So, you know how I have a brand new car? Like, my first brand new car ever? Like, so new that it doesn’t even have 3,000 miles on it? Yeah. Well, on Friday I decided to meet some coworker’s at Clinton’s Ditch for a beer at lunch. I wasn’t even going to go, except for that I was having a stressful day (as always) and it was gorgeous out and so sitting on the back patio of the Ditch and enjoying a Sam Summer sounded amazing. I texted Trant to order a beer for me and got in my car and headed down Erie Blvd. I was almost there when I stopped at a red light, just before Liberty. As I was sitting there waiting for the light to turn green a big older GMC Jimmy pulled into the Left Turn lane next to me and as he pulled past me he hit me. Yep, freaking hit my brand new car. He kept making the left and I yelled an obscenity and then pulled into the lane after him and followed him into a parking lot. We got out of our cars and he made a remark that the situation sucked as we looked at the damage on my car. It wasn’t huge – a scrape and small dent – but on my brand new car with less than 3,000 miles, it was devastating.
I started to take down the kid’s insurance information and phone number as he kept telling me how he didn’t want to have to go through insurance and how he had a guy that he saw fix a scrape like that easily and how it could be buffed out. I realized that this kid was a sketchy tool, so I decided that since it was my brand new car, I needed to call the police. It took about ten minutes for a cop to get there and when he did he walked up to us and said, “First of all, I’d like to thank the both of you because I’m supposed to be out writing seat belt tickets and this is much more interesting.” “It is?” I said. “Yeah. Click it or ticket…” he said as he rolled his eyes. He asked us both our versions of the accident and fortunately the kid wasn’t such a tool that he tried to say it wasn’t his fault – he verified for the cop that I was stopped at the light when he drove past me and hit me. The cop looked at the damage and then wrote up the report and told us it’d take 3 days blah blah blah and left. As I left to go back to work, the kid asked again to let him just pay out of pocket. Yeah…
I got back to work and IM’d Dodi right away, as I always do with anything that involves damage to a vehicle. She told me that if I sent her a picture of the damage, her dad could do sort of a preliminary estimate to give me an idea of the cost. A short time later she faxed me an estimate – $1700. It’s a brand new car and they wrote it up to fix it right. I knew that the tooly kid would not have the money to pay that out of his pocket and I didn’t want to haggle with him over costs and shops… I was sure that he’d try and tell me it could just be buffed out. Yeah, no. Not my brand new car. I will not accept anything less than having it fixed right. So, I called his insurance company that night and reported the claim. They called me today and took a recorded statement and sent someone out to look at the car. When the adjuster talked to me earlier today he hadn’t talked to his insured yet and so he didn’t say that they were accepting liability yet (which is exactly what he should have said). Dodi said that the field adjuster said they were good to go when he faxed over his estimate, so I think I should be able to bring it in to get fixed pretty soon – which is good because even though it’s a small booboo it’s still a blemish on my brand new car and that sucks!
Oh – and somehow that kid got my cellphone number (I think that the adjuster gave it to him which is totally obnoxious and I’m not sure if it’s legal…) and he called me today and grumped at me for putting through the insurance company. I was like, “Look – it’s a brand new car. My friend’s dad looked at it and they estimated $1700 to fix it right and my husband freaked out and made me put it through insurance.” Ok. I wussed out and fibbed a little, but whatever. It took me off guard that the tooly kid called me because I’m positive that I didn’t give him my number and the whole point of me calling his insurance company right away was so that I wouldn’t have to have that conversation with him. Oh, and of course he was all like, “it didn’t look like $1700 worth of damage to me.” Whatever, dude. You’re not an appraiser so f- off.
So that pretty much sucked. But get this – Sunday morning, Alex went out to get us breakfast and when he came back to the apartment I could tell by the way he was stomping up the stairs that something was wrong. “Someone hit my car!” “WHAT?!” Yeah. Someone hit Alex’s car sometime Saturday night. Can you believe it?! They hit the back driver’s side of the car, scraping all the way up towards the back door, and then totally obliterated his mirror. And then, apparently, got out of the car and placed his mirror on the hood of his car and then drove off. No note. Probably drunk.
We called the cops and they took a police report. The officer basically said, “Don’t hold your breath” about them finding anyone. Of course we don’t expect that they’ll find anyone – but we had the police report done to cover our bases with the insurance company. What totally blows about a hit and run is we HAVE to go through our own insurance for this claim and even though it’s totally not our fault we’ll probably get a rate hike out of it. Suuuuuuuuuuuucks.
Anyway, so yeah. We pretty much have the worst luck ever. Oh, and it’s totally just fab how everyone likes to say, “they come in threes…” So now I feel like I’m totally waiting for the other shoe to drop. Fingers crossed…
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Filed under Car | Comment (0)The timing couldn’t have been better: I picked up my brand new all wheel drive vehicle the night we get a lot of crappy snow. I drove to the dealership in my (adorable) Beetle, slightly sliding all over the place. It snowed the entire time we were in the dealership and the roads were pretty shitty by the time we left. I had no trouble driving around, though! I couldn’t believe how awesome the 4 wheel drive made the car in the snow!! It was amazing!!! I didn’t get to drive all that much today – just to work and back – but I did go to lunch away from the offive so that I “had” to drive. 
Awesome!!!
Ali
Sent from my iPhone
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Filed under Car | Comment (0)Turns out I had nothing to worry about. For as sketchy as that tool from the dealership sounded when he called me on Saturday, it turned out to be no big deal. My APR went from 4.9% to 5.9%, which effected my payment by $8. So I’ll be picking up my car tomorrow night – Yay!!!!
Because I’m really excited about my new car, here are all the pictures I took of it on Saturday:
From the side – so cute!
The window sticker… Not that you can actually see anything written on it.
My car’s butt. I love the tail lights. So cute! 
From the front… Pretty much just looks like a normal car from the front. My favorite views are from the back or the side.
Can’t wait! I will really miss the Beetle, though. 
Actually, I get all watery when I think about it. Gus was a really great car! I hope that he goes to some kid as their first car and they’re super excited about it. Or maybe to some little old lady that will take great care of him. Sigh. Bye Gus!
OK. I actually might cry now… Gus is so cute!!! I know I’m totally going to be in love with my new car – especially the morning after I pick him up, since it’s supposed to snow a lot and my new car has 4 wheel drive… But endings and goodbyes are always hard for me. God, I’m a tool!
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Filed under Car | Comment (1)So we got home today and had a message on the answering machine from the finance guy at the Subaru dealer from earlier today. He said that he “forgot to ask me a few questions” and wanted me to call him back. I gave him a call and he said, “Oh, I forgot to ask what your credit rating is.” I was pretty shocked, because I figured that since the guy’s job was to approve financing on vehicles and he had my SSN, etc, he would have figured that out for himself – before he committed to me with a number on financing. I told him that as far as I knew it was pretty good, but I wasn’t sure what the exact number was anymore. So he says, “Well, it has to be above xxx in order to get the APR we talked about… I’ve submitted the paperwork to the bank and we’ll know on Monday.” I hung up the phone and immediately got online to check what my credit score was. It was 14 points below the number he was looking for. I was pissed. I called the guy back and said, “Look. I was curious, so I got online and checked and it’s xxx. We’re talking 14 points. I am counting on the car to be a certain payment, so…” He cut me off and said basically, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s in with the bank and we’ll see what we get back Monday morning and maybe we can work something out blah blah blah…” I am going to be so annoyed if they tell me they can’t give me the rate that I want. Well, actually, I’m going to walk away from the deal. That’s not a big deal – it’s the fact that they would have jerked me around by not doing their job that would piss me off the most. Grr. Whatever. I was so happy and excited earlier today and now I don’t know how to feel. Alex thinks it will all be fine, but I want to be realistic and don’t want to be super disappointed on Monday.
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I finally decided on a replacement for Gus. A 2008 Subaru Impreza 5 door! It’s adorable and turned out to be very affordable! I will miss my Beetle a lot… But he was beginning to cost a lot to maintain – I would have had to put $800 into him just to pass inspection. This new car is bigger and more versatile and still cute. I pick it up Tuesday night – exciting!
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Filed under Car | Comment (0)Langan VW totally just made my day. They called me up and said that my car was all set and when I asked him what the charge would be, they said, “No charge – it’s a covered repair.” ROCK! I don’t have any sort of warranty on my car anymore, so I don’t know if it’s a global VW decision to just repair the faulty windows at No Charge or if it’s just a Langan thing but either way I’m psyched! That totally just made my day!!!
Rock!!
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Filed under Car | Comment (0)So the battery on my Beetle is dead/dying. Every time it gets really cold outside, I need to jump the battery. I am now an expert at jumping my car. It’s getting old, though, so last night while I waited in the parking lot at work for a coworker to come out and jump my car, I used Google Local on my phone and found the nearest AutoZone. I called them:
Ali: “Do you have a battery in stock for a 2000 VW Beetle?”
AutoZone: “What engine?”
Ali: “The 1.8 Turbo”
AutoZone: “Oooh, Turbo.”
Ali: “…”
AutoZone: “Yep, it looks like I have two… no… one in stock. That will be $69.99 plus tax.”
Ali: “OK, great. So, do you guys, like, install it?”
AutoZone: “Well, um, usually we do but it’s, like, freezing outside…”
Ali: “… … Yeah. I know it’s freezing outside. I’m stuck in a parking lot right now.”
AutoZone: “Well, there’s just me and the other guy here…”
Ali: “Thanks anyway.” Click.
Tools. I called Alex, who was still at work, and he Googled for another place for me to get a battery. He found an Advanced Auto Parts near by who said that they would be able to install the battery for me. After I got my car jumped I drove over there. The guy there made a valiant effort at installing the battery for me. Unfortunately, Volkswagens are weird, I guess. You’d think that if it was “the people’s car” you should be able to repair it yourself! He couldn’t figure out how to get the old battery out of the car. The user’s manual was not much help. It basically said, “To Replace Battery: Lift cover. Remove old battery. Install new battery. Replace cover.” D’oh. He put the new battery in my trunk for me and now I’ve got to figure out how to get it installed. I guess I’ll call over to the dealer near me today and bring it to them. Hopefully there is just something obvious that he was missing last night and it’s not something like the old battery is stuck in there because it’s corroded or something…
I had to go to a gym appointment last night and as I was leaving the house I said to Alex, “I just hope my car starts after I’m done!” I was expecting him to say, “Just call me if it doesn’t and I’ll come jump you.” Instead, he said, “Well, you can jump yourself off the battery in your trunk.” I know that he’s right – but how much of a tool would I look like if I was in a parking lot and I popped my hood, popped my trunk, got a battery out of my trunk and then jumped myself? People would think that I’m a moron… “Oh, you can replace the battery?! I thought you had to just keep jumping off of a new one so I kept this one in my trunk!”
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Filed under Car | Comment (0)I hate when it’s been forever since I’ve updated my blog. My whole purpose for having a blog is so that I have the ability to look back at what I was doing last week, last month, last year – whatever – and see what I was doing/thinking/feeling etc at that time. So, I get really disappointed when I suck at updating. And now, it’s been so long and we’ve done soooooooo much that updating becomes an enourmous task!
But enough whining about that.
Let’s see… Well, in the past month, we’ve had a cake tasting and ordered our cake, had an engagement party at my parents’ house, got a new car for Alex, discovered that Alex’s dad is giving us Marriott points for the honeymoon, and ordered our wedding bands. It’s all sooooooooo very exciting!
The cake tasting was a lot of fun! I was so adament that we were not going to pick out or order a cake while we were there, but I had one taste of the mocha cream filling and I was sold! Alex and I really enjoyed the cake tasting – sampling all of the different cake flavors and fillings while sipping on cappucinos was a nice break to a Wednesday. We found a design that we both loved and Alex decided that since he’s not too into cakes anyway, I could pick out the flavor. Since we both loved the mocha cream, we went for that. The price was surprisingly affordable and so we just went for it!
We had a fab time at our engagment party at my parents’ house. Wham and Amy worked hard and pulled off a great party! There was lots of food and drink and everyone had a great time. Alex and I tried to make sure that we kept circulating to socialize with everyone and I couldn’t believe how quickly the night went by – I can’t imagine what the wedding is going to be like! Of course, I was exhausted for the party because of some unexpected car business the night before and hopefully the night before the wedding will find me sleeping more so that I won’t have to battle exhaustion through the night.
Speaking of the car business… Alex went out with his friend, Dave, the night before our party. They took Alex’s car – the 91 Escort that was his sister’s then his father’s and became Alex’s when we were in need in December – to Albany. On their way home at 2:30am the car died. Dave was driving and wasn’t used to the quirkiness of the clutch and it ended up burning out on them. So I got the call at 2:30 to go find them on the side of the Thruway. Of course, I’d only been asleep for about an hour at the time so I was TIRED. I ended up finding them and driving them back to our apartment, only to have Alex realize that he left his wallet in the car. So we drove all the way back out and then tried to have the car towed but gave up after not getting thru to AAA after being on hold for over 45 minutes. I didn’t get to sleep until close to 5am. Got up early that morning to go to Weight Watchers and then kept running all day to find the Escort which had been towed and impounded and get it taken care of. Needless to say, Alex and I were pretty stressed out about it.
We ended up going car shopping the next day and actually found a car for Alex right away. He knew that he’d wanted a Toyota Camry after driving the rental that I had after my accident over December. We found a 2005 Camry for a great price and were able to get excellent financing for it. Alex was super-psyched because the car looked great – it’s black with chrome accents – and was actually a standard. Alex was very happy about that. We were even able to pick it up the next evening. I am sooooooo happy for Alex because this is his first “new” used car bought through a dealer. He is so in love with his car and I am so happy for him!!
My dad had told me a couple weeks back that he’d be able to give us air tickets using frequent flier miles for our honeymoon flight, which we were hella excited about. It brought us one step closer to going on a honeymoon, which is something that we weren’t positive was going to happen. We still had to figure out how we’d pay for a hotel. Alex told me this past weekend that his dad was going to be able to give us Marriott points – enough for a week’s stay in a “category 7″ (five star) hotel. So we are definitely going to be able to go on a honeymoon!!!!! We are soooo excited!! We decided that we’d like to go to London. We’ve got to figure out all the particulars now, but it looks like the honeymoon will be a week in London with day trips to Paris and Edinburgh. We’re SO happy! It’s fun to plan our honeymoon – less stressful than wedding planning. Not that I think that wedding planning is stressful – I’ve actually been having a blast with it! But there are a lot of details to the wedding planning and only so much I can do at a time. The honeymoon planning is a lot of research and daydreaming right now and that’s a welcome change of pace.
Yesterday, we went out and bought our wedding bands! Alex has known for like 3 months which band he wants. We’d gone to Frank Adams jewelers in Stuyvesant Plaza a while back and Alex tried on a ring there that he really connected with. It’s yellow gold on the inside, white gold on the edges, and hammered rose gold in the center. The ring is large (which looks right on his hand) and very heavy. Every ring that he’d tried on after that didn’t feel right to him. They didn’t have the same heavy feeling. He wanted his “one ring to rule them all”. That ring was pretty expensive, though. After I did our taxes, I figured that we could use our tax returns to buy our rings and we’d totally be able to afford the one that he wants. I kept thinking about a piece of advice that Beck gave me – don’t skimp on the wedding rings because those are a forever thing. How could we not get the one that Alex really wanted? I didn’t think that I would find a ring at Frank Adams that I wanted because the last few times we were there, nothing looked right to me. The salesgirl that was there yesterday was awesome. She pulled a bunch of rings for me to try on and I finally found one that Alex and I both really liked. My engagement ring is so intricate that most bands looked odd next to it. A plain white gold band looked too plain, but a band with prong set diamonds looked like it was too much. I found a very thin pave set diamond band that had a single row of small diamonds halfway around. It’s very delicate and vintage looking and looked great with my band or alone on my finger. We’re very excited for our rings – we both want them right now. The order is going in tomorrow and I guess I’ll find out then how long it will be until they get here. Can’t wait!!
And now it is time for me to go to bed. It’s almost ten (gasp!) and I’ve got to get up at the crack of dawn to get to the gym. I’ve been pretty good since January when I started back at Weight Watchers and have lost 17 lbs so far. I’ve learned, though, that I really can’t skip out on the gym and I’m trying really hard to get there in the mornings so that I don’t find excuses not to go after work. I’ve got an appointment on Tuesday with one of the Fitness Trainers (included in the membership) and I’m hoping that he can help me design a good upper body and abs routine. I really hope that I hit my goal for the wedding – I really want to love my pictures!
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Filed under Car, Health, wedding | Comment (0)So they determined that it was the water pump. Fabulous. The guy at the dealership wanted me to call the insurance adjuster so that he could determine if it was accident related. That was about 11am yesterday. I called the adjuster and left a message. He called me at about 3pm and I gave him the message. He called the dealership and then called me back: “The dealership told me that it’s not accident related and that they do this repair on cars of your type and mileage all the time.” I was sooooo annoyed because that meant that now I had to call the dealership back and tell them to go ahead with the repairs and it was already 3:30pm which meant that I wouldn’t have my car back until the next day. GRRRRRRR. Why did the guy at the dealership waste my time by having me call the adjuster if he was just going to tell him that it wasn’t accident related?! I could have had my car back yesterday. Instead, I had to wait another day and get to work at the buttcrack of dawn because Alex had to drop me off before work. Grrrrr.
Oh yeah, and now I have to pay them another $525 to get this fixed. That means that this month I’ll have speant $1000 on my car.
Freaking kill me.
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