section. It was really hard not to look at her and be all stupid when she was just a few feet away from us. As I told Jeani, it's a stupid situation: "What do you say?"

So of course, we said nothing.

Alpana, it's worth noting, looks like a totally normal person (although Jeani noted she was wearing makeup but, on the North Shore, wearing makeup whilst grocery shopping is just fine). The only time when she would have been a true practical help was when we were debating over getting a bottle of $2 wine - not Charles Shaw.

Jeani: "It'd be great if we could go up to her and ask her how this is!"

And it would be.

In any case, it was reassuring more than anything to think that Alpana Singh - someone in a high echelon of local cuisine - shops at Trader Joe's. It would be just as satisfying to know that Charlie Trotter shops at Dominick's.

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Element Chronicles: Part 3

nobody@vox.com(Paul) — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 08:16:44 -0500

After work on Friday, I took the Metra down to Oak Park to meet up with Jeani in order for us to go see the green Element. It was a little surreal, since that was my commute for a year; it felt pretty normal in the end. I even needed to use the washroom in between trains, just like the old days!

Anyway.

The dealer with the E was the same one where we'd purchased the Vibe, so it only made sense for us to use the same salesperson. Earlier on Friday, Jeani had stopped in and looked at some hail-damaged cars the dealer needed to get rid of - including new ones - and strongly suggested we consider one of those.

We started with the green E, which was in fact there. Our salesperson was oddly cold and distant, though - during the entire first half of the process it was like we were bothering him being there. Jeani hypothesized that he was miffed at us since we only came in for cars that were well below market value. I agreed - it was certainly the case.

Our salesperson took a good 10-15 minutes just to find the key to the car, and then drove us over to the lot it was in. He then parked the car, got out, and didn't say anything to us. Okay.... We got out as well, and the salesperson gave me the key. So we started looking it over. The body itself was pretty clean but, oh boy, the interior.

To put it politely, it wasn't perfect. It certainly wasn't a pigsty. But there was a layer of dust on the top of the dash, the seats were stained (with what?) in various places, and the interior just looked beat up. We decided to drive it, though, and to my tin ears I could hear something rattling whilst driving - from underneath the car. We liked it okay overall, but I tell you that the interior was a huge enormous turn-off. I appreciated that we were able to test drive the car ourselves, but there was no gas in the thing: the gauge was on "E" the whole time.

On the drive we came up with a plan: we'd go see the hail-damaged new ones and consider them. Jeani had seen three that morning, and got a contact on the new car side. Once we returned from our drive, we informed our salesperson about this - remember, he'd been pretty distant - and his initial reaction was, "Well, you see, that cuts me out of the deal." Ultimately Jeani said that we didn't care how that worked out and we were willing to give him the credit if need be.

He went inside, talked with his manager, etc. and then we spent more than a couple of minutes trying to park by the new car showroom. (This dealer is in Chicago, and parking in Chicago is, uh, hard.)

Upon arriving, we had to wait a good 15 minutes before our paged salesperson - the guy Jeani had contacted - showed up. Once he did, he took us over to the new car lot where we got to see what was still there and, sadly, there was only one hail-damaged new one worth considering. It was an 06 LX (not EX, so none of the creature comforts we wanted) with modest but not horrible damage on the hood, running boards, a roof rack, a luggage bin on top, and the shiniest most bling-y wheels I'd ever seen. I couldn't stand the wheels; Jeani was indifferent. They were ugly as sin.

Pictures of us with a luggage bin we'd never use (hello, 74 cubic feet inside!) and shiny wheels driving to IKEA flashed through my head. No aux jack? No armrests? No sunroof? Sure - it was new, and had a warranty. The green one didn't.

So we drove it, liked it, and talked with our guy. He "talked to his manager" and came back with a price of $18,999 - way too high, and allegedly due to those damn accessories (we later tallied them to be a few thousand dollars.) Mind you, that was sticker. But we thought, you know, we've already been here for 2 and a half hours - yes, 2 and a half hours - and if he wants to sell a car, he'll work with us.

We asked him to appraise our car, and he wanted to push it off until Saturday. He explained that other buyers weren't around this late (8:30ish on a Friday) and we'd have a better chance the next day. Jeani had an appointment in the morning, though, so that wouldn't work - and given they had sold 2 of the other cars, it was starting to look like a "now or never" situation.

We were both just exhausted at this point. But we wanted him to appraise it tonight. He eventually agreed, took the keys, and we waited. 15 minutes later, he came back and said, "Our guy can't find the car!" even though we told him exactly where it was. He very clearly didn't want to sell a car, and we felt really miffed at this point. We both told him again where it was but then Jeani turned to me and said, "Wait, it's going to take another 15 minutes? No way." We both yelled out his name, told him no, and went on our merry way.

Both of us were bummed that we didn't have a car. I was secretly a little happy we didn't have the bling-y wheels. Upon returning home we looked at listings again and decided to check out an orange 03 that we'd seen the prior week. The good news? The price dropped by a thousand bucks, so it was now $13k. The bad news? 35 miles away in Downers Grove.

Jeani suggested (sorry, that's the only verb I have for her today) that we sleep on it but should go see it. I agreed. And Friday, our long sad Friday, came to a close.

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Element Chronicles: Part 1

nobody@vox.com(Paul) — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 16:55:05 -0500

So as spilled in an earlier post, we're looking at getting an Element. In particular, we've found a 2003 green 4WD EX OMG LOL that's in our price range. The only thing it doesn't have is keyless entry, which I can install myself. The nice things that the car has include the sunroof for the rear folks, an aux jack for the iPod (thank goodness), power everything, ABS, and respectably low mileage - just a shade over 30k.

This past weekend we drive four different Elements. The first was an orange (!) 03, and we liked it, but the Carfax later showed that the thing had been "serviced" a few too many times. We then drove three more at a nearby Honda dealer - versus the orange, which was farther away. Two were blue and one was silver with blue plastic panels. (Odd.)

The funny/sad thing is that between the trio of Elements, none had the exact feature set we wanted. The closest was the first one we tried, a blue 03, which had no keyless. Everything else was there, but the price was about $2k more than the green one we're kind of pining after.

We drove a silver one, though, and whoo boy, something was odd. Neither Jeani nor I can explain it: the car just had bad vibes. The interior plastic was a little more scratched up, and the brakes were like sponge cake. I'm serious. I think stepping on sponge cake has a better chance of stopping that particular car. (Maybe shortcake.)

Then, one more blue one, this one with remote start. I got into the car to drive it and instinctively put my hand on the door panel to adjust the mirrors.

Me: "Uh... this doesn't have power mirrors?"
Salesguy: "Sure it does... it should..."
Me: "Yeah, well, the controls... aren't there!"

The weird weird thing is that it didn't even have joystick controls - no sir. This was stick-your-arm-out-the-window mirror time! Ugh. Awful. Sorry. Hard to swallow. And the remote start... visions of Honda dealers telling me the warranty was voided were dancing through my head. In the end, the blue one felt like a base model that someone modestly pimped out.

Unfortunately we didn't get a car Saturday. We tried. But you can't buy a car solely on emotion and, the fact that there were weird features missing on each one made us gunshy.

However, if the green one is sold and we don't like a Jetta wagon we're expecting to look at on Friday, the first blue one is a suitable backup.

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Moon Over the Freeway

nobody@vox.com(Paul) — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 11:52:13 -0500

How did I not know the Ditty Bops have a new album?

Er, new as in May? (It's June, by the way.)

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