>Repaired Car Sale!

Posted on September 8, 2009 by Steve Picray

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I’m going to sell my car. I owe more than it’s worth, but I am going to sell it anyway. The bank has told me that if I sell it, they will release the title to the new owner, and they will just take the leftover balance of the loan and make it an “unsecured” loan. If I get what I think the car is worth, then that means my new loan will be paid off within a year’s time. Then, for the first time in a long time, we will owe less on our vehicles than what they are worth!!

I thought about just keeping the car as an emergency backup to my van and my motorcycle, but then I realized that between now and May (when I could consistently ride my bike), I will have paid about $800 just for registration and insurance, let alone the extra interest I would be paying with a higher balance loan. So I need to sell it.

There were several problems with the car, and I have worked to fix most of them. The blower fan only worked on 4 or 5 (the “high” settings), and didn’t work at all on 1,2, or 3. I found out that the fix was a $18 part and 45 minutes of pretzel-like activity, as described here. Then, as soon as I fixed that, the driver’s side power window stopped working. I traced the problem to the power window motor, which I then replaced to the tune of $80 (doing the repair work myself, as shown here. Coincidentally, the dealer had told me that each of these repairs would cost me about $500 for them to do. Ha!

The final repair that I did involved the shifter knob. Kim told me several weeks ago that the shifter button (that must be depressed before you can engage the shifter) would pop out at times, and this would require a frantic search under the driver’s feet for the button, so the driver could shift into Park or whatever. I looked at the button, and found that one of the tabs holding it in place had broken. I called the dealer to see how much a new button would cost. Guess what…they said I had to buy the whole shifter knob, not just the button. The good news was that it costs $20 new. I mentioned this on my Facebook page, and a lady at church mentioned that she had one from an old Grand Prix. I tried hers and it works!

There are only two things wrong with the car right now: The first is that the cruise works intermittently. I have tried to get this fixed. I took it to the dealer, and they said it works fine. I asked them, did they understand the meaning of the word ‘intermittent’? They said they couldn’t fix it if it didn’t look broken. Ah well. Evidently this is a common problem with this model, so I figured they might just do whatever they did to fix all the other cars that had this problem, but they don’t believe me. It’s just as well, because it would probably cost me $500 (like everything else they want to do to the car!).

The second thing wrong with the car is that the front tires should be replaced. They still have tread, but you can see “over Lincoln’s head” if you know what I mean. The tires are performance tires, which means they cost $70 new. This amounts to $200 with all the valves, mounting, balancing, etc. The question is whether I will get the value back for replacing them before the sale. In other words, if I could get $4000 for the car if I replaced the tires for $200, but if I don’t replace the tires, I would only get $3500, it would be worth it to replace them. My fear is that I will get X amount of dollars for the car no matter if I replace the tires or not, especially since the car has about 137K miles on it.

I am going to list it on Craigslist later today for $5,000 and see if I get any bites. If anybody I know wants to buy it, e-mail me or call me. I will entertain all offers. And then I will kick the lowball ones to the curb!
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>July/August 2009 Update

Posted on August 28, 2009 by Steve Picray

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Ok, so I haven’t posted in a month, and it’s mostly because I wanted to finish the Tiger Cruise entries before posting anything else, but that’s not happening. I will finish them at some point, but it’s on the back-burner for now. So what’s happened in my life since the tiger cruise?
I never did buy that truck. Evidently they found somebody else that was willing to pay their price. I did end up buying a new motorcycle. It’s a yellow 2002 Honda Shadow Spirit 750 with 7K miles. I call it “Bumble” since it’s yellow (like a bumblebee) and it bounces on the road a lot (and in the words of Yukon Cornelius, “Bumbles bounce!”).

It has floorboards for the rider as well as the passenger (which I will probably never use), Kuryakyn grips (with the little tab thing so I don’t have to keep gripping the throttle on long trips), a good windshield, and a Mustang seat. Yes, a Mustang seat. I know, why did I take the bucket seat out of a Ford Mustang and put it on my motorcycle. Ha ha. Yes, you are very funny. No, seriously, it’s a Mustang seat.

Anyway, I bought it off eBay from a guy just over the Illinois border. I learned my lesson from last time: look at where the bike is before you bid. This time I didn’t have to drive 1000 miles round trip to get it home. Kim and the kids drove over to Covington, IN with me to meet the guy and pick up the bike, and then they drove the van home while I rode the 110 miles home. Boy, was it nice to be on a bike again! Also, I got a new helmet. Here it is:

So that’s the vehicle situation. I want to sell the Grand Am, and I plan on listing it on Craig’s List. If it sells, then I will be riding my motorcycle when there is no snow/ice, and the temp is above freezing. When it’s too cold or snow/ice happens, then I will drive the van to & from work. Since we carpool with a family in the next subdivision, Kim only needs the van in the afternoons to pick up the kids, and for going to church. I just don’t think we need to have two cars anymore, at least not in this economy.

Speaking of which, I didn’t think the economy would affect me all that much, since my job is taking care of sick people, and sick people don’t care if they have no money, they still come to the hospital. Well evidently not, because our census has been down since May/June, and my overtime has all but evaporated. I still sign up for OT shifts, but 90% of them get cancelled because the hospital doesn’t have enough patients to need me. Since our budget calls for me to work one OT shift per week (since Kim is not gainfully employed), this has presented a problem. We have had to do some serious shifting of payments, postponing bills, asking for deferrals, etc, just to get through the summer. It got to the point where, this week, I thought I didn’t have enough baking powder to make homemade biscuits, until I remembered that we had some self-rising flour. And our neighbor’s put a box out with the garbage yesterday showing they bought a 42” HDTV. Ah well.

Since I am sick of waiting for the OT situation to fix itself at work, I am trying to find a part-time job so we can meet our obligations. Hopefully I find one in the next week or so. We have been praying that God will provide the money. At first I was praying that God would increase our census at work (so they would need me to work OT), but then I realized that I was praying for more people to get sick. I decided it would be better to just ask God to provide however He wants.

Oh, I went to the dentist and got a cavity filled. It didn’t hurt before the dental work. Now it does (when I floss). So I need to go back in and get it fixed. Grrr. They should pay ME when they mess up. You know, “Sorry for your inconvenience, sir. Here’s a little something for your trouble.”

Our church had Vacation Bible Adventure (most places call it Vacation Bible School). We had a circus theme this year, and it was great. We drove tent stakes into the pavement (we got new pavement right after VBA was over) and set up a circus tent. At least one child trusted Christ as Savior (at least that’s all I can remember right now)! We have since had families visit our church because their kids came to VBA.

The bad news, as most of you know, is that my wife had a miscarriage this month. We found out she was pregnant on June 2nd, and we waited until June 25th to tell people (she had a very early miscarriage a year ago, and we didn’t want to tell people too early). We had an ultrasound on July 16th when she was 11 weeks along, and we thought everything was fine. Then she started spotting and we went back for her next OB appt on Aug 12th, and they couldn’t find the heartbeat. The ultrasound showed that the baby had died, and had not been growing for three weeks, in fact. We scheduled Kim for surgery the next day (since she has a family member who almost died with a miscarriage due to blood loss) so that everything would be done in a hospital setting. She recovered fairly quickly (at least physically), and we go in for her 3week post-op visit next week. So there’s that.

Our “Dinner for Six” program at church is still going strong. This is where one couple hosts two other couples in their home one night a month. So you are a host for one month, then a guest for two months, so everybody gets to host. We weren’t able to host in July, so we combined our group with the group in August, and we had “Dinner for 12” at someone else’s house. We brought some food and they made some food. Not everybody came, but that was to be expected. We also got to go to someone else’s house two days later for the August dinner.

Our kids started school this week. Our youngest started kindergarten and she is very excited about school. I’m back to teaching Sunday School, but this time, instead of the Junior High class, they combined Jr and Sr high, and then split them by gender. I teach the Jr/Sr high boys class. It’s a lot of fun, and I think they are learning things.

Speaking of learning things, I am in the process of signing up for the Masters of Science in Nursing program at Indiana University. That’s right, I’m going to be a Hoosier. I’m still rooting for the Hawkeyes (in the Big 10), but I will (God willing) have a degree from IU. This would allow me to become a Nurse Practitioner. The hope is that I could make more money, or at least make the same amount without working nights and weekends. Right now we are in the process of transcript review and figuring out what classes I need to take. I will probably start taking classes in January.

Well, that’s just about it. I’m sure I missed something, but that pretty much brings us up to date. On a political note, President Obama is still messing up the country and disregarding the constitution. On a spiritual note, God is still on His throne and is still in ultimate control. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.

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>Tiger Cruise #2: Underway

Posted on July 16, 2009 by Steve Picray

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July 1, 2009

Last night I couldn’t sleep because the rack was pretty uncomfortable. I tossed and turned, waking up every hour until 0600 when some guy’s alarm started going off every five minutes. Literally. I mean, it went off at 0600, 0605, 0610, etc, until 0620. I was just about to go find it and shut it off when John woke up, so we got up and got dressed.

He said that we were probably too late for breakfast on the mess deck, so we should just go to his shop, since he had oatmeal packets. We walked from the stern all the way to his shop, which is right behind the foc’sle. I watched IC3 Price sweep the floor, and then I met the other two IC-men in his shop: Perez and Patton. After cleaning, the XO came on the 1MC (shipwide intercom system pronounced “one-emcee”) and said that they were having a contest where we were supposed to guess how many padeyes there are in the hangar deck. I guessed 1860 I think. The prize was an XBox 360, but they haven’t announced the winner yet. Maybe tomorrow.

We had lunch: seasoned potato wedges and a hamburger. It was good. In the afternoon we spent a couple hours in the shop, and spent some time in the foc’sle learning about the anchors, chains, and mooring lines. I got to see the bell from the USS America, and I learned that those sailors on board who have babies born during the cruise, AND who believe in infant baptistm, can get their baby baptized in the inverted ships bell. Then they get the baby’s name engraved on the inside of the bell. We left the foc’sle and went up to the flight deck at 1400 to watch as we got underway. It was amazing to see this huge ship leave port and stand out to sea.

We walked around on the flight deck (3 football fields long!), went up to vultures row and had a long informational conversation with the mother of another sailor. Coming down from there we went back to the shop, and then went on a trouble call to the fantail. That was great, since we could see the cavitation from the screws.

We ate supper: pasta and red sauce, grilled chicken, green beans, salad, and apple crisp. I also grabbed an apple on the way out. We aren’t starving. This is evidenced by the fact that I lost no weight during the cruise, despite traversing the length of the ship a couple times a day and climbing more stairs every day than I care to number.

After supper we watched a magic show (pretty simple…easy to see how the petty officer was doing the tricks), and went to the shop. As we sat in the shop, I could feel the ship picking up speed, because we started rocking from side to side. I was this close to nausea…(as Maxwell Smart would say, “Missed it by….that much!”). It was more of an uncomfortable feeling, but it passed. Just before sunset I went outside to see where we were. I could only see land aft. We were in the ocean! The other sailors went to bed so John and I started watching a movie. About an hour into the movie, I was nodding off, so we went back to the fantail to see sunset. It was amazing.

I took a shower, which is an exercise in gymnastics, since nothing is supposed to touch the deck but your shower shoes. You get it done, though. I climbed into my rack for night #2 onboard at 2330. John got me some extra pillows and blankets. We are going to get up at 0630 tomorrow becuse flight ops starts at 0800!

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>Tiger Cruise: The Beginning

Posted on July 11, 2009 by Steve Picray

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As some of you know, I just spent a week with my brother John on the USS John C. Stennis, an aircraft carrier on which he serves in the US Navy. While I was on this trip, I kept a kind of diary, and I will reproduce some of it here over the next several days, so you know what it was like, the stuff I did, etc.

On June 29th I got out of bed at 0315 and threw my clothes on. I picked up my bags and headed out the door. It took about 45 minutes to get to the airport and I parked in the “economy” section. The sign said that the “economy” was that I only had to pay $7 a day to park there. Doing some quick math, I figured that my 10 day trip would cost me $70. Yikes. Later on that day when I talked to Kim, I informed her of this and asked if she and her dad could drive to the airport and get my car in order to save us $63. They did.

I checked in at the airport and paid the $20 fee for having luggage (how dare I!). I am seriously considering only flying Southwest from this point on, because they don’t gouge you with the extra fees. The flight to Chicago was uneventful, and an hour long. I sat next to some guy who wouldn’t even look at me for the entire flight. The flight to Seattle was better, since it was a bigger plane, and I sat between a young man in the Army ROTC and a Swedish flight attendant. Actually, she was Norwegian, but she works for some Swedish airline. Anyway, I spent most of the time reading, watching the in-flight movie (“New In Town” with Renee Zellweger), and talking to the Army guy.

I picked up my bag at SeaTac and called James (my Bro-in-law) because he was supposed to pick me up. He drove me to Everett where they live and showed me around. The Stennis was in port, so we drove by the base to get my first look at her. Then we got KFC and went back to their apartment. We spent the night eating barbecued meat (chicken and pork) that my sister Beth made and watching different funny videos on youtube. I was pretty exhausted (I had only gotten 4 hours of sleep the night before, and it was now 2300 Pacific time, which is 0200 Eastern), so I went to bed.

I woke up on the 30th at 10am and took a shower. We sat around for a few hours and then left for Seattle. John drives using the “pulse” method. This means that he eschews the cruise, and his speed fluctuates within 5mph. Kim laughed when I told her that, since she says I do the same thing. Yeah, but that’s just because the cruise doesn’t work on my car. We went to the Pike Street Market and watched the fish throwers, did some window shopping, and ate at two places: Piroshki, and some Chinese place (I can’t remember the name) that sold these buns with meat fully encased inside the bun. We drank fruit smoothies and ate our food on the grass by a totem pole overlooking Puget Sound. The bun thing was good, but it gave me heartburn because it had onions in it. I really liked the cinnamon twist thing from the Russian place, though. I think it had orange glaze or something on it.

I had to replace the batteries in my camera at lunch…we’ll see how many times this trip I have to do that. We rode the monorail to the Space Needle area. The science fiction museum had some interesting stuff, especially in the Jim Henson section, so we hit that first. Then we walked to the space needle, and rode the elevator to the top. I took video footage of the elevator ride up, and then we took lots of pictures from the top. They had a restaurant up there, but I joked that the prices were so expensive that when the patrons get the bill, they probably want to jump off the Needle. We rode down again and went to the sushi place called Nijo Sushi Bar & Grill.

John ordered five rolls of sushi (six different kinds). I tried one of each of the six types of sushi, and I didn’t throw up. Judicious application of diet coke was called for, but I didn’t throw up. . John ate all the rest of the sushi (34 pieces) and he could tell that I was still hungry (just not for sushi) so we went to an Irish pub (the Owl and Thistle or something like that) and I ate a French Dip sandwich and fries. We walked (a lot!) down the shore to Safeco field/Qwest field and took pictures. By now I had worn a hole in my left sock heel. We started walking back to the car, and tried to find a place where we could buy some socks (scratch that…A SOCK would have sufficed), but no luck. I called Kim right before we got to the car and wished her happy anniversary, since it was after midnight central time (but the sun was still up in Seattle). We got to Beth’s and I guess they had been waiting for us to get back so they were a little upset (I didn’t realize we had a curfew).

Beth drove John and I to the base and we signed in. He walked me through the hangar decks aft to our berthing space, and showed me where the head was. I got a locker to put my stuff in and a rack to sleep in. The funniest part was that he had reserved a bottom rack for me, but somebody else had used it for their Tiger (all the civilians on board were called “Tigers”). He was kind of upset, but we just took the mattress and threw it on my rack (the top one out of three). After a quick trip to the head and another admonition to not go barefoot anywhere (!) I climbed into my rack and started typing. I’m curious to see how the officer spaces compare…no word on if that will happen or not. Probably won’t happen. (ed: It didn’t. But I did tour the Midway, and the racks were just a little bigger, but not much different there.) Then I went to sleep.

I remember hoping that I wouldn’t roll out as I was a good six feet off the deck. I slept very fitfully, waking every hour since it was so uncomfortable. Each rack was like this: a steel plate, then a 4 inch mattress 15 years old, and then sheets, and you. I tried lying on my back, and my side. There was no good way to sleep, it’s just something you have to endure (or get used to).

At about 2am the sailor who took my original rack for his tiger came in and was making all kinds of noise about how “somebody jacked my brother’s rack!” It was kind of funny, but they got it all straightened out in the morning. A very interesting day.
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