I sold my old beater train car, a 1994 Camry. I had just put more than $1000 into it to keep it running, sold it for $1400. I told Cathleen I had plans for that $1400 which included 3 new toilets. Two of our toilets have had a tendency to run every few minutes 24x7. They seem to be slowly leaking water through the flapper and then when the float recognizes that the level is low, the water fills back again, and this repeats all day every day. I replaced the flappers which only made things worse. Now in addition to the periodic draining/re-filling, the flapper would get stuck in the up position and if you walked away the toilet would just run, potentially for hours, to the tune of $$$ muchos dineros $$$.
I had purchased a pressure assisted flush toilet for our powder room in our previous house and loved it. I think in the 5 or so years that we lived there that toilet only ever clogged maybe once, thanks to the pressurized flush. Since for some reason only a man knows how to plunge a toilet (a disgusting job that I don't relish much), I'd find myself getting a call at work telling me that this task was awaiting me at home. Of course this was not that exciting something that would consume my thoughts for the remainder of the day, on the contrary (it was happily forgotten as soon as it entered). So for me to actually remember the unpleasant discussion, someone would actually have to remind me while I was actually at home and sometimes that might be days after the deed at which point I'd make an urgent trek to el bano only to discover firsthand the horrible memory of that previous conversation and the unaddressed task. So I'm quite certain that these new Glacier Bay pressure flush toilets from Home Depot will soon be this man's best friend! They're not elegant to look at and they're loud, but they certainly do pack a punch. Anybody interested in three seemingly over-utilized plungers?
Onto more Spring newness... With the Volvo's transmission failure this past Fall and its subsequent sale to Carmax, and then the recent sale of my faithful train car, we were down to our Honda Pilot and an old 2001 stripped down Corolla (manual windows, locks, no cruise control, etc.). That intended purchase was aimed at our new teen drivers however, Tory had no desire to start driving by herself (good for us in evading additional insurance costs) and Gregory bought his own Toyota Celica. With all that "new" in the Spring air, and March Madness came with aggressive car sales campaigns, we were enticed to visit the local Toyota dealership. We decided that we were tired of the used car headaches, regular visits to the shop to keep cars running and opted to take advantage of a nice lease offer for Cathleen. The lease doesn't work for me because I log excessive miles, about 20K+ miles a year (100 miles a day), but Cathleen should be able to manage 1000 miles/month. We still have our Pilot to defray some of those miles too, though we're contemplating selling that and replacing it with a larger family vehicle.
So Cathleen picked out a nice black Corolla S which gets 26-34 MPG and we were so excited to have "NEW" again, with lease payments being relatively reasonable. In fact, it was so nice that I decided to replace my beater stripped down Corolla with a new 2010 Corolla S for myself (purchase, not lease, white not black). I drove mine off the lot with literally 0 miles on it, didn't have it more than an hour when I met up with my appointment at home for a window tinting estimate for the house windows. Since the summers are so cooking, and the front of the house gets so much heat through the large front windows, we desired to get some tinting on them to cut down on the furniture damaging ultra violet rays and more importantly to reduce the overwhelming heat in the front part of the house. At this time Cathleen was at the Doctors with Tory and so when the tint guy arrived he took the liberty of parking in her spot in our driveway (that was his first mistake). I don't think anyone should park in anyone's driveway without first asking permission (unless it is for a very brief moment). In any case, this forced her to park at the curb in front of the house when she returned home to find his truck in her spot.
After the tint guy had left, she grabbed her keys to move her car, only to bump into the tint guy back at our front door. It seems he was returning to notify us that he had backed up into the black 3 day old Corolla (mind you this was the first time that Cathleen had even driven the car). He had just cut his pivot turn too sharp when backing out and clipped the driver's side front quarter. The bumper is toast, the side panel, hood and headlight need attention, but at least the car still drives fine. I chided him saying I had beaters parked out at the curb for the past year and a half and never suffered a scratch, yet within days of getting a new car we have this misfortune. I told him that it was at least it was better that he didn't hit the 1 hour old car (which is a purchase and not a lease, not to mention it is MY car)... He was convincingly apologetic and I actually felt pretty bad for him, certainly he hadn't intended this. His insurance company has been in touch and it will be taken care of in the next few weeks, unfortunately not without a great deal of inconvenience to us...
One nice thing about having purchased from Rosner Toyota is that oil changes (with accompanying free car wash and manicure for all the girls in the home) and state inspections are free for as long as we own the cars. I looked at the maintenance schedule and I'm pretty much covered on maintenance fees until 60K miles where I have to change a cabin air filter. Then at 120K miles I have to add in the cost of changing the 4 spark plugs. So it will be nice not to have to deal with repair shops for a while (once we get past this body shop incident). Tires and brakes will need to be replaced eventually, but Corollas are pretty economical to maintain and they are dependable. Certainly not the most comfortable nor fun car to drive, but practical, dependable and new!
