Recap of Last Week Part Uno

Come with me now to those thrilling days of yesterweek. Okay so it's Sunday March 2nd. I'm sitting in my end of the reclining sofa. Everyone knows it's my end because it's perfectly conformed to my ass. If there's ever an argument over that issue it would be easily solved by contacting the FBI and having them match the butt-print with the one in their national latent butt-print database (Homeland Security has definitely gone too far). So anyway, I'm sitting there filling out a form for the Maryland Department of Motor Vehicles. That statement alone should tell you where this is heading. But first let me give you some background.

We formerly lived in Florida. We have two cars, both registered in Florida. When you come to Maryland you're supposed to transfer your title and registration within 60 days. For various reasons largely having to do with the housing market a period of 27 months elapsed between the time I came to Maryland to start my new job until we sold house in Florida/bought house in Maryland/became "official" Maryland residents. That whole car registration thing wasn't high on my priority list. Needless to say I missed the 60 day mark by oh, about 90 or so days. Florida does their car registration by the birth month of the person whose name appears first on the registration. That would be me and my birthday falls in March so being faced with the expiration of the Florida tags, it seemed like a good idea to register the cars in Maryland. Which brings me to last Sunday filling in the form.

In going through the instructions I realized that because we missed the 60 day "grace period" we were now going to have to pay excise tax in the amount of 5% of the vehicle price in addition to the title fees, application fees, registration fees and K-Y jelly restocking fees. We were looking at $500 to $600 for one car. A five year old car. That I already paid tax on when I bought it. That had 100,000 miles on it. That I was still making payments on. That I was going to have to replace the shocks and struts on in another couple of months. That liked to randomly fuck with me and talk to me in that creepy computer voice from 2001: A Space Odyssey. I started to think that perhaps this was not the best possible outlay of cash. That's when my wife and I started talking about a new car.

I did some quick research on the internet comparing models and prices then we packed up and went out to cruise the car lots to do some looking. It was late Sunday afternoon by then and the dealerships looked like this:



Only with cars. Dealerships close early on Sunday and you can wander unmolested. We had a price range that we had to stick to and we found a particular make and model in that range that we liked a lot...because it had personality and looked like a Transformer. Specifically a Decepticon, so naturally the girls named it Megatron.

We went home and did more research on that specific model and decided to go back and test drive it the next day. On Monday, as we drove into the dealership it looked like this:

I've never seen a car lot with more salesmen than cars. We felt like chum. Our old car was like the security of a shark cage and we were afraid to get out. I won't go into all the gory details. Suffice it to say that after all the research, test driving, comparisons, haggling, credit scores, number crunching, financing, etc, etc, etc, we got a new car. And yes, it was the first one we looked at. It's cleverly disguised as a 2008 Dodge Avenger in Silver Steel Metallic.

You can call him Megatron.

Outta my way mortal human commuters.

That covers up to about Wednesday or Thursday. Tomorrow I'll tell you about Friday and my encounter with the symbol of an educated man.